So We DID Secure the Explosives

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nbcrusader

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U.S. Team Took 250 Tons of Iraqi Munitions

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Army officer came forward Friday to say a team from his 3rd Infantry Division took about 250 tons of munitions and other material from the Al-Qaqaa (search) arms-storage facility soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April 2003.


At this point, the only incompetence appears to be the media for their inability to completely investigate a story before making their October Surprise.
 
Well...if this is true, the incompetence can be shared with everyone up the command chain for not readily knowing whether these were taken or not. You would think somebody would get the info up to George so he can have a great position on it right from the start.

Now...where did the 100 tons go? (If there were 100 tons left.)
 
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nbcrusader said:
U.S. Team Took 250 Tons of Iraqi Munitions




At this point, the only incompetence appears to be the media for their inability to completely investigate a story before making their October Surprise.

Goodness, you're so quick to believe these kinds of unsubstantiated claims.

Remember when you were so sure that Saddam removed them before the war? But that fell apart.

And then, after that, when you thought the Russians took them? But that fell apart, too.

So now some random guy comes forward, says that we actually took them, which runs counter to everything the Bush administration and the Pentagon has told us thus far. And wouldn't you know it? You believe this too.

I'd suggest that you wait 24 hours before jumping on stories like this, since that's usually about how long they last before completely disintegrating.

Although in this case, 24 hours is way too long.
 
strannix said:
So now some random guy comes forward, says that we actually took them, which runs counter to everything the Bush administration and the Pentagon has told us thus far. And wouldn't you know it? You believe this too.

I'd suggest that you wait 24 hours before jumping on stories like this, since that's usually about how long they last before completely disintegrating.

Although in this case, 24 hours is way too long.

It took about 24 seconds to start the GWB is incompetent talk - but perhaps that was just regularly scheduled programming.

A lot has been made about an issue of which we have an incomplete picture.
 
nbcrusader said:


It took about 24 seconds to start the GWB is incompetent talk - but perhaps that was just regularly scheduled programming.

A lot has been made about an issue of which we have an incomplete picture.

Incomplete? Ha.

We have pictures of the stuff taken after the war. It's not there now. We don't know where it is.

What exactly is incomplete about this picture?
 
I'd argue about your selective use of information and ability to pass judgment, but I think we are passed constructive discussion of the subject.
 
Re: Re: So We DID Secure the Explosives

strannix said:


So now some random guy comes forward, says that we actually took them, which runs counter to everything the Bush administration and the Pentagon has told us thus far. And wouldn't you know it? You believe this too.

Some random guy? This was a major who was there! We have satellite imagery. I listened to this press conference and it was the US that took them!

strannix said:
I'd suggest that you wait 24 hours before jumping on stories like this.

John Kerry jumped on this thing immediately after the story broke a couple days ago saying the Bush Administration was incompetent. That proved to be false. Now he and the NYT has egg on their face. And this is the same person that wants to lead our country? The same person that will take information that is under investigation and spin it before all the facts are found out? This sounds very similar to what he did 35 years ago.
 
Re: Re: Re: So We DID Secure the Explosives

swizzlestick said:


Some random guy? This was a major who was there! We have satellite imagery. I listened to this press conference and it was the US that took them!


the same satellite imagery that is now the center of controversy for no WMDs? hmmmmm :eyebrow:
 
There is a difference between explosives and munitions. I have no military background and even I know this. 350 tons of EXPLOSIVES are missing. Who cares about these stupid munitions? This story still doesn't say where the explosives are.
 
nbcrusader said:
I'd argue about your selective use of information and ability to pass judgment, but I think we are passed constructive discussion of the subject.

No, we're not.

What exactly is "selective" about my use of facts? Let's look at your selection of facts, shall we?

Did you note that this major specifically said he didn't know if the stuff he took out were the explosives in question? And that he specifically said he didn't notice any IAEA seals on the stuff he did take out?

No, of course not, but you blame the media for getting it wrong, anyway. But, oh yeah, my ability to pass judgment is in question ....
 
nbcrusader said:

Or when they disappeared.

Or who took them.

But, the enlightened few know that it is Bush's fault :|

We know when they were still there. Please refer to my post in this thread with video proof. And of course we don't know who took them. We weren't guarding them when they disappeared like we should have been.
 
Re: Re: Re: So We DID Secure the Explosives

swizzlestick said:

John Kerry jumped on this thing immediately after the story broke a couple days ago saying the Bush Administration was incompetent.

Of course Kerry jumped on it immediately. That's how long it took for the Pentagon to say they didn't know what happened.

See, here's the thing. We went to war, ostensibly to prevent Saddam's weapons from falling into the wrong hands. In this case, we knew exactly where the weapons were. But we didn't secure them, and now Lord knows where they are.

Not knowing where they are IS the incompetence. I can't put it any plainer than that. When someone tells you where something is, and you lose it, it's your fault.
 
The point is this is a developing story. I have heard as little of 3 tons and as much as 380 tons. I don't know where the rest of the explosives are. We will have to wait and see.

My point I was trying to make was John Kerry taking a story and running with it, while at the same time underminding the troops involved...all for political gain.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: So We DID Secure the Explosives

strannix said:
Not knowing where they are IS the incompetence. I can't put it any plainer than that. When someone tells you where something is, and you lose it, it's your fault.

Putting aside the issue of why they were there in the first place, and the fact that we do not know when they were taken from the facility (remember, the IAEA stated as early as January, 2003), to look back 18 months, determine the highest strategic goal and then sit back behind our computers and judge incompetence (when we only have a fraction of a percent of the information on how the war was conducted) is incredulous.
 
swizzlestick said:
... while at the same time underminding the troops involved...

How so? I'm genuinely curious to hear this explained. I've heard Bush make this charge, as he does anytime someone questions his abilities as Commander-in-Chief, but I've never heard anyone actually explain how it is so.

Maybe he caused Guiliani to blame this on the troops ...? I'm at a loss. Please explain how criticizing Bush amounts to undermining our troops. Really. Like I said, genuinely curious.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: So We DID Secure the Explosives

nbcrusader said:


Putting aside the issue of why they were there in the first place,

That's a good thing to put aside, because besides being completely irrelevant (it's not like it would have been OK not to guard it if it had been illicit), it's a question that's been answered already. The explosives have peaceful purposes, like mining and excavation and stuff, and they were not on the list of banned substances.

and the fact that we do not know when they were taken from the facility (remember, the IAEA stated as early as January, 2003),

You keep saying this, but besides the fact that you're (perhaps literally) the only person on earth that's still disputing that the seals were intact in March, we now have photographic evidence that they were there after the war.

to look back 18 months, determine the highest strategic goal and then sit back behind our computers and judge incompetence (when we only have a fraction of a percent of the information on how the war was conducted) is incredulous.

No, given our stated objectives going into the war - to keep America safe from the bad man's weapons - it makes a great deal of sense to criticize the leaders who let the weapons disappear.
 
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Two More Iraq Arms Stashes In Focus

VIENNA, Austria, Oct. 30, 2004


Looters unleashed last year by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq overran a sprawling desert complex where a bunker sealed by U.N. monitors held old chemical weapons, American arms inspectors report.

Charles Duelfer's arms teams say all U.N.-sealed structures at the Muthanna site were broken into. If the so-called Bunker 2 was breached and looted, it would be a new case of restricted weapons being at risk of having fallen into militants' hands.

Separately, Human Rights Watch said Saturday it alerted the U.S. military to a cache of hundreds of warheads containing high explosives in Iraq in May 2003, but that officials seemed disinterested and still hadn't secured the site 10 days later, even though it was being looted every day by armed men.

The disclosure, made by a senior leader of the New York-based group, raised new questions about the willingness or ability of U.S.-led forces to secure known stashes of dangerous weapons in Iraq.

Peter Bouckaert, who heads Human Rights Watch's international emergency team, told The Associated Press he was shown two rooms "stacked to the roof" with surface-to-surface warheads on May 9, 2003, in a warehouse on the grounds of the 2nd Military College in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Bouckaert said he gave U.S. officials the exact location of the warheads, but that by the time he left the area on May 19, 2003, he had seen no U.S. forces at the site, which he said was being looted daily by armed men.

His comments came as the question of 377 tons of high explosives reported missing from another site - the Al-Qaqaa military installation south of Baghdad - has become a heated issue in the final days of the U.S. presidential campaign.

Officials are unsure whether the episode at Muthanna points to a threat of chemical attack, since it isn't known if usable chemical warheads were in the bunker, what may have been taken, or by whom.

"Clearly, there's a potential concern, but we're unable to estimate the relative level of it because we don't know the condition of the things inside the bunker," said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the U.N. arms inspection agency in New York, whose specialists have been barred from Iraq since the invasion.

Chief arms hunter Duelfer told The Associated Press by e-mail Friday from Iraq that he was unaware of "anything of importance" looted from the chemical weapons complex. The report his Iraq Survey Group issued on Oct. 6 said, however, that it couldn't vouch for the fate of old munitions at Muthanna, a 35-square-mile complex in the heart of the embattled "Sunni Triangle."

One chemical weapons expert said even old, weakened nerve agents - in this case sarin - could be a threat to unprotected civilians.

The weapons involved would be pre-1991 artillery rockets filled with sarin, or their damaged remnants - weapons that were openly declared by Iraq and were under U.N. control until security fell apart with the U.S. attack. They are not concealed arms of the kind President Bush claimed Iraq had, but which were never found.

In its Oct. 6 report, summarizing a fruitless search for banned weapons in Iraq, Duelfer's group disclosed that widespread looting occurred at Muthanna, 35 miles northwest of Baghdad, in the aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi capital in April 2003.

A little-noted annex of the 985-page report said every U.N.-sealed location at the desert installation had been breached in the looting spree, and "materials and equipment were removed."

Bunker 2 at Muthanna State Establishment, once Iraq's central chemical weapons production site, was put under U.N. inspectors' control in early 1991 after it was heavily damaged by a U.S. precision bomb in the first Gulf War. At the time, Iraq said 2500 sarin-filled artillery rockets had been stored there.

The U.N. teams sealed up the bunker with brick and reinforced concrete, rather than immediately attempt the risky job of clearing weapons or remnants from under a collapsed roof and neutralizing them.

A CIA analysis, not done on site, hypothesized in 1999 that all the sarin must have been destroyed by fire. But a U.S. General Accounting Office review last June questioned that analysis, and the United Nations, whose teams were there, said the extent of destruction was never determined.

Buchanan said a U.N. team inspected the sealed Muthanna bunker on Dec. 4, 2002, and inspectors continued to visit Muthanna up to March 14, 2003, although they did not view the bunker that day. Four days later, on the eve of the U.S. invasion, the U.N. monitors had to leave Iraq.

As for when the sealed bunker may have been breached, the report said, "The facilities at the southern section" - the bunker area - "were removed by unknown entities between April and June 2003." It didn't elaborate, but presumably the first U.S. search teams arrived at Muthanna in June and discovered the looting.

"The (Iraq Survey Group) is unable to unambiguously determine the complete fate of old munitions, materials and chemicals produced and stored there," the Duelfer report said.

The three-week-old report also said, without elaboration, that chemical munitions "are still stored there" and that warheads, apparently not filled with chemical agent, "are still being looted."

As for the Baqouba facility, Human Rights Watch's Bouckaert said displaced people he was working with in the area had taken him to the warheads. "They said, `There's stocks of weapons here and we're very concerned - can you please inform the coalition?"' he said in a telephone interview from South Africa.

After photographing the warheads, Bouckaert said he went straight to U.S. officials in Baghdad's Green Zone complex, where he claimed officials at first didn't seem interested in his information.

"They asked mainly about chemical or biological weapons, which we hadn't seen," he said. "I had a pretty hard time getting anyone interested in it."

Bouckaert said he eventually was put in touch with unidentified U.S. officials and showed them on a map where the stash was located, also giving them the exact GPS coordinates for the site.

But he said he never saw U.S. forces at the site when he returned to the area for daily interviews with refugees, and that the site still was not secured when he finally left the area.

"For the next 10 days I continued working near this site and going back regularly to interview displaced people, and nothing was done to secure the site," he said.

"Looting was taking place by a lot of armed men with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades," Bouckaert said. He said each of the warheads contained an estimated 57 pounds of high explosives.

"Everyone's focused on Al-Qaqaa, when what was at the military college could keep a guerrilla group in business for a long time creating the kinds of bombs that are being used in suicide attacks every day," he said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday that Iraq had reported 377 tons of high explosives missing from al-Qaqaa "due to a lack of security" at the vast site 30 miles south of Baghdad.

Iraqi officials told the agency the explosives - which can be used to make the kind of car bombs that insurgents have used in numerous attacks on U.S.-led forces - went missing amid looting after the April 9, 2003 fall of the Iraqi capital.

The Pentagon has suggested the explosives, which can be used to make the kind of car bombs that insurgents have used in numerous attacks on U.S.-led forces, may have been removed before U.S. forces moved into the area.

U.S. Army Maj. Austin Pearson said Friday that his team removed 250 tons of plastic explosives and other munitions from al-Qaqaa on April 13, 2003. But those munitions were not located under U.N. nuclear agency seal as the missing high-grade explosives had been, and the Pentagon was unable to say definitively that they were part of the missing 377 tons.

Bouckaert, who last year criticized U.S. officials for not acting on important information about mass graves in Iraq, said he estimates there were between 500 and 1,000 tons of high explosive warheads at the war college site in Baqouba.

The site also included anti-tank mines and anti-personnel mines, he said.

Car bombs require only about 6 1/2 pounds of explosives, meaning each warhead potentially could have yielded enough material for nine bombs, Human Rights Watch said.



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/25/iraq/main651082.shtml
 
nbcrusader said:
And a bunch of pundits sitting behind their computers can even comprehend the complexities of military conflict..... :|

:blahblah:

You keep trying to make this sound so "complex" but it's just not. If you invade a country in order to keep its weapons out of the hands of bad guys, and you are unable to keep the weapons out of the hands of bad guys, you have failed. It's not complicated at all.

We're not arguing strategy, or moral issues, or anything that is complicated about war. It's a question of whether our basic goal (i.e., making America safer) has been met.
 
there was a reason the president DID not say weapons did not fall into the hands of the enemy.

his answer was "Let the experts investigate, so we can find out."


I believe they knew and like many other things i. e., The CIA report concerning 9-11

they held it back, covered it up
until after the election.

This is not sour grapes, just an observation.

Anyone who says they voted for W because he is strong on Terror is misinformed, mislead or in denial.

Report: U.S. troops watched weapons-site looting


LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Explosives were looted from the Al-Qaqaa ammunitions site in Iraq while outnumbered U.S. soldiers assigned to guard the materials watched helplessly, soldiers told the Los Angeles Times.

About a dozen U.S. troops were guarding the sprawling facility in the weeks after the April 2003 fall of Baghdad when Iraqi looters raided the site, the newspaper quoted a group of unidentified soldiers as saying.

U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen witnessed the looting and some soldiers sent messages to commanders in Baghdad requesting help, but received no reply, they said.

"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots," one officer said.

The eyewitness accounts reported by the Times are the first provided by U.S. soldiers and bolster claims that the U.S. military had failed to safeguard the powerful explosives, the newspaper said.

Iraqi officials told the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency last month that about 380 tons of high-grade explosives, a type powerful enough to detonate a nuclear weapon, had been taken from the Al-Qaqaa facility.

Soldiers who belong to two different units described how Iraqis snatched explosives from unsecured bunkers and drove off with them in pickup trucks.

The soldiers who spoke to the Times asked to remain unidentified, saying they feared retaliation from the Pentagon.

The soldiers said they could not confirm that looters took the particularly powerful explosives known as HMX and RDX. One soldier, however, said U.S. forces saw looters load trucks with bags marked "hexamine," which is a key ingredient for HMX.

One senior noncommissioned officer said troops "were running from one side of the compound to the other side, trying to kick people out" and that at least 100 vehicles were at the site waiting for the military to leave so that they could loot the munitions.

The Pentagon has offered accounts that suggest the explosives were removed before the U.S.-led invasion to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and not during the chaos following the fall of Baghdad.

A Pentagon statement last week said the removal of the explosives would have required dozens of heavy trucks moving along the same roads as U.S. combat divisions.

The missing explosives became a campaign issue with Sen. John Kerry claiming it was further evidence of the Bush administration's poor handling of the war.

Four soldiers who are members of the Germany-based 317th Support Center and the 258th Rear Area Operations Center, an Arizona-based Army National Guard unit, said the looting happened over several weeks in late April and early May 2003.

Asked about the soldiers' accounts, Pentagon spokeswoman Rose-Ann Lynch told the newspaper: "We take the report of missing munitions very seriously. And we are looking into the facts and circumstances of this incident."
 
It will be intersesting watching Bush clean up after himself the next four years. Let's hope he doesn't cause more horrendous messes.
 
nbcrusader said:

But, the enlightened few know that it is Bush's fault :|


With the exception of the "enlightened" Rudolph Gulliani who said it was the troops fault.

"What kind of message does that send to the troops!?"- GWB (in all 3 debates)
 
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