Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

here is an MSNBC interview with one of the producers from their news crew that visited al Qaqaa as embeds with the 101st Airborne on April 10th, 2003


Q:Was there a search at all underway or was, did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?

A: 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.


well, I guess Druge was wrong, big surprise there huh?

Troops were at al Qaqaa before the 101st got there and they found explosives

"Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said troops found thousands of five-centimetre by 12-centimetre boxes, each containing three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.

A senior U.S. official familiar with initial testing said the powder was believed to be explosives. The finding would be consistent with the plant's stated production capabilities in the field of basic raw materials for explosives and propellants."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030405-chem-readiness01.htm


oops, there goes the excuse that everything was gone before we got there

 

oh! the irony...

from cnn...

 

Too bad CNN already retracted it from the front page. That was quick. Guess they figured out how to put together a timeline.


In any case, the exact date is not nearly as critical as arming terrorists with the ideal material for individual suicide bombers and suicide car/plane/boat bombs. But at least we got the Oil Ministry building as soon as we stepped into Baghdad and got twenty Iraqis to cheer us for a photo op when we tore down that big old Saddam statue.

 

When the story was posted I went to see what the IAEA said, rather than what someone reported they said. The IAEA didn't say the confirmed it was there in March. They said they confirmed it was there in January. As the timeline seemed important, this discrepancy seemed important.

-IAEA confirms it was there in January.
-IAEA says seals still in place in March. Presumably the reason they actually inventory the stuff instead of just always checking the seals is because someone could remove the stuff and reseal it?
-IAEA says Saddam declared use of some of these materials for industrial uses, although not from this facility I think.
-Pentagon says it wasn't there one day after invasion.
-'Anonymous official' says it was there after the invasion.
-IAEA says they were giving coalition time to recover explosives before going public, but if it knew in April of 2003, that seems like an awful long time to wait - especially when they go public a week before the election.

Only saying this doesn't seem as clear cut as some are making it out to be. Clearly not having enough troops to secure these kinds of sites was a mistake. Was the stuff still there when we intervened? I don't think we have enough information to determine that. Its plausible that Saddam, who had moved the same substances from other sites, dispersed it before the intervention. In this one site you're talking about 1,100 buildings with many different types of ordinance stored. Some say 'well why not blow it up then.' Forgetting that the last thing you want to do is blow up over a thousand buildings that contain mixed ordinance, some of which are chem/biological agents.

From Chump's article that he quotes above: "UN weapons inspectors went repeatedly to the vast al Qa Qaa complex, most recently on March 8. But they found nothing during spot visits to some of the 1,100 buildings at the site 40 kilometres south of Baghdad."

What does that mean?

 

Interestingly, 500,000 emails was sent out to the Bush apologists and talking heads of the NBC report this morning. Amazing stuff...

 

I would prefer to see it re-cast as FRICKABED...

 

am i the only one who is bothered by CBS attempting to influence the election in this way???

were they planning on running an unflattering story about kerry that night to balance it out???

the idea of journalists gathering around, holding up stories to influence a national election is beyond scary to me.

 

Nope.

Doesn't speak well for jounalistic integrety, does it?

 

I've never seen those words linked together.

 

Journalistic integrity might be the biggest oxymoron we have ever seen, at least the way things have been going lately.

 

IntegrIty!

Thanks for highlighting my inability to spell!!!

We can joke all we want...but Max's point is pretty important. You would have thought they would be sensitive to appearances of objectivity when the news magazine is scheduled just days before the election. And to rehash a story they initially reported in April 2003....

Given Drudge is the source, i'm hoping there's more to this than what we see so far.

 

the white house is claiming they just found out about this 10 days ago

when exactly should 60 mins run the story then? should they not run a negative piece on the president b/c it is close to the election?

I think you tread on dangerous grounds when you start worrying about perception instead of running news worthy stories when they happen

 

They're a newsmagazine...not the nightly news. Half the year they run repeats...so it's not asif the nation is eagerly awaiting to learn from them, and only them

It's not that they shouldn't run a negative piece on the pres...but they should be extra diligent in selecting their stories when they are quite aware of the timing of this episode. Especially given the negative press the media has received lately.

Just my immediate perception, based on the admittedly sparce information from a biased source (Drudge). Do you not see anything more than timely reporting here? Or at least see how it could be perceived as more than just another story as it happens?

 

Give me a break. Fox news is run by former Republican party operatives and the staff is vetted for loyalty to the conservative cause. Are we supposed to see that Swift Boat liars story again and call that balance? Balance is needed when there are two sides with data to back up there arguments. If one side just makes up crap - it is not balanced to have them talk just to have two opposing sides. There is no excuse for this.

Where's that balance for the Sinclair hit piece?

 

excuse me, but do you see a Fox News stamp on my forehead?? where did I ever defend Fox News???

if you'd pull your head out of your partisan blinders you'd be able to call both of these exactly what they are......some word that i can't think of right now that means really, really bad.

holding off on reporting news to sandbag an election sucks.

 

a.) you said there was a need for balance. The Fox mention is a data point - the right wing provides plenty of imbalance in the media so I don't see the need for a tit for tat balance any more
b.) if there's a need for balance, this is not as bad as any of the hitpieces like the Swift boat liars' initial campaign or Sinclair's last minute bid

Balance is called for when there are two sides with merit. There is no other side to this HMX/RDX story. It's just the facts.

It's the same thing with global warming. You have 99% of the world agreeing that something is happening and journalistic balance calls for a fruitcake with an agenda to be interviewed so they can have *balance*.

The other current issue seems to be voter fraud. Republicans are doing it, and making up blog stories about Democrats to get equal media time.

 

you're right, woofer. i'm convinced. it's important...even beneficial...to have the media out there holding up stories until the night before an election to sandbag one of the candidates. i can't believe i didn't see that before. thanks wayne dolcefino...errrrr..i mean, woofer.

 

apparently you are not alone

You are quite right that *balance* alone should not dictate stories. But i would have hoped for the appearance of impartiality. And holding this story until days before the election just seems....that word that Max meant to say that means really really bad.

 

Actually the Iraqi government was withholding the information if you read the piece. The White House knew about, but then didn't know about it eighteen months ago ( Bush was ignorant but others knew). You should be wondering why they knew about it but didn't say anything. They could have spun it back then but chose to cover it up.

 

The other side of that coin is not reporting news. Republicans would be screaming bloody murder if a Democrat was in office and they found out a story was spiked until after an election. Outright lies on the Drudge Report make it to the mainstream media. Any news that comes out of Iraq is almost by default going to be bad at this point. The only good news that could come out of Iraq for the Bushies is the unlikely case of if they found WMD or Osama.

Since the FCC has abandoned holding stations with licenses to broadcast on the *public* airwaves to any standard anymore except an unwritten decency rules, that is the way it is. Murdoch owns plenty of newspapers. They could have held back on the Swift boat liars coverage and waited till the last week if they wanted maximum impact.