CBS, the Kerry campaign, and dirty politics

Damn that CBS and their low blow politics.....you'd think they were a Sinclair Broadcasting station....

You cast aspersions on drudge, then you post a link to www.dkosopedia.com?

I read the article you linked, and it is very interesting to note that under the listing of "Current News and Background Reports" it failed to list one of the many news reports that indicate the US Military did not find these explosives when it arrived at the al Qa Qaa site, yet it does list the Jerusalem Post article that quotes a Pentagon spokesman who would only speak on the condition of anonymity. Not the most neutral website out there is it?

"The DOD now claims [3] that no weapons were there when U. S. troops arrived at the facility after the invasion:

The IAEA returned to the site two months later, in March 2003, and confirmed the equipment it had tagged was still there.

However, coalition forces found no evidence of the weapons in question when they first arrived at the sprawling Al-Quaqaa facility, 30 miles south of Baghdad, about April 10, 2003, according to a defense official.

The troops searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings, finding some weapons and explosive material, but nothing close to the quantity reported missing by the Iraqi government, and none with IAEA seals, he said.

This account has been discredited by the embed reporter travelling with the 101st Airborne Division -- the unit who first arrived at that facility.

"We didn't know it as the Qaqaa facility at that point but when they did bring us over there we stayed there for quite a while. We stayed overnight, almost 24 hours. And we walked around, we saw the bunkers that had been bombed, and that exposed all of the ordinances that just lied dormant on the desert.

One more fact: At a density of 1.91 g/cm³, 1 metric ton of packed HMX explosive should occupy a space of about 1/2 cubic meter. Even loosely packed crystal, 400 metric tons would easily fit into a large warehouse and would be consistent with Col. John Peabody's account quoted in the AP report above of finding thousands of 2-inch-by-5-inch boxes, each containing three vials of white powder

As now seems likely, this white powder was the HMX or RDX explosive. Indeed if it was not the explosive, then what was the material in the vials and where is it now?

Amy Robach: And it's still unclear exactly when those explosives disappeared. Here to help shed some light on that question is Lai Ling. She was part of an NBC news crew that traveled to that facility with the 101st Airborne Division back in April of 2003. Lai Ling, can you set the stage for us? What was the situation like when you went into the area?
Lai Ling Jew: When we went into the area, we were actually leaving Karbala and we were initially heading to Baghdad with the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. The situation in Baghdad, the Third Infantry Division had taken over Baghdad and so they were trying to carve up the area that the 101st Airborne Division would be in charge of. As a result, they had trouble figuring out who was going to take up what piece of Baghdad. They sent us over to this area in Iskanderia. We didn't know it as the Qaqaa facility at that point but when they did bring us over there we stayed there for quite a while. We stayed overnight, almost 24 hours. And we walked around, we saw the bunkers that had been bombed, and that exposed all of the ordinances that just lied dormant on the desert.
AR: Was there a search at all underway or did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?
LLJ: No. There wasn't a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was - at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.
AR: And there was no talk of securing the area after you left. There was no discussion of that?
LLJ: Not for the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. They were -- once they were in Baghdad, it was all about Baghdad, you know, and then they ended up moving north to Mosul. Once we left the area, that was the last that the brigade had anything to do with the area.

Bi-Polar Bear wrote:

Damn that CBS and their low blow politics.....you'd think they were a Sinclair Broadcasting station....

My point exactly, Bear. Sinclair is a media conglomerate controlled by conservatives who are bent on pushing a Rebuplican agenda.

Just, as you point out, CBS is on the other side.

Thank you for helping me to make my point.

Rush noted today that nobody "loots" 400 tons of anything. Disappearing 400 tons of something requires tractor trailors, like the ones observed moving **** from Iraq to Syria while the UN and the democrats gave Saddam Hussein several extra months to do that sort of thing.

(CBS) U.S. troops found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad. But a senior U.S. official familiar with initial testing said the materials were believed to be explosives.

Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex just south of Baghdad.

"It is clearly a suspicious site," Peabody said.

CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction continues at sites where the U.S. thought chemicals weapons might be hidden.

"And although there are no reports of actual weapons being found, there are constant finds of suspicious material," Martin said. "It obviously will take laboratory testing to find out exactly what that powder is."

The senior U.S. official, based in Washington and speaking on condition of anonymity, said the material was under further study. The site is enormous and U.S. troops are still investigating it for potential weapons of mass destruction, the official said.

"Initial reports are that the material is probably just explosives, but we're still going through the place," the official said. ....

The facility had been identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons site. U.N. inspectors visited the plant at least nine times, including as recently as Feb. 18.

The facility is part of a larger complex known as the Latifiyah Explosives and Ammunition Plant al Qa Qaa.

There was no need to ship it to Syria or anywhere else. It was legally in posession of Hussein since it had non nuclear purposes.


And we had all these pictures and drones and spies telling us there were WMD, but no one saw or heard anything about 380 tons of explosives getting moved?

Come on. You can't apologize for Bush forever.

It sounds like you are saying that we allowed WMD to be looted too.