Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

Old News...

 

Kind of hard to keep your story straight when you're lying.

And further in the briefing...

 

I thought there was no nuclear threat from Iraq; that they had no equipment or 'materials' for nuclear construction?

 

Dual use. It has a legitimate civilian use. However the threat was identified and the materials were sealed per the UN inspectors' instructions. We all knew where it was until after the US invaded and *decided* to not secure it.

edit:
the same applies to all the low level irradiated material created as byproducts of their early 90's program and other material that were secured and monitored by the UN until we decided to invade and *neglect* our stewardship of the country except for the Oil ministry.


edit 2:
the main use of this material for nuclear weapons would be to make a smaller payload conventional explosive device. This would make a nuclear warhead or bomb more practical since the equivalent amount of TNT would be bigger and heavier. Smaller payload means a smaller missile is required for the equivalent delivery vehicle be it rocket, missile, or bomb. If one looks back at the first two atomic bombs, part of the size is due to the amount of the conventional explosives.

 

Hayes goes thorugh more and more contortions to justify the war. He thought Iraq was an imminent mortal threat or at least one sometime in the future. Rather than admit that this was largely wrong, as we see with Ken Pollack and others, Hayes has claimed at various times to support the war due to concerns with Iraqi feminism, love of Iraqis in general, Sadam was a bad man, or more recently that war is peace or at least leads to peace unlike like the hated diplomacy that according to him led to sanctions that led to troops in Saudi that led to 9/11. I'm sure there will be new creative and equally fallacious attempts to convince himself if no one else.

A Shiite Iraq, aligned with Iran, Al Qaeda with high explosives attacking our troops, this dual use material going to Iran who is building weapons when Sadam wasn't, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 American dead, nothing can shake Hayes' faith in the Iraqi war.

Hayes will no doubt respond as usual. Pick a sentence or phrase; claim to not understand what is written and continue to miss the forest for the trees on Iraq and how this war has made the US less safe.

 

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said US-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. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.


http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1098677410357

 

I think this is approximately fifty bombs for every commercial jetliner in the world with enough left over for suicide bombers for about a century. So if the terrorists mess up a few times, they have plenty of stuff in reserve.

For free from the Bushies.

 

Another beginning-of-week DNC-planted NYT stories blows up in the face of the liberals. What a shame.


Poor libs. Rooting for failures in Iraq to save this election. Pathetic.

 

Once again nobody was rooting for this. Remember if the anti-Bush liberal crowd would have had their way the IAEA would still be gaurding the explosives, and they wouldn't be in the hands of the terrorists right now.

 

No one has to root for anything. The incompetence of the Bushies shines through all.

If one is not based in reality, the facts tend to skew against the faith based Bush logic.

 

How could they be secured by US Forces when they disappeared BEFORE our invasion, according to NBC News? Another one blows up in Kerry's face again!

http://drudgereport.com/nbcw.htm

NBCNEWS: CACHE OF EXPLOSIVES VANISHED FROM SITE IN IRAQ BEFORE TROOPS ARRIVED...

The NYTIMES urgently reported on Monday in an apprent October Surprise: The Iraqi interim government and the U.N. nuclear agency have warned the United States that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives are now missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

[The source behind the NYT story first went to CBSNEWS' 60 MINUTES last Wednesday, but the beleaguered network wasn't able to get the piece on the air as fast as the newspaper could print. Executive producer Jeff Fager hoped to break the story during a high-impact election eve broadcast of 60 MINS [10/31.]]

Jumping on the TIMES exclusive, Dem presidential candidate John Kerry blasted the Bush administration for its failure to "guard those stockpiles."

"This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration," Kerry said.

In an election week rush:

**ABCNEWS Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 4 Times
**CBSNEWS Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 7 Times
**MSNBC Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 37 Times
**CNN Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 50 Times

But tonight, NBCNEWS reported: The 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were already missing back in April 10, 2003 -- when U.S. troops arrived at the installation south of Baghdad!

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq._

According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived._

"The U.S. Army was at the site one day after the liberation and the weapons were already gone," a top Republican blasted from Washington late Monday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers.

Dem vp hopeful John Edwards blasted Bush for not securing the explosives: "It is reckless and irresponsible to fail to protect and safeguard one of the largest weapons sites in the country. And by either ignoring these mistakes or being clueless about them, George Bush has failed. He has failed as our commander in chief; he has failed as president."

A senior Bush official e-mailed DRUDGE late Monday: "Let me get this straight, are Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards now saying we did not go into Iraq soon enough? We should have invaded and liberated Iraq sooner?"

Top Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart fired back Monday night: "In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame. Instead of distorting John Kerry’s words, the Bush campaign is now falsely and deliberately twisting the reports of journalists. It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous."

Why is the U.N. nuclear agency suddenly warning now that insurgents in Iraq may have obtained nearly 400 tons of missing explosives -- in early 2003?

NBCNEWS Jim Miklaszewski quoted one official: "Recent disagreements between the administration and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency makes this announcement appear highly political."

 

Man, it sure did get quiet in here.

 

For those who can't read calendars like Faos and Matt Drudge, here is the timeline:

http://www.nola.com/newsflash/iraq/...ational-18/109873704472511.xml&storylist=iraq



Timeline on missing explosives in Iraq
10/25/2004, 3:35 p.m. CT
The Associated Press

(AP) — • 1991: The International Atomic Energy Agency placed a seal over storage bunkers holding conventional explosives known as HMX and RDX at the Al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad as part of U.N. sanctions that ordered the dismantlement of Iraq's nuclear program after the Gulf War. HMX is a "dual use" substance powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.

• January 2003: IAEA inspectors viewed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa for the last time. The inspectors took an inventory and again placed storage bunkers at Al-Qaqaa under agency seal.

• February 2003: IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the United Nations that Iraq had declared that "HMX previously under IAEA seal had been transferred for use in the production of industrial explosives." This apparently did not include the HMX that remained under seal at Al-Qaqaa.

• March 2003: Nuclear agency inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time but did not examine the explosives because the seals were not broken. The inspectors then pulled out of the country.

• March 2003: The U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq.

• After the invasion: The Pentagon said Monday that "coalition forces were present in the vicinity at various times during and after major combat operations. The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility, but found no indicators of WMD (weapons of mass destruction). While some explosive material was discovered, none of it carried IAEA seals.



In between March 2003 and now, those 340 tons disappeared. No matter how you spin it, it was under control until we kicked the UN out and the Pentagon has already said we lost it.

edit: The bushies could have guarded this but chose instead to guard oil fields and the oil ministry buildings and capture a model airplane put together with duct tape and claim it was a WMD delivery system. The fact that they skipped guarding the main nuclear facility in Iraq in the first month of the war should have told us that they didn't have a clue. For an adminstration that claimed it knew where everything was, it sure looks like incompetence.

edit 2: The nbc story doesn't jive with reality. They moved and dispersed 400 tons of material right under our spy planes, drones or under fire during the war? The Bushies were so intent on finding nucular or chem bio weapons they decided to ignore conventional explosives. They sure are good at coming up with excuses.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...6oct26,1,5204158.story?coll=la-home-headlines
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Pentagon officials said that although U.S. troops searched the facility on several occasions during and after the invasion, the facility was not high on U.S. commanders' list of sites to guard because survey teams found no nuclear or biological materials at Al Qaqaa, a collection of 87 buildings and underground bunkers less than 30 miles south of Baghdad.

Asked if U.S. troops were ever ordered to guard the facility, where Hussein built conventional warheads and the IAEA dismantled parts of his nuclear program after the Gulf War, a Defense official responded, "Not that I'm aware of."

David Kay, the CIA's former chief weapons hunter in Iraq, believes that the material was looted in the immediate aftermath of the war.

He said he saw the facility in May 2003, "and it was heavily looted at that time. Sometime between April and May, most of the stuff was carried off. The site was in total disarray, just like a lot of the Iraqi sites."

Kay said that HMX and RDX were "superb explosives for terrorists" because they were stable compounds that could be transported safely and used for large-scale attacks.

Both types of material "would be good for a car bomb or a truck bomb," Kay said. "Just pack it together with a detonator."

The U.S. failure to guard hundreds of ammunition depots after the invasion has been well documented. Top military officials in Iraq believe that weapons taken from these sites have armed an insurgency that is taking American lives almost daily. More than 1,100 U.S. troops have been killed since the invasion began.
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Yeah, the 'publicans sure aren't quiet, they're too busy talking it up in spin alley and deception lane.

 

Why do the facts hate America?

 

It really quiet after we learned that the attempt to get out of responsibility didn't follow the actual timeline.

 

Why do major leftist media outlets continue to distort the news to fit their own agenda?

 

Yeah, too bad they aren't all as accurate and undistorted as the Drudge report.

 

A website with a targeted audience is in a totally different ballpark as a major media outlet that claims to be independant

 

I agree that it certainly is very different. In this case it's also wrong.