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Old 10-28-2004, 08:11 AM   #1 (permalink)
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Explosives Were Still in Place After Invasion?

I felt this deserved its own post... if the mods dont then feel free to combine with the other thread on the topic.

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

There is also a Video at the above link of footage of the explosives and the 101st airborn getting into the bunkers that contained them. PLEASE KEEP IN MIND: it has yet to be determined if the explosives in the footage are part of those that went missing. But it did look like a LOT of materials.

Quote:
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.
Will this change anything if true?
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Old 10-28-2004, 02:55 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Well, the Bushies have provided about 10 different excuses so far (the explosives were taken out before the invasion by Saddam; the explosives were taken out between April 3 and 10 when there were no U.S. troops there; they were there but our troops did a poor search; even that the Russians took it!) but the pics prove that they are full of shit (yet again).
Click here for 6 beautiful, full color pictures of undeniable proof that the high explosives were there at the same time as our troops.

Click here for 3 wonderful pictures showing the IAEA seals on the barrels, proving that they were filled with RDX and HMX.
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Old 10-28-2004, 08:47 PM   #3 (permalink)
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Do those pictures say that the explosives are RDX or HMX? Do those pictures really show IAEA seals on the barrels? Take a look at them...they prove so much less than you claim.

The "Bushies" have not made any excuses because no one knows what has exactly happened. They have provided possible explanations for what may have happened to those weapons, and when. The Bush-haters have chosen to take the worst-case-scenario that may have happened and pound it down our throat. The truth is, we don't know what happened yet, so thanks for the pics and the video--it's good news reporting--but I've heard enough of people drawing conclusions before they have real proof.

This is a satellite picture of two big trucks outside a bunker on March 17, 2003 (before we got there):



It appears that the Iraqis may have been up to something well before our arrival, so how 'bout them apples. I will say, this does not necessarily mean that the explosives were removed before we were there. It's important for all to understand, WE DON'T KNOW YET.
For a fair, unbiased report of what we have learned so far, read the story associated with the above picture: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/...ves/index.html
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Old 10-28-2004, 09:13 PM   #4 (permalink)
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Should watch the movie in the above link (I couldn't get it to copy right to post it)... looks like LOTS of explosives in the footage.
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Old 10-28-2004, 09:24 PM   #5 (permalink)
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Here's what former head U.S. weapons inspector David Kay had to say to Aaron Brown on Newsnight earlier today...

Aaron Brown: We saw at the top of the program there is new information to factor in. Pretty conclusive to our eye. So we'll sort through this now. Take the politics out of it and try and deal with facts with former head UN weapons inspector, US weapons inspector, David Kay. David, it’s nice to see you.

David Kay: Good to be with you, Aaron.

AB: I don't know how better to do this than to show you some pictures have you explain to me what they are or are not. Okay? First what I’ll just call the seal. And tell me if this is an IAEA seal on that bunker at that munitions dump?

DK: Aaron, about as certain as I can be looking at a picture, not physically holding it which, obviously, I would have preferred to have been there, that is an IAEA seal. I've never seen anything else in Iraq in about 15 years of being in Iraq and around Iraq that was other than an IAEA seal of that shape.

AB: Was there anything else at the facility that would have been under IAEA seal?

DK: Absolutely nothing. It was the HMX, RDX, the two high explosives.

AB: OK now, I’ll take a look at barrels here for a second. You can tell me what they tell you. They, obviously, to us just show us a bunch of barrels. You'll see it somewhat differently.

DK: Well, it's interesting. There were three foreign suppliers to Iraq of this explosive in the 1980s. One of them used barrels like this, and inside the barrels a bag. HMX is in powder form because you actually use it to shape a spherical lens that is used to create the triggering device for nuclear weapons. And particularly on the videotape, which is actually better than the still photos, as the soldier dips into it, that's either HMX or RDX. I don't know of anything else in al Qaqaa that was in that form.

AB: Let me ask you then, David, the question I asked Jamie. In regard to the dispute about whether that stuff was there when the Americans arrived, is it game, set, match? Is that part of the argument now over?

DK: Well, at least with regard to this one bunker, and the film shows one seal, one bunker, one group of soldiers going through, and there were others there that were sealed. With this one, I think it is game, set, and match. There was HMX, RDX in there. The seal was broken. And quite frankly, to me the most frightening thing is not only was the seal broken, lock broken, but the soldiers left after opening it up. I mean, to rephrase the so-called pottery barn rule. If you open an arms bunker, you own it. You have to provide security.

AB: I'm -- that raises a number of questions. Let me throw out one. It suggests that maybe they just didn't know what they had?

DK: I think you're quite likely they didn't know they had HMX, which speaks to lack of intelligence given troops moving through that area, but they certainly knew they had explosives. And to put this in context, I think it's important, this loss of 360 tons, but Iraq is awash with tens of thousands of tons of explosives right now in the hands of insurgents because we did not provide the security when we took over the country.

AB: Could you -- I’m trying to stay out of the realm of politics. I'm not sure you can.

DK: So am I.

AB: I know. It's a little tricky here. But, is there any -- is there any reason not to have anticipated the fact that there would be bunkers like this, explosives like this, and a need to secure them?

DK: Absolutely not. For example, al Qaqaa was a site of Gerald Bull's super gun project. It was a team of mine that discovered the HMX originally in 1991. That was one of the most well-documented explosive sites in all of Iraq. The other 80 or so major ammunition storage points were also well documented. Iraq had, and it's a frightening number, two-thirds of the total conventional explosives that the US has in its entire inventory. The country was an armed camp.

AB: David, as quickly as you can, because this just came up in the last hour, as dangerous as this stuff is, this would not be described as a WMD, correct?

DK: Oh absolutely not.

AB: Thank you.

DK: And, in fact, the loss of it is not a proliferation issue.

AB: Okay. It's just dangerous and its out there and by your thinking it should have been secured.

DK: Well look, it was used to bring the Pan Am flight down. It's a very dangerous explosive, particularly in the hands of terrorists.

AB: David, thank you for walking me through this. I appreciate it, David Kay the former head US weapons inspector in Iraq.
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Last edited by Tex; 10-28-2004 at 09:32 PM..
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Old 10-29-2004, 02:14 AM   #6 (permalink)
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You can't have it both ways. Some of these explosives are used to detonate nuclear weapons. Does this mean that there were in fact at least the makings of WMDs in Iraq? Was Bush right in his assessment? Was all the intelligence at least partially correct? If we are to make the jump that there is conclusive evidence the explosives was there when our troops arrived couldn't we also make the jump that whatever happened to these explosives is probably what happened to the WMDs? Y'all can't have yer cake and eat it too. Either they had at least the makings of WMDs or they didn't.
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Old 10-29-2004, 03:24 AM   #7 (permalink)
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Those high explosives that could be used for WMD were there from the early 90's. The IAEA inspected and secured them, WAY BACK THEN. We all knew about them and where they were at all times. The video's show that the seals were intact.

They exhibit absolutely no proof of the makings of WMD's in Iraq.
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Old 10-29-2004, 06:02 AM   #8 (permalink)
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By now everyone reading this thread probably has seen the video of troops cutting the seals and looking at the munitions inside the warehouse. This footage was taken one month after the war started by a reporter embedded with the military. The suggestion by scout that they were weapons of mass destruction and quicksteal already sounds like the bush administration covering their tracks again. This is getting very tiresome. I hope the worst goverment of the last hundred years loses on tuesday so we can move forward.
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Old 10-29-2004, 06:58 AM   #9 (permalink)
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Top 11 reasons we are now safer after Bush allowed 377 tons of high explosives to be looted

1. High volume will drive down prices for the explosives buy-back program.

2. CSI Iraq will determine the precise type and amount of explosive used in every suicide-bombing and when all 380 tons have been used up, we'll strike back with impunity.

3. By making terrorism easy over there, we'll make terrorists too lazy to attack us here.

4. Giving away weapons is how the Bush family makes friends.

5. It's not like there was any nuclear material at the site, it's just the stuff you use to detonate nuclear material.

6. The explosives have legitimate civilian uses. They may have been taken by entrepreneurial miners.

7. No one will be safe from C4 until everyone has C4.

8. Many would-be terrorists will meet their end improvising devices to employ their too easily acquired explosives.

9. 14.67 tons of HMX, 155.68 tons of RDX and 6.39 tons of PETN explosives were not lost. They were liberated from the tyrannical clutches of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

10. Readily available explosives make insurgents less likely to form relationships with terrorist sponsors outside Iraq.

11. Scandal could put Kerry over the top.


Maybe this is something, Bush could use #3 to show how good he is for America. Bush: Making it insanely easy for terrorists to carry out their love overseas, so they won't bother doing it here.

Last edited by Superbelt; 10-29-2004 at 07:02 AM..
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Old 10-29-2004, 07:10 AM   #10 (permalink)
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HAHA that suggestion that they were WMDs didn't come from some spin site or news. It was merely something I was pointing out. If in fact some of them could be used to detonate nuclear weapons and we already know from various news reports they also had other ingredients for nuclear weapons, essentially they had WMDs. Therefore the war was justified. You all can't have it both ways, so if I was Kerry I would procede very carefully in this push of news that is essentially over a year old.
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Old 10-29-2004, 07:23 AM   #11 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by scout
HAHA that suggestion that they were WMDs didn't come from some spin site or news. It was merely something I was pointing out. If in fact some of them could be used to detonate nuclear weapons and we already know from various news reports they also had other ingredients for nuclear weapons, essentially they had WMDs. Therefore the war was justified. You all can't have it both ways, so if I was Kerry I would procede very carefully in this push of news that is essentially over a year old.
Ya'll are probably getting as tired of reading this as I am of writing it, but here we go again.

First, all intelligence reports have concluded that Saddam did not have an active nuclear weapons program. I don't know what you're referring to, but it doesn't jibe with the Duelfer report or any of the other intelligence estimates.

Regardless of that, if your WMD conclusion is so logical, why are you and a few other posters the only people I see bringing it up? Why isn't the Bush administration screaming this from the highest mountain? Are they that stupid? Somehow I doubt it. HAHA, indeed.
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Old 10-29-2004, 07:41 AM   #12 (permalink)
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IAEA inspectors dismantled parts of his nuke program that he had there before the 1991 Gulf War. They had these nuclear capable munitions under seals BEFORE the first Gulf war. In 1998 they confirmed that 35 tons were missing, probrably taken out during Gulf War I, But through inspections into 2003 none others were taken out. If these were WMD, as required by resolutions, and the fact that we knew exactly where they were, they would have been removed rather than sealed. YOU are imposing on them the classification of WMD when that is entirely disingenuous. They are conventional weapons, not WMD.

What other components do they have for nuclear weapons? I assume you are talking about the rusted over centerfuges found in a rose garden? That's delicate equipment and is useless after so many years in the soil.

A lot of things go into the production of a nuclear missile, having several of them doesn't mean there is a WMD program. Our senate already determined that there is no active or latent wmd program existing in Iraq

I betcha they had a refrigerator with some rotten food in it, Ooh They have botulism, that's halfway to a biological weapon.
I am sure they have almond trees in Iraq too. Cyanide gas can be derived from almonds.

We are not having it both ways. There were no WMD in Iraq. We wen't into Iraq under the threat of imminent danger from Iraq. We did not go in because Saddam had high grade explosives that can be used to build a nuclear missile. RDX and HMX is the easy part. It is a huge endeavor to build a nuclear missile. That's why there is only a handful of nations that have them.
These weapons though, can kill people, and most likely are being used against our troops. The shortsightedness of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who chose to engage Iraq with a relatively small contingent of troops. This was done against the urgings of Bush's senior military advisors. This is important because it shows the irresponsibility Bush has acted with in carrying out this war. If you are going to start a war to remove the threat of attacks on americans, you should go in with forces sufficient enough to occupy any weapons you come across.


-----------------
I wanted to post this earlier, but decided not to. I thought it would just be rubbing salt in the wound of some peoples political affiliation:
No matter how much proof we have, we have the video, we have the testimony from IAEA, Iraqi Provisional and David Kay. These weapons mean nothing to some people because of their emotional and intellectual attachment to Bush in this campaign. To admit to such a serious fault in Bush at this time, so close to the election, calls into doubt your own political standings and the worth of what you have been fighting for for the past several years.

At this point Bush could be on video, with his Dad in the background as W stangles a 12 year old naked boy. And his father later testifies to national TV that he indeed did witness the act. Some here would still support Bush and do everything they could to discredit it.
To do otherwise, I guess, admits to massive failure.

Last edited by Superbelt; 10-29-2004 at 07:46 AM..
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Old 10-29-2004, 09:25 AM   #13 (permalink)
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Aw to be honest I was just tryin' to get under y'all's skin a bit. I think both sides have stretched this both ways just about as far as it can be stretched. There is some reports now that the military moved 250 tons of munitions out of Alqaqaa after the invasion around the first part of April. To be honest I don't think anyone knows for sure at this moment what exactly happened.
To blame this on Bush is for sure a tremendous stretch, just as saying this proves there was WMDs in Iraq is a stretch.

Last edited by scout; 10-29-2004 at 09:28 AM..
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Old 10-29-2004, 10:13 AM   #14 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by scout
Aw to be honest I was just tryin' to get under y'all's skin a bit.
I don't think that's viewed as acceptable around here.
Quote:
I think both sides have stretched this both ways just about as far as it can be stretched.
It's easy to say that when your side has been so wrong.
Quote:
There is some reports now that the military moved 250 tons of munitions out of Alqaqaa after the invasion around the first part of April.
This is an interesting deflection.

Let's assume it is true even though it is probably false.

Are you suggesting that the U.S. knew that was happening while it was happening? I think not - otherwise these reports (read: excuses) would have come out earlier in the discussion of the issue.

But let's look at it from both perspectives:

- The U.S. Military knew 2/3rds of the explosives had been removed before the end of the war. So, the U.S. just thought it would be ok to leave the remainder unsecured after it had already been demonstrated that other people knew about the location and had taken it? I would say Not A Chance.

- The U.S. Military didn't know 2/3rds of the explosives had been removed before the end of the war. So, for all the U.S. knew, the explosives were still there - and they didn't secure them.

No matter how you slice it - it is incompetence.
Quote:
To be honest I don't think anyone knows for sure at this moment what exactly happened.
No, we don't know _exactly_ what happened. But we do know many things - including the fact that thousands of containers of explosives were there after the U.S. Military arrived. And those thousands of containers of explosives are now missing.
Quote:
To blame this on Bush is for sure a tremendous stretch, just as saying this proves there was WMDs in Iraq is a stretch.
Sorry no. Someone is at fault for failing to properly guard the thousands of containers of explosives that are now missing. That is quite clearly different from the fantastical claim that "this proves there were WMDs in Iraq".
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Old 10-30-2004, 01:27 PM   #15 (permalink)
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Although we have no new information in the past two days, I'm glad to see that you have new rhetoric for your bandwagon against Bush. What you don't have is undeniable proof. If there are pictures of Iraqis leaving the compound with the materials in question, then you will have your proof. It would also be helpful if someone in the Pentagon was to say that the material in the video was explosives, and not someone working for the UN saying "it couldn't have been anything else."

And if there are reports that have been revised down from 400 to 360 tons of explosives being "lost", could it be possible that the reports of 250 tons of materials that were removed from the site before the war could be revised up, and that these materials were removed before our arrival?

Finally, if you are indeed correct on your speculations that the weapons were taken after we were there, to say that it's Bush's fault that the explosives went missing is not exactly correct. You have no evidence that when the troops got there, someone called up the President to ask him what to do with the explosives. It would be a foolish oversight, but to blame the President and no one else is a partisan ploy.

Another finally, if Iraq had hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives, why would terrorists want to try to steal 380 tons from a site that had been "secured" by our forces? Syria, Iran, and the people of Saudi Arabia would likely have explosives for terrorist acts that would be much safer to obtain. On the other hand, if they were removed before the war, it would be the cheapiest and easiest method for obtaining explosives.

And to revise what we actually know, there were thousands of containers in the facility, and thousands of containers of explosives were removed. What was in the containers in the video has not been proven, except for the one box that was opened, which contained neither HMX nor RDX.
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Old 10-30-2004, 01:47 PM   #16 (permalink)
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We're dealing with probabilities - not absolutes. We are never going to know absolutely what happened. Ever.

Even if an insurgent stepped forward and said "Yes, I took them" and even if that insurgent had a video tape showing us that he took thousands of containers from the facility are we going to know whether those containers had RDX/HMX in them or whether they had bubble gum in them.

Why? Because nothing is absolute.

There is an extremely high probability that thousands of containers of explosives had been looted from Al Qaqaa after the U.S. military had the opportunity to secure the area. I have already listed the evidence.

FYI - David Kay worked for the U.S. gov't. Not the U.N.
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Old 10-30-2004, 10:26 PM   #17 (permalink)
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bling, that's a fair point. While I may not agree with it being an "extremely high probability" that the explosives were taken after we got there, I will say that if we had properly secured the area, this would not have been an issue. The problem was, properly securing the area meant not pushing forward towards Baghdad, when there were other weapons-containing facilities that we had not reached yet. What if by bypassing these 400 tons of explosives, we managed to secure 1000 tons of explosives? What I'm saying is, this was a decision made by people high in the military to press forward to topple Saddam's regime, hoping that by doing so, there would be a significantly decreased military threat. From what we have seen, the threat has not become less dangerous, it has just changed to a guerrila-type attack.

So if you really want to play armchair-general, would you rather take apparent control of the whole country, or real control of bridge-busting devices? Knowing what we know now, I may have opted for the explosives, but it would still be a tough decision.
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Old 10-30-2004, 11:03 PM   #18 (permalink)
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I would rather we put enough troops on the ground to do the job.

Well no, I would rather we had not invaded Iraq. Then the explosives would still be IAEA-sealed in a bunker with frequent inspections.
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Old 10-31-2004, 09:39 AM   #19 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by quicksteal
Although we have no new information in the past two days, I'm glad to see that you have new rhetoric for your bandwagon against Bush. What you don't have is undeniable proof. If there are pictures of Iraqis leaving the compound with the materials in question, then you will have your proof. It would also be helpful if someone in the Pentagon was to say that the material in the video was explosives, and not someone working for the UN saying "it couldn't have been anything else."
You actually undermine Bush and his stated goals by always defending him.

What's it gonna take to persuade Bush loyalists to question the credibility and the performance of this administration? I thought that the 9/11 Commission
report determination that it found no signifigant support of Al Qaeda by Saddam might provoke skepticism of Bushco, and then I expected that the
Duelfer report's findings might start the process, and then the unwarranted withholding of the CIA inspector general's report on 9/11 intelligence failures
from congress, first by the interim CIA director, and then by hastily appointed
new, very partisan CIA director Porter Goss could cause some hand wringing.
Instead, Bush's supporters are unwavering in their support of Bush above
all other considerations, including any indication that the truth or the
welfare of the troops deployed in Iraq matter.

Why do people who unquestioningly back a president who says that he is committed to bring "freedom" to the Iraqi people, apparantly at any expense to this country, choose not to notice that this same president conducts our government in a less open way than any president in memory, and only participated in 14 press conferences in 44 months, compared to more than 60 press conferences that his own father held in the same length of time in office? Is this the way the leader of a "free and open society" sets an
example to the people he purports to so strongly desire to bring democracy
to, in Iraq, and in the entire middle east?

By avoiding answering tough questions posed to him by members of the press corps, refusing to release the CIA inspector general's report to congress, and by refusing to ever admit an error in judgment or ever take responsibility for an unanticipated outcome in his war on terror, how can Bush demonstrate to middle easterners that his government offers a distinct alternative to the non-democratic governments that currently hold power in that region?

By your knee jerk support of the way Bush has conducted his presidency,
you are actually undermining his stated goal of bringing democracy to Iraq
because a "freedom loving people" would not tolerate Bush's penchant for
secrecy and avoidance of accountibility for this long of a period, even in
"war time". If middle easterners are persuaded next week that Bush has
been legitimately elected to a term as U.S. president, "democracy according
to Bush" will be even less palitable of a cause for American and Iraqi forces to
fight for than at it's already hypocritically discredited level !
Quote:
<a href="http://pennlive.com/newsflash/topstories/index.ssf?/base/international-18/1099156450296091.xml&storylist=">Looters said to overrun Iraq weapons site</a>
10/30/2004, 1:08 p.m. ET
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
The Associated Press

(AP) — Looters unleashed last year by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq overran a sprawling desert complex where a bunker sealed by U.N. monitors held old chemical weapons, American arms inspectors report.

Charles Duelfer's arms teams say all U.N.-sealed structures at the Muthanna site were broken into. If the so-called Bunker 2 was breached and looted, it would be the second recent case of restricted weapons at risk of falling into militants' hands.

Officials are unsure whether this latest episode points to a threat of chemical attack, since it isn't known if usable chemical warheads were in the bunker, what may have been taken and by whom.

"Clearly, there's a potential concern, but we're unable to estimate the relative level of it because we don't know the condition of the things inside the bunker," said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the U.N. arms inspection agency in New York, whose specialists have been barred from Iraq since the invasion.

Chief arms hunter Duelfer told The Associated Press by e-mail Friday from Iraq that he was unaware of "anything of importance" looted from the chemical weapons complex. The report his Iraq Survey Group issued on Oct. 6 said, however, that it couldn't vouch for the fate of old munitions at Muthanna.

One chemical weapons expert said even old, weakened nerve agents — in this case sarin — could be a threat to unprotected civilians.

The weapons involved would be pre-1991 artillery rockets filled with sarin, or their damaged remnants — weapons that were openly declared by Iraq and were under U.N. control until security fell apart with the U.S. attack. They are not concealed arms of the kind President Bush claimed Iraq had, but which were never found.

In its Oct. 6 report, summarizing a fruitless search for banned weapons in Iraq, Duelfer's group disclosed that widespread looting occurred at Muthanna, 35 miles northwest of Baghdad, in the aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi capital in April 2003.

A little-noted annex of the 985-page report said every U.N.-sealed location at the desert installation had been breached in the looting spree, and "materials and equipment were removed."

Bunker 2 at Muthanna State Establishment, once Iraq's central chemical weapons production site, was put under U.N. inspectors' control in early 1991 after it was heavily damaged by a U.S. precision bomb in the first Gulf War. At the time, Iraq said 2,500 sarin-filled artillery rockets had been stored there.

The U.N. teams sealed up the bunker with brick and reinforced concrete, rather than immediately attempt the risky job of clearing weapons or remnants from under a collapsed roof and neutralizing them.

A CIA analysis, not done on site, hypothesized in 1999 that all the sarin must have been destroyed by fire. But a U.S. General Accounting Office review last June questioned that analysis, and the United Nations, whose teams were there, said the extent of destruction was never determined.

The looting at Muthanna, a 35-square-mile complex in the heart of the embattled "Sunni Triangle," is the latest example of how sensitive Iraqi sites — previously under U.N. oversight — were exposed to potential plundering by militants or random looters in Iraq's wartime chaos.

Last Monday, U.N. officials confirmed that almost 380 tons of sophisticated explosives — also under U.N. seal — had disappeared from a military-industrial site south of Baghdad, a location left unsecured by U.S. troops advancing to Baghdad in April 2003.

Thousands of tons of other munitions are also unaccounted for across Iraq. The issue has become a flashpoint in the U.S. presidential race.

Buchanan said a U.N. team inspected the sealed Muthanna bunker on Dec. 4, 2002, and inspectors continued to visit Muthanna up to March 14, 2003, although they did not view the bunker that day. Four days later, on the eve of the U.S. invasion, the U.N. monitors had to leave Iraq.

As for when the sealed bunker may have been breached, the report said, "The facilities at the southern section" — the bunker area — "were removed by unknown entities between April and June 2003." It didn't elaborate, but presumably the first U.S. search teams arrived at Muthanna in June and discovered the looting.

"The (Iraq Survey Group) is unable to unambiguously determine the complete fate of old munitions, materials and chemicals produced and stored there," the Duelfer report said.

The three-week-old report also said, without elaboration, that chemical munitions "are still stored there" and that warheads, apparently not filled with chemical agent, "are still being looted."

In a brief e-mail responding to AP questions on Friday, however, Duelfer said his inspectors "never found anything of importance looted from the cruciform bunkers," Muthanna's huge cross-shaped storage bunkers. He also said piles of sand dumped onto bunker contents in the past were a deterrent to theft.

The group's formal report, on the other hand, indicated the Americans don't know what may have been taken from the sarin-warhead or other bunkers. "The bunkers' contents have yet to be confirmed," said the 24-page annex, whose photographs show bricked-up entrances breached by man-sized holes.

The report also said unspecified bunkers tested positive for the presence of chemical weapons agents.

Duelfer, an ex-U.N. inspector and now CIA adviser, told the AP the Muthanna site, 30 miles north of the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, is currently being "monitored" by the U.S. military.

In a quarterly report to the U.N. Security Council on Aug. 27, six weeks before Duelfer's disclosures, U.N. inspectors had called attention to Muthanna's sealed bunker, and said 16 other sealed structures and areas there "contained potentially hazardous items and material." Buchanan said those include toxic chemicals and waste, but not chemical weapons agents.

Nerve agents like sarin can cause convulsions, paralysis and respiratory failure. Their potency degrades over time, but "even with degradation, the weapons may be dangerous even if there's half as much nerve agent now as before," said British chemical weapons expert Richard Guthrie.

Guthrie, of Sweden's Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said weakened sarin might be useless against military units in the field, but still be a threat to unprotected civilians in confined spaces.

The Muthanna complex, in desolate flatlands populated by Bedouin camel herders, produced huge amounts of nerve agents and the blister agent mustard in the 1980s, when the weapons were used against Iranian troops and rebellious Iraqi civilians during the Iran-Iraq War.

Under U.N. resolutions banning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the U.N. inspectors who moved in after the 1991 Gulf War oversaw destruction of 22,000 chemical weapons at Muthanna by 1998, when they withdrew from Iraq in a dispute over access and CIA infiltration of the U.N. operation.

When U.N. inspectors returned after four years, Muthanna's sealed locations appeared not to have been tampered with, Buchanan said.
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Old 10-31-2004, 09:49 AM   #20 (permalink)
Banned
 
More "lies" from people "out to get our president"? The first link is to the
Washington Times coverage of this story, and the second link will display the
entire article.......
Quote:
<a href="http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041028-091946-8604r.htm">http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041028-091946-8604r.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.boston.com/dailynews/304/world/Human_Rights_Watch_says_it_war:.shtml">Human Rights Watch says it warned U.S. military of unsecured high explosives in Iraq</a>
By William J. Kole, Associated Press, 10/30/2004 12:56

VIENNA, Austria (AP) Human Rights Watch said Saturday it alerted the U.S. military to a cache of hundreds of warheads containing high explosives in Iraq in May 2003, but that officials seemed uninterested and still hadn't secured the site 10 days later.

The disclosure, made by a senior leader of the New York-based group, raised new questions about the willingness or ability of U.S.-led forces to secure known stashes of dangerous weapons in Iraq.

The question became a heated issue in the U.S. presidential campaign after Iraqi officials told the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency that some 377 tons of high explosives reported missing from another site the Al-Qaqaa military installation south of Baghdad

Peter Bouckaert, who heads Human Rights Watch's international emergency team, told The Associated Press he was shown two rooms ''stacked to the roof'' with surface-to-surface warheads on May 9, 2003, in a warehouse on the grounds of the 2nd Military College in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Bouckaert said he gave U.S. officials the exact location of the warheads, but that by the time he left the area on May 19, 2003, he had seen no U.S. forces at the site, which he said was being looted daily by armed men.

Bouckaert said displaced people he was working with in the Baqouba area had taken him to the warheads. ''They said, `There's stocks of weapons here and we're very concerned can you please inform the coalition?''' he said in a telephone interview from South Africa.

After photographing the warheads, Bouckaert said he went straight to U.S. officials in Baghdad's Green Zone complex, where he claimed officials at first didn't seem interested in his information.

''They asked mainly about chemical or biological weapons, which we hadn't seen,'' he said. ''I had a pretty hard time getting anyone interested in it.''

Bouckaert said he eventually was put in touch with unidentified U.S. officials and showed them on a map where the stash was located, also giving them the exact GPS coordinates for the site.

But he said he never saw U.S. forces at the site when he returned to the area for daily interviews with refugees, and that the site still was not secured when he finally left the area.

''For the next 10 days I continued working near this site and going back regularly to interview displaced people, and nothing was done to secure the site,'' he said.

''Looting was taking place by a lot of armed men with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades,'' Bouckaert said. He said each of the warheads contained an estimated 57 pounds of high explosives.

''Everyone's focused on Al-Qaqaa, when what was at the military college could keep a guerrilla group in business for a long time creating the kinds of bombs that are being used in suicide attacks every day,'' he said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday that Iraq had reported 377 tons of high explosives missing from al-Qaqaa ''due to a lack of security'' at the vast site 30 miles south of Baghdad.

Iraqi officials told the agency the explosives which can be used to make the kind of car bombs that insurgents have used in numerous attacks on U.S.-led forces went missing amid looting after the April 9, 2003 fall of the Iraqi capital.

The Pentagon has suggested the explosives, which can be used to make the kind of car bombs that insurgents have used in numerous attacks on U.S.-led forces, may have been removed before U.S. forces moved into the area.

U.S. Army Maj. Austin Pearson said Friday that his team removed 250 tons of plastic explosives and other munitions from al-Qaqaa on April 13, 2003. But those munitions were not located under U.N. nuclear agency seal as the missing high-grade explosives had been, and the Pentagon was unable to say definitively that they were part of the missing 377 tons.

Bouckaert, who last year criticized U.S. officials for not acting on important information about mass graves in Iraq, said he estimates there were between 500 and 1,000 tons of high explosive warheads at the war college site in Baqouba.

The site also included anti-tank mines and anti-personnel mines, he said.

Car bombs require only about 6.5 pounds of explosives, meaning that each warhead potentially could have yielded enough material for nine bombs, Human Rights Watch said.
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Old 10-31-2004, 03:32 PM   #21 (permalink)
Crazy
 
Location: Auburn, AL
Quote:
Originally Posted by bling
I would rather we put enough troops on the ground to do the job.

Well no, I would rather we had not invaded Iraq. Then the explosives would still be IAEA-sealed in a bunker with frequent inspections.
We would have had enough troops on the ground had Turkey let us go through their country, but they did not, so the 4th infantry division did not deploy when our troops went in.

By "frequent inspections," you mean the inspections that were stopped for years during the Clinton administration, or the inspections during the current administration in which the inspectors would arrive, but would not be allowed to enter the sites for hours, enough time to conceal any illegal activities?

edit: host, I just read the articles you posted, thank you. I must say, though, that your analysis of my arguments supporting the President is quite tilted.

Last edited by quicksteal; 10-31-2004 at 03:45 PM..
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Old 10-31-2004, 04:00 PM   #22 (permalink)
Banned
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by quicksteal
We would have had enough troops on the ground had Turkey let us go through their country, but they did not, so the 4th infantry division did not deploy when our troops went in.
Clearly it was a mistake to continue regardless.

Quote:
By "frequent inspections," you mean the inspections that were stopped for years during the Clinton administration, or the inspections during the current administration in which the inspectors would arrive, but would not be allowed to enter the sites for hours, enough time to conceal any illegal activities?
Sure. It is telling that even flawed inspections would have prevented the looting of the explosives.
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Old 10-31-2004, 04:31 PM   #23 (permalink)
Banned
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by quicksteal
edit: host, I just read the articles you posted, thank you. I must say, though, that your analysis of my arguments supporting the President is quite tilted.
You're welcome, quicksteal. I reacted to the "tone" that I perceived to be in
your comment:
Quote:
Originally Posted by quicksteal
Although we have no new information in the past two days, I'm glad to see that you have new rhetoric for your bandwagon against Bush.
My interpretation of your wording is that you believe that criticism of Bush is
unfounded without "absolute proof". I believe that kind of thinking enables and
encourages Bush to conduct himself as if he is accountable to no one. To err on
the side of the intent of the framers of our constitution, we must criticize him
loudly and often to remind him that he is accountable to the citizens who he
took an oath to serve, and to protect, per that constitution.
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