Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

OK, I can predict Drudge's next report when this Russian conspiracy theory falls apart - aliens brought back Elvis, took several thousand tons of explosives from Iraq in exchange.

Because lord knows, our spy satellites would have caught everything else and eyewitness accounts are unreliable.

The same looting that took place everywhere else *after* we conquered Iraq happened here. Occam's razor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28bomb.html

4 Iraqis Tell of Looting at Munitions Site in '03
By JAMES GLANZ and JIM DWYER

Published: October 28, 2004


AGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 27 - Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday.


The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and later heaving unwanted items off the trucks.

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I don't know why that a more simple explanation than Saddam moving the material before the intervention. He empirically had done so. Looters empirically looted. Occam's razor is irrelevant it would seem.

 

looks like the explosives WERE there when US troops rolled in...


http://counterspin.blogspot.com/2004/10/its-over.html

With Pics!

 

First you said the 101st didn't look for explosives? There were 1,100 buildings filled with ordinance. Are these the bunkers with IAEA seals? Or merely with padlocks?

 

The flies in the face of all the evidence we have seen so far. But the Bushies would buy it.

 

Sweet!


Bush on Wednesday

Kerry today threw the words back at the president, announcing he was going "to apply the Bush standard."

 

The Bushies hand picked weapon inspector David Kay says traces of HMX and RDX were found at many improvised explosive device sites when they checked.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/a...sives_were_looted_after_iraq_invasion?mode=PF


On the otherhand if this 350 tons was only a drop in the bucket of the stuff the Bushies lost, where's the outrage?

 

Multiple eyewitnesses to looters *after* we made a pitstop.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/28/MNGJB9HQLT1.DTL

Baghdad -- Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday.

The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and later heaving unwanted items off the trucks.

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What? How so? Its not contradicted by any of the 'evidence' we've seen so far.

And why are you posting the same article multiple times? the SFgate article is the same exact text as the previous one you posted.

 

more from the Minnesota news station that has video and pictures of the explosives

http://www.kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1

EXCLUSIVE:
5 EYEWITNESS NEWS video may be linked to missing explosives in Iraq
Updated: 10/28/2004 11:50:09 AM - VIDEO

A 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein was in the area where tons of explosives disappeared, and may have videotaped some of those weapons.

The missing explosives are now an issue in the presidential debate. Democratic candidate John Kerry is accusing President Bush of not securing the site they allegedly disappeared from. President Bush says no one knows if the ammunition was taken before or after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003 when coalition troops moved in to the area.

Using GPS technology and talking with members of the 101st Airborne Division, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has determined the crew embedded with the troops may have been on the southern edge of the Al Qaqaa installation, where the ammunition disappeared. The news crew was based just south of Al Qaqaa, and drove two or three miles north of there with soldiers on April 18, 2003.

During that trip, members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS news crew bunker after bunker of material labelled "explosives." Usually it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get into the bunkers and see the material identified by the 101st as detonation cords.

"We can stick it in those and make some good bombs." a soldier told our crew.


Soldiers who took a 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew into bunkers on April 18 said some of the boxes uncovered contained proximity fuses.
There were what appeared to be fuses for bombs. They also found bags of material men from the 101st couldn't identify, but box after box was clearly marked "explosive."

In one bunker, there were boxes marked with the name "Al Qaqaa", the munitions plant where tons of explosives allegedly went missing.

Once the doors to the bunkers were opened, they weren't secured. They were left open when the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew and the military went back to their base.

"We weren't quite sure what were looking at, but we saw so much of it and it didn't appear that this was being secured in any way," said photojournalist Joe Caffrey. "It was several miles away from where military people were staying in their tents".

Officers with the 101st Airborne told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that the bunkers were within the U.S. military perimeter and protected. But Caffrey and former 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS Reporter Dean Staley, who spent three months together in Iraq, said Iraqis were coming and going freely.

"At one point there was a group of Iraqis driving around in a pick-up truck,"Staley said. "Three or four guys we kept an eye on, worried they might come near us."


On Wednesday, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS e-mailed still images of the footage taken at the site to experts in Washington to see if the items captured on tape are the same kind of high explosives that went missing in Al Qaqaa. Those experts could not make that determination.

The footage is now in the hands of security experts to see if it is indeed the explosives in question.

 

This is the same article you posted the link to before. I can't believe you and woofer are running out of things to say, so what's up?

 

it is actually not entirely the same article

a) the latest link is a direct link to the news station (not to a leftist blog as before)
b) the latest link has more info


did you happen to see Rudy Giuliani's comments? He is blaming our troops

"The president was cautious the president was prudent the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"


disgusting

 

They probably told Americans they were Ukranian troops in the coalition going out to do some advance scouting.

 

I've been hearing the President and his supporters blame everyone from our troops, to the Allawi, to John Kerry to the Russians on this. I don't get why they don't just admit it was a mistake and say, "that in war mistakes happen but that the war overall was the right thing to do."

It seems to me like the more they cast for excuses the more desparate they sound and worse off for the Bush campaign the longer this issue is dragged out.

 

your are right on the money with this post

Kerry expressed a simular thought today in Wisconsin

"When the Bay of Pigs went sour, John Kennedy had the courage to look America in the eye and say, 'I take responsibility, it's my fault,'" Kerry said Thursday, referring to the bungled invasion of Cuba in 1961. "John Kennedy knew how to take responsibility for the mistakes he made and, Mr. President, it's long since time for you to start taking responsibility for the mistakes you made."

 

This is where the democratic party and the John Kerry team fall short. They are bereft of idea and creativity. This is the golden opportunity to use the presidents words against him in a major TV ad. God know that the Repuiblicans would been creative enough with that pot of gold alread.

I will wait though to see if the use Bush's words of jumping into conclussion and the rebuttal from Gen. Clark soon.

 

The Red Sox lost their third straight game of the ALCS 19-8. We all know what happened over the next several days.

It ain't over 'til it's over. It's always darkest before the dawn. I'm all out of cliches.

 

Lord help us... the world is about to end!!!















Civil!!

 

Now this is a good one. The borders are supposedly sieves open for anyone to cross, including marauding radicals, but Russian special ops COULDN'T get into the country? That makes a lot of sense, especially if they came across the SYRIAN border under direction of saddam?

Not that I find this report credible, but yuking it up as impossible is silly.

 

I have only one question about all this:




How do you pronounce the word cache? I always thought it was cash-aa but the other day at work, I told my IT guy that I was going to clear my internet cash-aa and he said "you mean your internet cash?"

So which is it? Cash-aa or cash?