380 TONS? or 3 Tons?

[dmadman43]

Originally posted by gothmog
Bush was the one who went to war without adequated number of troops and did not give the necessary orders to protect and secure amno dumps. This is just an example of a horrible Bush mistake that is costing our troops lives as the missing explosives are used for car bombs and IEDs.

I don;t see how any intellecutally honest person could possibly blame Bush for this. This would be like blaming Roosevelt for the Battle of the Bulge. Blaming Johnson for the Mei Lai Massacre. Sheesh! What Kerry is doing is essentially blaming the troops!

 

[dmadman43]

Originally posted by ThAnswr
Bottom line: The Bush administration hasn't the foggiest idea where those explosives are.

The Bush administration failed to tell the troops going through Al-Qaqaa to be on the lookout for the explosives or even what Al-Qaqaa was even though they had been told about the significance of Al-Qaqaa from both the UN weapons inspectors and the IAEA.

Here's the real kicker: Al-QaQaa has turned out to be the "caca" that's hit the fan for George Bush.

What do you know that General Tommy Franks or Paul Bremmer doesn't?

 

[momof2inPA]

Ha ha, Bushies. gothmog, cleaned your clock

 

[dmadman43]

Originally posted by ThAnswr
Bottom line: The Bush administration hasn't the foggiest idea where those explosives are.

The Bush administration failed to tell the troops going through Al-Qaqaa to be on the lookout for the explosives or even what Al-Qaqaa was even though they had been told about the significance of Al-Qaqaa from both the UN weapons inspectors and the IAEA.

Here's the real kicker: Al-QaQaa has turned out to be the "caca" that's hit the fan for George Bush.

then why did they do this?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/04/iraq/main547667.shtml

and here:

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/10/rdx-problem-resolves-itself-little.html

little more data for the RDX pot. Whatever the MSNBC embeds saw with the 101st, the 3ID which preceded them saw more. It searched Al Qa Qaa and found suspicious material

April 4, 2003. CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction continues at sites where the U.S. thought chemicals weapons might be hidden. "And although there are no reports of actual weapons being found, there are constant finds of suspicious material," Martin said. "It obviously will take laboratory testing to find out exactly what that powder is." U.S. troops found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad. But a senior U.S. official familiar with initial testing said the materials were believed to be explosives. Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex just south of Baghdad.

... The facility had been identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons site. U.N. inspectors visited the plant at least nine times, including as recently as Feb. 18. The facility is part of a larger complex known as the Latifiyah Explosives and Ammunition Plant al Qa Qaa. The senior U.S. official, based in Washington and speaking on condition of anonymity, said the material was under further study. The site is enormous and U.S. troops are still investigating it for potential weapons of mass destruction, the official said. "Initial reports are that the material is probably just explosives, but we're still going through the place," the official said. Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.

The contemporaneous CBS report, written before anyone knew al Qa Qaa would be a big deal, establishes two important things. The first is that 3ID knew it was looking through an IAEA inspection site. The second was that the site had shown unmistakable signs of tampering before the arrival of US troops. "Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare." Now presumably those thousands of boxes were not all packaged and labeled with chemical warfare instructions under IAEA supervision, so the inescapable conclusion is that a fairly large and organized type of activity had been under way in Al Qa Qaa for some time. It is important to reiterate that these are contemporaneous CBS reports which were filed no with foreknowledge of the political controversy to come.

Michael Totten wonders why "there is no mention of 380 tons of HDX and RDX". Perhaps the reason the RDX isn't mentioned can be found via a link through Josh Marshall, quoting NBC's Jim Miklaszewski. (Hat tip reader Trebbers in Comments)

Following up on that story from last night, military officials tell NBC News that on April 10, 2003, when the Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne entered the Al QaQaa weapons facility, south of Baghdad, that those troops were actually on their way to Baghdad, that they were not actively involved in the search for any weapons, including the high explosives, HMX and RDX. The troops did observe stock piles of conventional weapons but no HMX or RDX. And because the Al Qaqaa facility is so huge, it's not clear that those troops from the 101st were actually anywhere near the bunkers that reportedly contained the HMX and RDX. Three months earlier, during an inspection of the Al Qaqaa compound, the International Atomic Energy Agency secured and sealed 350 metric tons of HMX and RDX. Then in March, shortly before the war began, the I.A.E.A. conducted another inspection and found that the HMX stockpile was still intact and still under seal. But inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound.

Here we discover the rather important fact that the UN inspectors hadn't actually seen the RDX in their final inspections. They just assumed it was there because the seals were intact. So let's put it all together. The UN inspectors conduct their final inspection before OIF without actually having seen the RDX. The 3ID reach the site on April 4, 2003, know they are looking at an IAEA site and find thousands of white boxes which they suspect may be chemical weapons. The boxes are labeled with chemical warfare instructions. On April 10, the Second Brigade of 101st Airborne arrives with press embeds. They look around but press on with their main combat mission. From this the NYT comes to the conclusion that the RDX was lost after the US assumed custody of the site. It is worthwhile to reiterate the NYT's key assertions. In their article of October 25, the Times said:

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

It turned out that White House and Pentagon officials had acknowledged no such thing. The next day, the NYT reported:


White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell. But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the facility and had merely stopped there for the night on their way to Baghdad. The commander, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said he did not learn until this week that the site, known as Al Qaqaa, was considered highly sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited there shortly before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.

In the light of the unearthed contemporaneous CBS report, the NYT's use of an interview with the Col. Anderson is totally worthless. They interviewed the wrong unit commander. It was a 3ID outfit that searched the place with the intent of discovering dangerous materials nearly six days before. The 101st had no such mission. Moreover, the NYT's innuendo that "the huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years ..." suggests a well-manicured facility that had been run to seed by knuckle-dragging American incompetence after faithful care by the IAEA. It totally ignores the disorderly condition in which 3ID found it, where, if the NYT correspondents had been present, they might have taken home their own boxes "with three vials of white powder, together with documents in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare" -- surely a sign it was untampered with, unless the NYT wishes to assert the contrary and thereby destroy their own case.

Incidentally, the condition of Al Qa Qaa is yet more indirect proof of the redeployment of war materiel which took place under the cover of UN obstruction, most notably by barring 4ID from attacking south through Turkey into the Sunni Triangle, which was the subject of Belmont Club's War Plan Orange.

 

[dmadman43]

Originally posted by momof2inPA
Ha ha, Bushies. gothmog, cleaned your clock

well, from the article about the purported video we read:

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.

yea, that;s some real clock cleaning there...

 

[gothmog]

I love the concept that Bush could not forsee the need for more toops and so this is not his his fault. This is truly a dumb position. Before the war, Bush was told by the Pentagon that the US needed twice to three times the troops used to carry out this invasion and to occupy Iraq afterwards. The general who told Bush and Rumsfeld this was retired and his advice was ignored. Bush disregarded the advice of his own military about the number of troops need to invade Iraq and to win the peace afterward.

Bush screwed up because it was clear that the number of troops we had available for this invasion was not adequate. Bush ignored the advice of the professionals at the Pentagon and that advice has proved to be correct. We did not have the troops necessary to stop the looting or to secure key sites such as amno dumps. The result is the quagmire that our troops now find themselves bogged down in.

Bush is running on a record of being able to lead and protect the country. This is an example of Bush failing to provide adequate leadership and his failure endangering our troops. If Bush had listened to the generals, we would had waited until we had sufficient forces and done the job right.

An intellectually honest person would admit that they made a mstake. Bush is flawed in that he can not admit that he has ever made a mistake and our troops are suffering due to his flaws.

 

[Laz]

Very interesting. Please provide exact references to your accusations.

 

[gothmog]

The claim that Senator Kerry is blaiming the troops for the failure to secure the explosives is wrong. I love Wes Clark's statement on this issue.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Gen. Wesley Clark (news - web sites) issued the following statement today:

"For President Bush to send Rudolph Giuliani out on television to say that the 'actual responsibility' for the failure to secure explosives lies with the troops is insulting and cowardly. "The President approved the mission and the priorities. Civilian leaders tell military leaders what to do. The military follows those orders and gets the job done. This was a failure of civilian leadership, first in not telling the troops to secure explosives and other dangerous materials, and second for not providing sufficient troops and sufficient equipment for troops to do the job. "President Bush sent our troops to war without sufficient body armor, without a sound plan and without sufficient forces to accomplish the mission. Our troops are performing a difficult mission with skill, bravery and determination. They deserve a commander in chief who supports them and understands that the buck stops in the Oval Office, not one who gets weak knees and shifts blame for his mistakes." ---

 

[supermom2]

I've looked but I can't find a link to where President Bush or Rudy G. blamed the troops? Does somebody have a link? gothmog?

 

[gothmog]

Today show this morning. It was pretty disgusting.

 

[Laz]

" Bush was told by the Pentagon that the US needed twice to three times the troops used to carry out this invasion and to occupy Iraq afterwards. The general who told Bush and Rumsfeld this was retired and his advice was ignored. Bush disregarded the advice of his own military about the number of troops need to invade Iraq and to win the peace afterward. "

" Bush ignored the advice of the professionals at the Pentagon and that advice has proved to be correct."

Please provide proof for these accusations.

I also view the Link from that News 5 story, I did not see or read of anything related to the weapons they talked about. From what I uderstand, It is a powder substance that resembles corn starch. Also I have heard from the chemistry teacher at my school that this powdery substance is harmless unless some serious and expensive refining takes place, however I am sure an expert can confirm or deny this.

Now it appears that Iraqi officals are backing off their earlier claims as to the amount of the explosives that may or may not have been their:

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

"But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported."

The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.


But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over three tons of RDX were stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.


The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003.

 

[bsnyder]

That just shows how the left has no sense of perspective anymore and how desperate they are to defeat Bush. Even if the explosives were “looted and stolen” (a pretty unlikely scenario given how difficult it is to move 380 tons), keep in mind that the Duelfer report showed that the U.S. armed forces have either destroyed or secured 400,000 tons of explosives. What is missing from al Qaqaa represents less than 1% of that.

gothmog....you'd be okay with Saddam having the 400,000 tons of explosives and still being in power, wouldn't you?

 

[gothmog]

Great statement by Senator Edwards responding to Rudy G

DULUTH, Minn., Oct. 28 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Senator John Edwards issued the following statement today about George Bush's chief surrogates blaming the troops for missing explosives in Iraq:

"Today, George Bush sent his chief surrogate, Rudy Giuliani, out to defend the president's incompetence. And Giuliani blamed the troops. He said they didn't do their jobs. The Republicans couldn't be more wrong.

"Our men and women in uniform did their jobs. It's our commander-in-chief, George Bush, who didn't do his.

"If George Bush is going to have his friends out there blaming the troops, then he needs to back up his claims with evidence. Mr. President, show America the order that you issued for our troops to secure these dangerous explosives. Show us the order that your friends accuse our troops of ignoring.

"George Bush refuses to step up and take responsibility -- and now it's time for him to step aside."

This morning, Giuliani said, "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?"

Bush is unfit to be president

 

[DawnCt1]

Originally posted by gothmog
The claim that Senator Kerry is blaiming the troops for the failure to secure the explosives is wrong. I love Wes Clark's statement on this issue.

The Wes Clark? The failed presidential candidate and discredited general? No thanks. I dont' mind if Kerry keeps harping on this issue. Its a discredited story, a non issue. Looting occurs in every war time situation. It occurs in down town LA. The point is, those specific explosives weren't there and the Pentagon is reviewing truck movements in and out of there prior to the war.
Kerry was already in trouble with the troops and he just dug himself a bigger hole. There is enough other evidence out there to discredit the CBS/NYT story.

 

[snarfer1]

Originally posted by bsnyder
It appears something is definitely being made up. We have very conflicting stories about 3 tons or 380 tons.

It could be NASA again. Remember the Mars probe that smaked into Mars and turned to dust because someone confused Kilometers per Hour with Miles per hour?

Come on! It's only off by 2 magnitudes. And you don't expect our Democratic friends to admit to soooooo small an error, or the liberal bias in the main stream media, or the proven Democratic voter fraud do ya?

Come on ThAnswer, you I know have intellectual honesty, not playing tit-for-tat, isn't their anything lately that you're not happy with relating to Kerry or the DNC? You know I have admitted problems with Bush in the past, and most of us evil right-wing nut jobs have proven our sense of humour, even at the expense of our canidate, come on step up to the plate!

-Tony

P.S. The CBS original plan to air this the Sunday before the election doesn't seem 'unfair' to you at all?

 

[gothmog]

This is interesting. It is clear that more than three tons of explosives were at the site and were looted due to Bush's failures.

ADMINISTRATION MISLEADS ON MISSING EXPLOSIVES

The Bush administration is pushing the theory that the 380 tons of explosives were missing from the Al Qaqaa storage facility before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Administration spokesman Dan Senor said on CNN that "there's a very high probability that those weapons weren't even there before the war."<1>

For days, this theory has been in direct conflict with a Pentagon official, who told the Associate Press on Monday, "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."<2>

Now, video shot in Iraq by a Minneapolis news team provides further proof that the administration's theory is bogus. After the invasion - on April 18, 2003 - the Minneapolis ABC news crew was stationed just south of the Al Qaqaa facility.[]3 That day, they drove 2 to 3 miles north with the 101st Airborne Division. There, "members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS news crew bunker after bunker of material labeled 'explosives.'"<4> Some of the boxes were marked "Al Qaqaa."<5> One soldier told the crew: "we can stick in those and make some good bombs."<6> Watch the video:
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1338421&l=65509 .

Sources:

1. "Paula Zahn Now," CNN, 10/26/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1338421&l=65510 .
2. "380 tons of explosives missing in Iraq," Associated Press, 10/25/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1338421&l=65511 .
3. "5 EYEWITNESS NEWS video may be linked to missing explosives in Iraq," KSTP.com, 10/28/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1338421&l=65512 .
4. Ibid, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1338421&l=65512 .
5. Ibid, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1338421&l=65512 .
6. Ibid, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1338421&l=65512 .

The explosives were filmed and observed after the fall of Baghdad and now are missing. Bush failed to protect our troops by not ordering our troops to secure the sites in question and by not sending sufficient troops to do the mission.

 

[BuckNaked]

Originally posted by gothmog
Great statement by Senator Edwards responding to Rudy G

Bush is unfit to be president

I'd say he's every bit as fit as a military officer that called his fellow soldiers, including ones that were still imprisoned by the enemy, war criminals. I'm sure the POWs at the Hanoi Hilton enjoyed the experiences that followed that little speech.

 

[Geoff_M]

The explosives were filmed and observed after the fall of Baghdad and now are missing. Bush failed to protect our troops by not ordering our troops to secure the sites in question and by not sending sufficient troops to do the mission.

I honestly hope that Kerry keeps up this line of attack... it's a loser for him. For starters, the bottom line is that we don't know what did or didn't happen with the explosives (for that matter, we don't know that it is captured elsewhere by the US as part of the 100's of thousands of tons of munitions found) and people are starting to realize that Kerry is going off half-cocked. Secondly, he may not realize it, but Kerry is also attacking our miltary by inference. I know the charges from the Kerry Camp have also ruffled a lot of feathers in the military. The implications are that the soldiers and their commanders in the video you posted weren't "smart" enough to realize that such material was a threat to them.

 

[chadfromdallas]

Originally posted by Geoff_M
I honestly hope that Kerry keeps up this line of attack... it's a loser for him.

Are you sure? http://electoral-vote.com/


Check out previous report to see the change since yesterday

 

[Teejay32]

well, FWIW, the discepancy in amount of weapons is another present to those who think the IAEA was negligent in leaving the explosives there in the first place, and fodder for people who believe that Iraq was ground zero for a weapons smuggling network. Put both things together for a very depressing conspiracy theory and an idea of what some people think of the IAEA.

Bush does have the ultimate responsibility of securing weapons sites I suppose. It comes with the job. Kerry's main job is trying to make Bush look bad enough to lose the Presidency...before this is over 3/4 of it will be discredited, and he'll have pissed off at least one of our coalition partners as well as our troops, but he might be able to say Bush screwed up something.

We already know that not enough troops were on the ground to secure every site at risk of being looted. We began taking blame for this when a national museum and government buildings were looted. This is slightly different - the US Army was aware of the contents (or lack thereof) in Qa Qaa and is fully capable of making decisions in re security of the site. I'll wait for the official version (not the official version as told by CBS or NBC) but right now I'm leaning toward the fact that most of the weapons were gone before the troops arrived...it fits the pattern of the regime, and the after-reporting fits the pattern of trying to blame "looters" and lack of US security for every problem. That the US left 380 tons of explosives unguarded is simply a tougher sell.