One pound can blow up a plane - they have 400 TONS!

[Dorian Gray]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...d=540&ncid=716

Quote:

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei reported the disappearance to the U.N. Security Council on Monday, two weeks after he said Iraq told the nuclear agency that the explosives had vanished from the former Iraqi military installation as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security."

Bush's incompetence can't even secure one munitions dump! He thinks he can secure the whole country?

He f*cked up, and he needs to go. Because of his incompetence, he disbanded the Iraqi army and failed to secure this stockpile of explosives. By disbanding the Iraqi army, he let massive amounts of people cross all borders into Iraq. By not securing this stockpile, he ARMED THE GODDAMNED TERRORISTS. How can he sit there in his bubble and pretend he is some kind of leader? Soldiers and Iraqi civilians are blown up every day with the very same kind of explosives that USED TO be in this stockpile. Coincidence? NO.

Quote:

McClellan said the IAEA informed U.S. mission in Vienna on Oct. 15 about the missing explosives at Al-Qaqaa. He said national security adviser Condoleeza Rice was notified "days after that," and she then informed President Bush.

ElBaradei told the council the agency had been trying to give the U.S.-led multinational force and Iraq's interim government "an opportunity to attempt to recover the explosives before this matter was put into the public domain."

But since the disappearance was reported Monday in The New York Times, ElBaradei said he wanted the Security Council to have the letter dated Oct. 10 that he received from Mohammed J. Abbas, a senior official at Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology, reporting the theft of 377 tons of explosives.

The letter from Abbas informed the IAEA that since April 9, 2003, looting at the Al-Qaqaa installation had resulted in the loss of 215 tons of HMX, 156 tons of RDX and six tons of PETN explosives.

The incredible thing about this is that NO ONE knew this stuff was missing until now. Incredible in the sense that I don't ***** believe it for one single second.

Just like EVERYTHING that has EVER come out of the Bush administration, either they are full of incompetent dicks, or they are all lying. It has to be one or the other. There can be no other possible reason for this enormous gaffe that is killing people every day.

Bush's presidential service now is exactly the same as his military service 30 years ago - he is completely failing to show up for duty because he is too busy working on a campaign. And most likely, using cocaine.

[Mycroft]

It's the Drudge report, but he says these munitions went missing before US troops arrived.

Quote:

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX MON OCT 25 2004 22:45:05 ET XXXXX

NBCNEWS: HUGE CACHE OF EXPLOSIVES VANISHED FROM SITE IN IRAQ -- AT LEAST 18 MONTHS AGO -- BEFORE TROOPS ARRIVED

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

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!

http://www.drudgereport.com/nbcw.htm

[BobK]

Found in your article.

Quote:

Pentagon (news - web sites) spokesman Bryan Whitman said coalition forces were present in the vicinity of the site both during and after major combat operations, which ended May 1, 2003 — and searched the facility but found none of the explosives material in question. That raised the possibility that the explosives had disappeared before U.S. soldiers could secure the site in the immediate invasion aftermath.

Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News reported on this back in April, 2003. So it seems they were moved between January and when the US forces arrived on site in April.
article
article

Maybe the US should have attacked sooner.

Arrrghh. You beat me to it Mycroft. Good going.
I have the same source plus one other.

I wonder if the networks willl still be touting it tomorrow.

[Dorian Gray]

That second article by Drudge was pretty funny at the end:

Quote:

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?

Tom Ridge is suddenly reporting NOW that terrorists may have been casing financial institutions in 2000-2001. I guess the amount of time lapsed isn't that important after all, eh guys?

On another note, let's say that they were moved before US troops got there. Inspectors saw the explosives there each time they inspected the place up to April 2003. When the US military found that they were gone, why didn't NBC News report that, or the military report that, or prepare anyone for a large amount of explosive attacks, or try to find out what happened to them so they wouldn't be used against US forces?

Because they were trying to look for nonexistant WMDs while terrorists overran the defenseless borders of Iraq, that's why.

Quote:

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."

That's one interpretation. Another interpretation is that the DISAGREEMENT appears highly political. After all, it's in the interest of BOTH the Pentagon AND the Bush administration for those explosives to have been missing before we got there.

[Ziggurat]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dorian Gray
That's one interpretation. Another interpretation is that the DISAGREEMENT appears highly political. After all, it's in the interest of BOTH the Pentagon AND the Bush administration for those explosives to have been missing before we got there.

Or maybe, just maybe, this isn't the big deal that some people are making it out to be. Saddam had an estimated 600,000 tons of conventional explosives in various places throughout the country, and a LOT of it went "missing" by Saddam's design before we even entered the country. This stuff was indeed high-power, but it's still only 380 tons. It's a drop in the bucket. This complaint is politically-motivated monday-morning quarterbacking.

[Just thinking]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dorian Gray
The incredible thing about this is that NO ONE knew this stuff was missing until now. Incredible in the sense that I don't ***** believe it for one single second.

Just like EVERYTHING that has EVER come out of the Bush administration, either they are full of incompetent dicks, or they are all lying. It has to be one or the other. There can be no other possible reason for this enormous gaffe that is killing people every day.

You no doubt have read through others clearly pointing out the political nature (and false information, regarding when it was missing) of this article. You have clearly bought into the NY Times bomb dropping of Bush Bashing at the end of the campaign. The timing and inaccuracy of this information should be a little too contrived for even yourself to believe. Don't let Dan Rather start showing up in your mirror.

[DaChew]

The real problem, as far as I can tell, is that the NY Times blew the timing for CBS. CBS was all set to run this as a last minute dirty trick of the type they are certainly famous for. Unfortunately, the NY Times ran the story in time for the truth to come out before the election and that ruined the whole point. So, I guess we have to wonder what CBS will fall back on as their last minute bomb shell.

[TragicMonkey]

Quote:

Originally posted by DaChew
So, I guess we have to wonder what CBS will fall back on as their last minute bomb shell.

Dan Rather's confession that he was seduced by Dick Cheney, and has love memos to prove it. Now there's a scandal that nobody wants to hear!

[DaChew]

Quote:

Originally posted by TragicMonkey
Dan Rather's confession that he was seduced by Dick Cheney, and has love memos to prove it. Now there's a scandal that nobody wants to hear!

No, it has to be something we didn't already know.

[Dorian Gray]

Quote:

This stuff was indeed high-power, but it's still only 380 tons. It's a drop in the bucket.

Tell that to the families of the dead.

[Ziggurat]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dorian Gray
Tell that to the families of the dead.

What a complete non-argument. What dead? Where's the evidence that any of this stuff was actually used? Where's the evidence that it went missing after the invasion and not before? Oh, that's right, there IS no credible evidence for any of that. And yet, you keep on talking.

[NoZed Avenger]

When were the explosives move and how?

Perhaps we should ask the Russians:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/natio...1153-4822r.htm

Quote:

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."
...
The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not convince Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.

A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.

emph. added.

N/A

[corplinx]

I think the big point here is the claim that the munitions (380 tons) were "looted" and are now being used against us because we "failed to plan" is not a skeptical complaint.

A woo-woo is a woo-woo is a woo-woo. And if Senator Kerry is elected we will go from from one woo-woo to another.

[Scoobmaster]

I find the final paragraph in This ABC News report to be even more disturbing:

Quote:

The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.

If you want to claim incompetence, the IAEA is not blameless here.

Now, as stated in a timeline in
This MNSBC article

Quote:

2003
January
IAEA inspectors view the explosives at Al-Qaqaa for the last time. The inspectors take an inventory and again place storage bunkers at Al-Qaqaa under agency seal.

February
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei tells the United Nations that Iraq has declared that “HMX previously under IAEA seal had been transferred for use in the production of industrial explosives.” This apparently didn’t include the HMX that remained under seal at Al-Qaqaa.

March 9-15
Nuclear agency inspectors visit Al-Qaqaa for the last time but apparently don’t examine the explosives because the seals aren’t broken. The inspectors then pull out of the country

The last time the explosives were VISIBLY accounted for was in January 2003. When the IAEA inspectors went in in March, they ONLY CHECKED IF THE SEALS WERE NOT BROKEN. It is possible that the material was removed anytime after the January inspection.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Does this story remind anyone about the ruckus raised about the Iraqi National Museum? "Oh my god, the place is looted!!! Thousands of priceless artifacts were stolen!!! It's all Bush's fault!!!!" Then when the dust settled a few weeks later, it turned out that hardly anything was missing. I wonder if this is more of the same?

[Questioninggeller]

Quote:

Originally posted by BobK
Found in your article.

Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News reported on this back in April, 2003. So it seems they were moved between January and when the US forces arrived on site in April.
article
article

Maybe the US should have attacked sooner.

Arrrghh. You beat me to it Mycroft. Good going.
I have the same source plus one other.

I wonder if the networks willl still be touting it tomorrow.

I smell BS. If this Russian story is true then why would Drudge and the Washington Times have the information before Bush's intelligence/PR outlets.

If Drudge is right, and since this is a campaign issue, why wouldn't Bush mention this and save face?

[SRW]

Quote:

Originally posted by Questioninggeller
I smell BS. If this Russian story is true then why would Drudge and the Washington Times have the information before Bush's intelligence/PR outlets.

If Drudge is right, and since this is a campaign issue, why wouldn't Bush mention this and save face?

I guess Bush unlike Kerry was honoring the 48 hour rule. You would think that Kerry would be a little more cautious about any story that CBS is involved with.

[Nova Land]

Quote:

Originally posted by The Central Scrutinizer

Does this story remind anyone about the ruckus raised about the Iraqi National Museum?...

Yes, it does sort of now that you mention it. In that case, as I recall, there was an initial report of a staggeringly high figure.

Shortly thereafter, it was found there were errors in the way the figure had been derived, and there followed a noisy backlash, especially in sources such as Fox News, The Washington Times, and numerous right-wing blogs and echo chambers giving a staggeringly low number.

My memory is that later, when no one was paying attention anymore, there were several follow-up stories with the corrected figures. It turned out the staggeringly low estimate was as inaccurate as the staggeringly high number. There had, indeed, been a significantly large number of pieces looted (although not as large as first claimed). The initial story was substantially true, but this was drowned out in the backlash that followed, and the later corrections received little attention.
No time to look up links to each of the 3 stages of the news coverage, but here is a link to what appears to be a reputable site giving a summary of the museum situation.

Quote:

The National Museum of Iraq is located in Baghdad, Iraq. Closed in 1991 during the Gulf War out of fear of further U.S. air-strikes it was not re-opened until April 28 2000, former President Saddam Hussein's birthday. It contains important artifacts from the over 5,000 year long history of Mesopotamia in 28 galleries and vaults.

The museum experienced extensive looting and damage during the 2003 invasion of Baghdad, with the loss of an unknown proportion of its 170,000 ancient artifacts. Some of the looting was evidently professional, with the most valuable pieces taken. It has been very difficult to assess the level of looting, as there was no centralized inventory of the collection.

Also largely destroyed was the House of Wisdom, Iraq's national library.

In the months preceding the invasion, starting in December and January, various antiquities experts, including representatives from the American Council for Cultural Policy asked The Pentagon and the U.K. government to ensure the museum's safety from both combat and looting. No promises were made, though U.S. forces did avoid bombing the site.

...

UNESCO organized an emergency meeting of antiquities experts on April 17, 2003 in Paris to deal with the aftermath of the looting and its effects on the global art and antiquities market.

Various ancient items believed looted from the museum have surfaced in Jordan, the United States, Switzerland, and Japan, and on eBay. Among those arrested for attempting to bring looted antiquities into the United States were a reporter and a camera man for Fox News.

On May 7, 2003, U.S. officials announced that nearly 40,000 manuscripts and 700 artifacts belonging to the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad were recovered by U.S Customs agents working with museum experts in Iraq. Some looters had returned items after promises of rewards and amnesty, and many items previously reported missing had actually been hidden in secret storage vaults at the museum prior to the outbreak of war.

...

In November, 2003 Coalition officials reported a few dozen of the most important items remained missing from the museum's public galleries, along with another 10,000 other items -- most of them tiny and some of them fragments.

Here are a few of the news stories listed as sources. I'll look these up when I get back home tonight, to see if the summary quoted above is accurate. And I'll see if I can find a link to someone analyzing the news coverage debacle.

Quote:

Thousands of Iraqi artifacts found, CNN, May 7, 2003

MISSING ANTIQUITIES: Loss Estimates Are Cut on Iraqi Artifacts, but Questions Remain, The New York Times, May 1, 2003

ANTIQUITIES: Curators Appeal for a Ban on Purchase of Iraqi Artifacts, The New York Times, April 16, 2003

Hundreds of looted items returned to Iraqi museum, CNN Web Site, November 11, 2003

To this day, there are still many people who believe that there was hardly any looting. This may indeed be a similar case where noise triumphs.

[NoZed Avenger]

Quote:

Originally posted by Questioninggeller
I smell BS. If this Russian story is true then why would Drudge and the Washington Times have the information before Bush's intelligence/PR outlets.

If Drudge is right, and since this is a campaign issue, why wouldn't Bush mention this and save face?

The DoD has said the same -- one source (that I have not followed up on yet) indicated that the DoD may release satellite images backing this up -- trucks taking materials away just before the invasion and heading to Syria.

[NoZed Avenger]

Oh, and the UN doesn't seem to agree with the UN source that has been quoted so far.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=204304&page=1

Quote:

T]he confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

[Dorian Gray]

It said 380 tons of several different agents, of which RDX was one. Maybe there were 3 tons of RDX, and 377 tons of the others? And PLEASE explain to me the logic behind claiming that Iraqis exaggerated DOWNWARD the number of WMDs they supposedly had, but exaggerated UPWARD the amount of high explosives?

Quote:

What a complete non-argument. What dead? Where's the evidence that any of this stuff was actually used? Where's the evidence that it went missing after the invasion and not before? Oh, that's right, there IS no credible evidence for any of that. And yet, you keep on talking.

Too bad you didn't have this level of skepticism when Bush was insisting there were WMDs.

Where is your evidence that it came from somewhere else? Where is the evidence that it went missing before the invasion and not after? Oh, that's right, there IS no credible evidence for any of that. And yet, you keep on talking.

The roadside bombings are happening within about 40 miles of this site.

[Tmy]

Heres some news footage from a Minnesota news station that may show they existed post invasion.


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.

[NoZed Avenger]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dorian Gray
It said 380 tons of several different agents, of which RDX was one. Maybe there were 3 tons of RDX, and 377 tons of the others? And PLEASE explain to me the logic behind claiming that Iraqis exaggerated DOWNWARD the number of WMDs they supposedly had, but exaggerated UPWARD the amount of high explosives?

(1) I had no real hope that you would bother to read the cited material, but I do have hopes that others might look at it and see that the number "declared" for RDX was 141 tons.

(2) The logic -- again, this is for others who might read this -- is that Iraq had to account for all of its known munitions in 2002 when the inspectors were due back in at the end of 2002. The numbers had to match up and Hussein had to say that the explosives were somewhere.

[Ziggurat]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dorian Gray
Too bad you didn't have this level of skepticism when Bush was insisting there were WMDs.

You presume far too much. You're projecting onto me arguments you THINK I made or would have made. But my support for the war was never contingent on Saddam currently posessing WMD's. So once again, you have no point.

Quote:

Where is your evidence that it came from somewhere else? Where is the evidence that it went missing before the invasion and not after? Oh, that's right, there IS no credible evidence for any of that. And yet, you keep on talking.

Well, considering that most IED's use artillery shells, the fact that most bombs used against us DON'T come from this store of specialized explosives should be rather self-evident. Given that, I think the burden of proof is rather on you to show that these explosives were used against us, not on me, especially when you're the one arguing about explaining this to the families of the dead. As for when they went missing, consider for a moment how much allegedly went missing. You'd need something like 40 semis, fully loaded (which in itself would be a risky proposition), to haul that stuff off. That takes a long time and a lot of people just to load onto the trucks, let alone get in and out with 40+ trucks without being noticed. And while US troops may indeed have been negligent about watching the site (something that I don't think anyone can actually conclude yet), I find it rather improbable, to say the least, to think that they wouldn't notice the movement of that many trucks during wartime operations, when searching for enemy movements (including supply movements) was a top priority and US troops controlled the roads and the skies.

Quote:

The roadside bombings are happening within about 40 miles of this site.

And that's supposed to mean something? What, is there some limit to how far explosives can be moved before they're used? Do you have evidence that there weren't other stores of more conventional explosives within a 40 mile radius? Roadside bombings get put where there's an easy location to place them, and where American convoys will have a hard time avoiding them. That such a place exists within 40 miles of Al Qaqaa seems to me, shall we say, rather irrelevant to the argument at hand.

[Dorian Gray]

Just look at Tmy's article.

[NoZed Avenger]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dorian Gray
Just look at Tmy's article.

I looked. The soldiers cut thru padlocks in the video -- not an IAEA seal. The one room that looks like it might be behind an IAEA seal they specifically say they did not enter.


Paula Zahn televised an interview of a weapons inspector:

Quote:

MICHAEL LYSOBEY, FORMER WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Well, the materials at that site or the materials that I saw in the video are not necessarily the HMX, which is the high explosive used in a nuclear implosion device.

What we saw in the tape were a bunch of barrels and a bunch of explosive caps. Al Qa Qaa is an explosives facility. So that's what we'd expect to see. The explosives that we're worried about, we don't know. This isn't definitive proof that those explosives were there.

I'd invoke a 48 hour rule on drawing conclusions, but of course the elections will be here almost that close.

A good thing the story didn't run on October 31 like CBS originally intended, huh? We wouldn't be able to invoke the 48 hour rule. . . .