CNN-Weapons were already missing

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Yes I know about this.

I'm wondering if any of the shrill from the left will retract their posts with this new information.

This shows alot of things-

-Hans Blix and the inspectors were incompetent
-they had weapons after all, so there was a justifable reason to go in to Iraq, (if you're from the far left)
-the way that Kerry latched on to this and ran with it without verifying everything shows he is a promoter of scare tactics and will do anything to try and get elected

i could go on, but i do not want to steal anybody else's thunder.

db9.
 
Yes they were conventional high explosives, the question remains that if the regime was able to transport 377 tonnes of high explosive to a different location before the war is it not concievable that the WMD were also transported - I think that Saddam had weapons into 2002 at least and moved them out during the UN effort and the millitary buildup. This is not WMD, be under no illusions that it is.
 
"IAEA and other U.N. inspectors left the country in March 2003 before the fighting began on March 19."

".. On April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad."

That leaves the thieves nearly one month to loot the stuff.

Now you can quarrel about responsibilities on this one. I remember the U.S. warned the U.N. telling them to leave the country before they started bombing.
 
A_Wanderer said:
the question remains that if the regime was able to transport 377 tonnes of high explosive to a different location before the war is it not concievable that the WMD were also transported - I think that Saddam had weapons into 2002 at least and moved them out during the UN effort and the millitary buildup.

This theory goes against all the available evidence. Both the Kay Report and the Duelfer report, commissioned by the Bush administration, indicate that Saddam had no WMD, and no WMD programs since at least 1998.

So the question that you say is remaining has been asked and answered, by the Bush administration's own appointed people. It's really time to stop this WMD fairy tale once and for all.
 
hiphop,
so you are saying that the inspectors were just thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat close to finding them, but it's the usa's fault for impeding their search ?

c'mon buddy u can do better than that:sexywink:

db9
 
The key conclusions of the Duelfer report was that Saddams primary objective was the removal of the UN Sanctions and the reconstruction of his WMD stockpiles out of fear from Iran which will probably be a nuclear power by the end of next year - this probably would have occured if the UN Inspections found that Saddam had verifiably disarmed and the regime was not removed, be not so quick to dismiss the possibility that some, note some, material was moved.

Now the utter absence of evidence was boggling, I mean every major intelligence service in the world was absolutely wrong - now part of this was overcompensating after underestimating the capacity before the inspectors actually saw what the regime could produce and the other part was group-think. The absence of weapons program related materials would seem to confirm the feelings of those inspectors that material was moved to Syria before the war and the apparent dissaperence of this high explosives just goes to show that such a proposition is not implausible.
 
Last edited:
This is the part that bothers me (from msnbc):

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said U.S.-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. The site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

So, after the invasion, we found these things, but we didn't bother to post a guard around them? Inexcusable.
 
A_Wanderer said:
The key conclusions of the Duelfer report was that Saddams primary objective was the removal of the UN Sanctions and the reconstruction of his WMD stockpiles out of fear from Iran which will probably be a nuclear power by the end of next year - this probably would have occured if the UN Inspections found that Saddam had verifiably disarmed and the regime was not removed,

I see. So Saddam wanted weapons. Perhaps you'd like to name a regime that doesn't? That's not a "key conclusion", that's telling us something that is perfectly obvious. Nobody thinks Saddam didn't want WMD. The question is, did we have to go to war to prevent him from getting them?

No the utter absence of evidence was boggling, I mean every major intelligence service in the world was absolutely wrong - now part of this was overcompensating after underestimating the capacity before the inspectors actually saw what the regime could produce and the other part was group-think. The absence of weapons program related materials would seem to confirm the feelings of those inspectors that material was moved to Syria before the war and the apparent dissaperence of this high explosives just goes to show that such a proposition is not implausible.

Ah, a favorite of conspiracy theorists everywhere - "the evidence is that there is no evidence." A perfect self-reinforcing loop.

I'd point out that it's hardly established that this stuff went missing before the invasion. I'd recommend Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo for discussion of the contradictions Pentagon and White House officials have made in their stories as well as general problems with the "it was already gone" theory.
 
Key Findings
Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to ends sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.

Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions
were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that
which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion,
irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic
missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.

They are the key findings straight from the summary of the report, can you explain to me how I am misreading this part where it says that the intent was to remove sanctions and restart the program. We did have to go to war to prevent him from getting them, two choices either go to war and remove a regime of whoms barbarity was on par with the USSR or avoid war and wait for the sanctions to be lifted, at which point the regime would reactivate its program. The third option would be to leave sanctions in place and have Saddam die and the country implode into a civil war with absolutely no force to maintain order. The choice was right.

You could not prevent the man from getting the weapons in the long run without removing the regime, either the sanctions remained in place and things got worse, the smuggling continued or the sanctions would have been lifted and he would have got the weapons programs restarted a lot quicker - either way he would have got the weapons, it was only a question of time.

I am not saying that the regime would have hundreds of tonnes of weaponized WMD sitting in a warehouse with a big sign out front, I am saying that key elements of the weapons programs which could be used in a reconstituted effort just have not been found and it is plausible that they were shipped out of the country, now if you feel that that is a crazy proposition and that Saddam disarmed fully and totally but just didn't want to tell anybody about it then fine.
 
Last edited:
diamond said:
hiphop,
so you are saying that the inspectors were just thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat close to finding them, but it's the usa's fault for impeding their search ?

c'mon buddy u can do better than that:sexywink:

db9

I don´t know what your point is. Read the articles diamond dude :D

Obviously IAEA guarded the site before of the war. Then the war started, the IAEA couldn´t guard them anymore and left the country. One month later, after the fall of Baghdad, the U.S. troops are there and start to guard the site. In the meantime, important explosives were stolen.

That´s the picture I get. I don´t know what you mean by "the inspectors were just thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat close to finding them".

Finding what? :confused:
 
This explosive was declared by the regime and had IAEA seals on it, they knew all about it but agreed that Iraq should keep it for later use in civilian projects like mining etc.
 
Yes, the IAEA promotes peaceful use.

I still don´t get diamond´s point.

I tend to agree with cydewaze:

"This is the part that bothers me (from msnbc):

Quote:
At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said U.S.-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. The site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

So, after the invasion, we found these things, but we didn't bother to post a guard around them? Inexcusable."
 
The corner at NRO had this to say.


BOMB-GATE [Cliff May]
Sent to me by a source in the government: “The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The US is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

(For the record, I don’t reveal my sources so if that means I end up sharing a cell at Sing-sing with Judy Miller, so be it.)
Posted at 10:00 AM
 
what's really sad is the amount of arm-chair quaterbacking.
in the same vain-

by the time Curt Schilling wins it for the BoSox most of these folks from the left will be finding fault w/Mr Schilling's performance in one degree or another:sexywink:
 
do we really have the right to attack a country with $200 billion worth of resources because we think it might have started a weapons program sometime in the future? and even if the intelligence of the world community was flawed ... shouldn't we wait until we have some hard proof, maybe a satellite picture of weapons movements or something substantial, before we completely obliterate an entire country? just seems like common sense points to me.
 
A_Wanderer said:
The corner at NRO had this to say.


BOMB-GATE [Cliff May]
Sent to me by a source in the government: “The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The US is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

(For the record, I don’t reveal my sources so if that means I end up sharing a cell at Sing-sing with Judy Miller, so be it.)
Posted at 10:00 AM

This is ridiculous on its face. It's just a "government official" - could be anyone with that phrasing - giving his own theory. He can't possibly be in a situation to know what El Baradei's motivations may or may not be, short of mind-reading.

If we're relying on anonymous officials, there's also this story, which notes a "Pentagon official" saying that we inspected the site after the war and the stuff was still there. It's still anonymous, and therefore unreliable, but at least 1) it doesn't rely on the word of people with an obvious self-interest in saying otherwise, and 2) there's no mind-reading required.

Besides, it may be moot anyway; the first troops to visit the site did find explosives, although it's unclear what kind of explosives.
 
strannix said:
This is ridiculous on its face. It's just a "government official" - could be anyone with that phrasing - giving his own theory. He can't possibly be in a situation to know what El Baradei's motivations may or may not be, short of mind-reading.

If we're relying on anonymous officials, there's also this story, which notes a "Pentagon official" saying that we inspected the site after the war and the stuff was still there. It's still anonymous, and therefore unreliable, but at least 1) it doesn't rely on the word of people with an obvious self-interest in saying otherwise, and 2) there's no mind-reading required.

Please realize that an unnamed "Pentagon official" is just as unreliable as the "government official". Reporter can simply quote each other to get a quote and we will never be the wiser.
 
nbcrusader said:


Please realize that an unnamed "Pentagon official" is just as unreliable as the "government official". Reporter can simply quote each other to get a quote and we will never be the wiser.

As you notice I called the Pentagon official "unreliable". I'd dispute that they're equally unreliable, though, for the reasons I put forth.

It's true that we'll never be the wiser, and as you'll notice by my acknowledgment of the unreliability of the Pentagon official, I don't put too much stock in either quote. But as a general rule, assertions made based on facts are always more credible than those based on speculation, and assertions made out of self-interest are always less credible than those that are not.
 
strannix said:
But as a general rule, assertions made based on facts are always more credible than those based on speculation, and assertions made out of self-interest are always less credible than those that are not.

Agreed.

And these days, where can you find someone not acting out of self-interest?
 
Say what you want about the media but I trust the eye-witness account from an embed reporter more than an unnamed official.

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. bOnce we left the area, that was the last that the brigade had anything to do with the area.

video link
 
MaxFisher said:

I guess it doesn't matter to him that the story has already been proven to be wrong.
Are you paying attention?

Maybe you have had surgery and are on some heavy meds.

Al-Qaqaa spokesman says no weapons search

By KIMBERLY HEFLING
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- The first U.S. military unit to reach the Al-Qaqaa military installation after the invasion of Iraq did not have orders to search for the nearly 400 tons of explosives that Iraqi officials say were stolen from the site sometime following the fall of Baghdad, the unit spokesman said Tuesday.

When the troops from the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade arrived at the Al-Qaqaa base a day or so after Baghdad's fall on April 9, 2003, there were already looters throughout the facility, Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit, told The Associated Press.

The soldiers "secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemical weapons were not present in their area," Wellman wrote in an e-mail message. "Bombs were found but not chemical weapons in that immediate area.

"Orders were not given from higher to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions, as they (high-explosive weapons) were everywhere in Iraq," he wrote.

His remarks appeared to confirm the observations of an NBC reporter embedded with the army unit who said Tuesday that she saw no signs that the Americans searched for the powerful explosives during their 24 hours at the facility en route to Baghdad, 30 miles to the north.

The disappearance, which the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Monday to the U.N. Security Council, has raised questions about why the United States didn't do more to secure the facility and failed to allow full international inspections to resume after the March 2003 invasion.

On Tuesday, Russia, citing the disappearance, called on the U.N. Security Council to discuss the return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq. But the United States said American inspectors were investigating the loss and that there is no need for U.N. experts to return.

The missing explosives have become a major issue in the final week of the presidential campaign, with Vice President Dick Cheney questioning on Tuesday whether the explosives were at the facility when U.S. troops arrived, and the Kerry campaign calling the disappearance the latest in a "tragic series of blunders" by the Bush administration.

The Al-Qaqaa explosives included HMX and RDX, key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in repeated bomb attacks on U.S.-led multinational forces and Iraqi police and national guardsmen. But HMX is also a "dual use" substance powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.


Bush won't take any questions on this or even address it.

Why? If there is nothing to hide?
 
deep said:
Bush won't take any questions on this or even address it.

Why? If there is nothing to hide?

I'll skip the personal attack on MaxFisher.

Given the flurry of news articles and editorial comments, there is no clear picture of when the explosives disappeared.

The last time they were seen was 2000-2001?

The last time the IAEA visited the site, they only inspected the seal.

There is a statement from the IAEA that the explosives disappeared as early as January 2003.

With all the hyperbole and rhetoric, and knowing that certain groups would not be happy with any answer given, I am not surprised GWB hasn't answered questions on this.
 
Even you wily conservatives can't manage to talk away the disappearance of hundreds of tonnes of weapons due to gross incompetence... ahh it's a good day. :wink:
 
Back
Top Bottom