Oh, that liberal media
I noticed (and noted in comments) that the NYT (and AP) hit piece (that’s what I’m calling it now) on the missing explosives was lacking in the timing department. Turns out, there’s a reason for that:
The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new twist, after a network embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion of Iraq reported that the material had already vanished by the time American troops arrived.
NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad.
They were gone over a year and a half ago.
Update: Jeff has much more. As does TTLB. More like an October Surmise!
October 26th, 2004 at 11:31 am
Sorry S.U. but your bias is showing. The Pentagon itself is saying there is no way of knowing whether the explosives disappeared before or after troops arrived. The interim Iraqi government (not an anti-Bush group) seems to claim that it occurred post invasion.
At best, this is he said, she said. Regardless, it’s a failure on the part of Bushco to adequately plan for addressing the depot. If they couldn’t destroy or secure that, then what would they have done with actual WMD’s?
October 26th, 2004 at 11:50 am
David Kay said that he visited the site in May, and thinks that it was looted after the invasion. Does a Chief Weapons Inspector who examined the site a couple months after trump a reporter who was there at the initial inspection? I honestly don’t know, but I’m leaning towards thinking the ball was dropped.
October 26th, 2004 at 11:50 am
What would you have them do? Call up iraq, say we’re thinking about invading in the future. Do you mind if we secure these locations while we mull it over?
NBC news confirmed that when troops and their embedded reporters arrived in april, the stuff wasn’t there.
me biased? No, never! 🙂
October 26th, 2004 at 11:51 am
Steve, April is before May. So, do i beleive Kay or NBC? Dunno, they both have lied to me at some point or another.
October 26th, 2004 at 12:14 pm
Uncle:
That’s funny, because in April of last year, after the US was already in Iraq, Fox News reported on the site as having possible chemical weapons links, but never bothers to mention 380 tons of missing ordinance. Wonder why they would fail to mention such a thing, if a known stockpile had gone missing?
October 26th, 2004 at 12:24 pm
NBC news confirmed that when troops and their embedded reporters arrived in april, the stuff wasn’t there.
The peacock is about as reliable as Dan Rather or Fox News. I’m giving the credibility edge to the puppet government and David Kay. Neither are aligned against the Bush administration politically.
What would you have them do? Call up iraq, say we’re thinking about invading in the future. Do you mind if we secure these locations while we mull it over?
There’s a little invention known as a “bomb.” If you believe what we see in the media, ours are both accurate and precise. The site had been tagged and was monitored periodically (although it’s unclear how frequently). If we had no faith in our ability to secure the depot, then we should have destroyed it before we hit the road to Baghdad.
I heard a guy on local radio here saying that the rapid “race” to Baghdad was definitely the right thing to do. What he felt happened was that we (or rather, Bushco) failed to plan for the follow-up forces necessary to secure the rear. Once again, the problem can be traced to inadequate number of troops to win the war and as well as the peace. We kicked Saddam’s ass handily. Unfortunately, we left the aftermath to faith. That was a totally unnecessary gamble. There were plenty of military advisers who warned about this. They were ignored.
Even though plenty of people opposed the invasion because they didn’t feel Saddam was a threat (or at least, not the most urgent threat), I don’t think Bush would be in any danger of losing this election if the occupation wasn’t such a clusterfuck.
October 26th, 2004 at 12:42 pm
Here’s a search I did on NBC news:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/?querytext=Al+Qaqaa+explosives&id=3053419&action=fulltext
The explosives had been inventoried and sealed by IAE (UN, I think) inspectors in 1991, and were inventoried again in Jan 2003. The inspectors checked the seals again in March.
NBC embedded reporters were with our troops when they reached the depot on April 10. They searched and didn’t find that quantity of explosives or any IAE seals.
So, point 1: Is it more likely that US troops missed seeing a huge stockpile of explosives, or that they just weren’t there on April 10?
Possibly the depot was looted more later, but 380 tons is about 17 truck loads, if trucks as big as American semis were available. No casual looters would have hauled away the whole stockpile.
Point 2: Who’d be in the best position to get a convoy of about 17 trucks together, loaded, down the road to somewhere else, and the contents unloaded and hidden? It would have been no big deal for Saddam’s government anytime before the bombs started falling, but it would have been a huge thing to try to do secretly when American troops were guarding road crossings.
So, I think it much, much more likely that the stuff was missing sometime in those 9 months that Bush waited on UN tomfoolery before we finally went in. It may have been long missing and the inspectors fooled in March, or it may have been hustled out of there, possibly to Syria, right after the last visit – but it wasn’t there on April 10.
Point 3: That the missing stuff wasn’t noticed until now bothers me, but I don’t know when or if the US had access to IAE/UN lists of such stuff, how long or what form those lists were in, and therefore I don’t know that the discrepancy could have been identified any earlier.
October 26th, 2004 at 12:51 pm
Regardless of when or who, we went in to prevent Iraqi weapons from falling into enemy hands. And instead, our invasion caused Iraqi weapons to fall into enemy hands. See the problem?
October 26th, 2004 at 12:55 pm
The problem I see is that the delay of the invasion is what lead to the weapons falling into the wrong hands. If anything, it’s a case study on going at it faster.
After all, that year long rush to war wasn’t fast enough.
October 26th, 2004 at 1:39 pm
If we hadn’t invaded in the first place, those stockpiles wouldn’t be in the hands of people using them against us. The invasion, meant to make us safer, has in this instance made us less safe.
And the timeline of when those explosives went missing is up in the air.
October 26th, 2004 at 1:44 pm
Or the stockpiles would be nookyular weapons, chemical weapons explosive agents, or fertilizer for pretty daisies.
And the timeline seems pretty straightforward to me.
October 26th, 2004 at 1:53 pm
If we hadn’t invaded in the first place, those stockpiles wouldn’t be in the hands of people using them against us.
If we hadn’t invaded, those stockpiles would have been in the hands of Saddam Hussein, who would still be in power.
October 26th, 2004 at 3:57 pm
If we hadn’t invaded, those stockpiles would have been in the hands of Saddam Hussein
Yes.
So the question is. Who would have been more likely to use those explosives against innocent citizens outside of Iraq? Saddam or whoever has them now?
If those explosives make their way into the NYC subway system or a ballgame at Neyland stadium, I wonder if your opinion of the wisdom of ousting Saddam as the focal point of Bushco’s war on terror will change?
It’s funny that the fate of one person doesn’t matter if it’s Osama Bin Laden, but it matters immensely when it’s Saddam.
Bushco is fighting a 20th century war… and badly at that. We need someone who can fight even when there are no “good targets” to be had.
October 26th, 2004 at 5:06 pm
This could be interesting, apparently the IAEA did nothing to secure the munitions.
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_10_24_corner-archive.asp#043563
October 26th, 2004 at 6:15 pm
If we hadn’t invaded, those stockpiles would have been in the hands of Saddam Hussein, who would still be in power.
Les..said stockpiles were under IAEA seal from 1991 to right before the war started. We knew where it was. Now we don’t know where they are. Do you really think that all of our problems have now ended because Saddam is out of power?
October 26th, 2004 at 7:48 pm
SU:
To address the initial point of your post:
They were gone over a year and a half ago.
I believe the timing has to do with the Iraqi minister sending a letter to the IAEA about 10 days ago saying the stuff was missing and the media learning about it only now.
October 26th, 2004 at 10:56 pm
If this is true, our guys have captured about 440 THOUSAND tons of explosives in Iraq. We’re now crying over 380 tons.
I just wish the press would shut up about it, because it’s a distraction from the REAL War on Terror, which is catching Osama.
October 27th, 2004 at 12:14 am
Thib…by that logic, 9/11 isn’t a big deal..after all look at all the terror attacks that we’ve stopped.
October 27th, 2004 at 9:52 am
By what logic? Osama is responsible for 9/11; he’s the one we need to catch. The press are doing us a disservice by distracting us from that.
October 27th, 2004 at 10:15 am
Les..said stockpiles were under IAEA seal from 1991 to right before the war started. We knew where it was.
IAEA seals don’t mean squat. Iraq broke the seals on this stuff. Iran broke the seals on their nuclear equipment. Korea broke the seals on their nuclear equipment. The process doesn’t work.
And, yeah, we knew where it was right up until Saddam moved it prior to the invasion.
Put it this way: would you let a convicted criminal keep the gun he used in his crimes as long as it had a seal in place?
October 27th, 2004 at 1:43 pm
And, yeah, we knew where it was right up until Saddam moved it prior to the invasion.
Which would suggest that if we hadn’t invaded, he wouldn’t have moved the stuff. Now we don’t know where it is.
Put it this way: would you let a convicted criminal keep the gun he used in his crimes as long as it had a seal in place?
The stuff was under seal because it was dual use (mining if I’m not mistaken).
October 27th, 2004 at 1:57 pm
Les:
They do if they were unbroken, which they were as late as April of 2003, depending on whom you listen to.
October 27th, 2004 at 2:35 pm
Manish and Tom: IAEA seals are just promises. “Here’s the stuff, but we promise we won’t use it. Unless we need to, then we will.”
If we find out that Al Qeada has the bomb, would you let them keep it if they promised to put an IAEA seal on it?
As far as that late April date, contemporaraneous CBS (April 3, 2003) and Fox (April 4, 2003) news reports suggest that the explosives weren’t there at that time.
October 27th, 2004 at 3:19 pm
BTW, some people may not know what IAEA seals are. They’re basically little metal tags clipped on to certain materials and devices. That’s all. Pictures here on the IEAE Web site. That’s why I say they’re just a promise not to use the weapons.
October 28th, 2004 at 12:21 am
Les:
Your IAEA link doesn’t work.
Also, David Kay (who might know a thing or two about this) seems to disagree with your theory:
But in any case, there’s no possible outcome here that makes the administration look good. Even the best-case is bad for the administration. That’s why there’s so much spin surrounding this.
October 28th, 2004 at 10:04 am
Tom, I read your the quote above from David Kay and it seems wildly indeterminate. He thinks looters took off with 380 tons explosives tucked in their pants?
And how does Kay’s statement jibe with reports from CBS (April 3), Fox (April 4), and NBC (April 10) that the Al Qaqaa facility was searched and no explosives were found?
There’s also a new ABC report that might explain things. Internal IAEA documents indicate the amount of explosives might have been 3 tons, not 380 tons.
October 28th, 2004 at 12:21 pm
It jives perfectly, when you consider that he said there was a period from two or three weeks before the invasion, to a month after, where we don’t know what happened. He’s basically saying that they could have disappeared anywhere in that window from early March to May.
And has been pointed out repeatedly, the US troops who visited in April didn’t do a thorough search of the site. We simply cannot determine from the April visit whether or not the explosives were there at that time.