Russian SF Tied to the Missing Explosives

[A_Wanderer]

Via Drudge

GERTZ // THURSDAY // WASH TIMES: Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041027-101153-4822r.htm

Could be very interesting if this pans out - I would not put it past them to try such a thing.

 

[nbcrusader]

Watch this get buried with the rest of the real story.

 

[nbcrusader]

More Discrepancies in Original Report

Discrepancy Found in Explosives Amounts

More evidence of a sloppy news story designed to influence the election. Too bad we are not electing First Finger Pointer, otherwise Kerry might have convinced me of voting for him.

 

[verte76]

This is strange. Last week Putin said he wanted Bush to be re-elected. Is he sincere?

 

[Flying FuManchu]

This kind of stuff only strengthens the neo-conservative viewpoint of the world...

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

hmm... the story about these explosives going missing was all over cnn.com yesterday... now it's mysteriously no where to be found. shocking, i know.

 

[swizzlestick]

This is strange. Last week Putin said he wanted Bush to be re-elected. Is he sincere?

One theory I've been kicking around is that US intelligence caught on to this before the press did. Bush wasn't in the position to publicly throw accusations at the Russians before Iraq and during the occupation, he needed as much support (or at least less strong opposition) as he could get. Putin came out and said he told the president there were WMD's there and he has expressed support for the war on terror in general, particularly after what happened in the school. I think Bush and America knew, but kept it under their hats in exchange for some public PR. I don't believe it's some kind of secret conspiracy, but I do believe that what we and the Russians know is a whole lot more than what the press is just figuring out. I think the "defense officials" made those statements because a) the press has revealed part of the story already and b) by saying just before the election that Russia may be the key it implies that the weapons were there and it's advantage Bush. Will the Russians come clean? My guess is a little. The public story as presented by both Russia and the US will limit Russian involvement but be enough for Bush to be somewhat vindicated. Not only that but we'll know which country is next.....

 

[strannix]

This makes a lot of sense ... if you've been paying zero attention to the details of the story thus far.

It's actually funny:

"That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said.

Of course, this begs the question of how the White House could have possibly not known the stuff was missing until this last month. It was a pivotal location! And not just that, it was impossible for the stuff to disappear! Yet we didn't know that it actually did disappear for a year and a half!

Gosh, no incongruency there!

And contrary to what's in the article, Di Rita did have a comment on the story. His comment was “I am unaware of any particular information on that point.” So I guess Shaw needs to talk to his peeps in the Pentagon before the WT ....

 

[sharky]

Hmm...this is weird though. KSTP, which was embedded with the 101, had pictures of these explosives at this facility so there were explosives there when they arrived. And they had IAEA seals, so the U.S. should have known they were there before they even showed up.

link to explosives video
link to IAEA seals

 

[A_Wanderer]

Even more curious

On Sunday night, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller told Jeff Fager, executive producer of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” that the story they had been jointly pursuing on missing Iraqi ammunition was starting to leak on the Internet.

“You know what? We’re going to have to run it Monday,” Keller said.

CBS’s Jeff Fager had asked the paper to delay publication one week.

The paper’s front-page story, charging that 377 tons of powerful bomb-making material “vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year,” hit the presidential campaign with explosive force, as Sen. John F. Kerry seized on it for three straight days and President Bush accused Kerry yesterday of making “wild charges.”

The article has also sparked criticism of the two news organizations from some conservatives, who accuse the Times and CBS of orchestrating a late hit against Bush.

Keller said in an interview yesterday that campaigns “attack the messenger” when they do not like the message. “Beating up on the so-called elite media has a nice populist ring to it, and some of it is calculated,” he said. Bush campaign officials thought that “if they barked at us, we would back off. . . . We’ve vetted this every way we can, and we continue to do that.”

Keller said “60 Minutes” executives asked the newspaper to hold the story until this Sunday so they could report it the same day, and “we said we weren’t comfortable doing that because it wouldn’t give the White House a fair opportunity to respond.”

Fager dismissed criticism of the timing as “absurd,” saying “it was a breaking news story and a significant one. It’s impossible to manage these things.” He said “60 Minutes” and correspondent Ed Bradley had planned to break the story this Sunday — two days before the election — only because “the story came to us on relatively short notice” and that was the next available show. The program has a separate staff from “60 Minutes Wednesday.”

Fager said it was “incredibly unfair” to link the ammunition story to the earlier “60 Minutes Wednesday” report on documents about Bush’s National Guard service, which CBS has admitted it cannot authenticate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/w...post.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3493-2004Oct27.html

 

[A_Wanderer]

And 380 tonnes becomes 3 tonnes as if by magic. Good thing we have the Mainstream Media because they always tell the truth, unless it isn't in the political interest of some editior.

Oct. 27, 2004 — Iraqi officials may be overstating the amount of explosives reported to have disappeared from a weapons depot, documents obtained by ABC News show.

The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S. military control.

But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported.

The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.

But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over three tons of RDX were stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=204304&page=1

 

[deep]

salon article here

Armed group claims to have Iraq explosives

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Oct. 28, 2004 | BAGHDAD, Iraq --

An armed group claimed in a video Thursday to have obtained a large amount of explosives missing from a munitions depot facility in Iraq (news - web sites) and threatened to use them against foreign troops.

A group calling itself Al-Islam's Army Brigades, Al-Karar Brigade, said it had coordinated with officers and soldiers of "the American intelligence" to obtain a "huge amount of the explosives that were in the al-Qaqaa facility."

 

[A_Wanderer]

Well that seems like a reliable source, oh and the "American intelligence" helped them get this explosive material - gee there must be rogue agents on the ground who actually wanted to make Iraq a prolonged war.

 

[deep]

maybe it was the Tora Bora crew.

 

[anitram]

But wait, I thought Giuliani said it was the American troops' fault.

Are they collaborating with the Ruskies to promote the spirit of friendship and reconciliation?