Missing weapons update

[Midnyte_Ragebringer]

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published October 28, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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."
Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.
Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.
The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.
The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.
Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.
The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material.
Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said.
"That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."
The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.
A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.
The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.
"The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.
The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime.
According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken.
It is not known whether the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.
A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.
The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not persuade 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.
However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said.
The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.
Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.
The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said.
Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.
The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said.
Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said.
"Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said.
Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.
The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.
Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.
The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.
Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing.
The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.
Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

Interesting.

[vn_Tanc]

Interesting and contradictory to a report I read stating that the missing explosives were known to be at that site after the US took control.
I'll see if I can dig it up.

[Voronwë]

in our morning meeting we talked about this story. It is certainly interesting in that there was some incident with a Russian envoy detained near Syria at the beginning of the war.

I heard some questions about this reporters history of publishing questionable stuff in the past, but i think people are looking into this for sure.

my understanding is that this is totally unrelated to the 380 tons of missing explosives from the NBC report.

[vn_Tanc]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933

That's today's russian denial and the claim by the Iraqi govt. that it was stolen or looted.

Apparently El Baradei reported the explosives missing on 9 April 2004 and the last verfied IAEA inspection was in January 2003 so it's all up for grabs right now I guess.
Definitely one to keep an eye on.

[vn_Tanc]

my understanding is that this is totally unrelated to the 380 tons of missing explosives from the NBC report

That what is? THe questionable russian or the reporter? Cos Midnyte's post above refers directly to them. . .

[Sylvos]

I've got a patriot missle hiding.....in my pants!

OH!


keke

[Voronwë]

then ignore what i said about the thing and the thing

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/inter ... r=homepage

talks about the looters taking stuff from that site.

but i think the date of the weapons disappearing is still up in the air.

[Winnow]

This is Kerry's big October surprise which fizzled. It was supposed to be released by CBS closer to the election but now that NY Times has released the story earlier, it can be debunked. Sucks for Kerry in that respect. He's out yelling and screaming about this empty ammo dump as if it was much bigger than it is when he doesn't even know the facts. He sounds like a loon. The way he's overblowing it, he must of had high hopes that this story would make a difference.

Kerry's out there saying our "kids" (aka professional volunteer soldiers) are being shot at by weapons that we supplied and that were stolen. Update: what possibly was taken was designer explosive material. What a bafoon. He sounds like an idiot ranting and raving about this. Most likely it will turn out to be the U.N.'s fault and he'll look even more foolish as Bush "flips" this back into the flippers face.

[Jice Virago]

Well, he is correct in that many of the weapons being used on our troops came from us. We did, after all, put Saddam in power in the fist place (overthrowing the Quassim democracy because it was favoring Islamic interests) with CIA training and funding. We also armed them to engage Iran. Considering the reason we went in originally (WMDs in case the neocons have their excuses mixed up), allowing that enourmous quantity of explosives to simply vanish is a pretty massive fuck up. I am fairly certain W would have loved to seize it too, since it could have lent his WMD bullshit some credence. Its probably not as big a deal as the Kerry camp is making it out to be, but then neither was the whole flip flopping thing, and that horse got beaten into the turf.

[Winnow]

Well, he is correct in that many of the weapons being used on our troops came from us. We did, after all, put Saddam in power in the fist place (overthrowing the Quassim democracy because it was favoring Islamic interests) with CIA training and funding. We also armed them to engage Iran. Considering the reason we went in originally (WMDs in case the neocons have their excuses mixed up), allowing that enourmous quantity of explosives to simply vanish is a pretty massive fuck up. I am fairly certain W would have loved to seize it too, since it could have lent his WMD bullshit some credence. Its probably not as big a deal as the Kerry camp is making it out to be, but then neither was the whole flip flopping thing, and that horse got beaten into the turf.

I was referring specifically to the missing explosives. I don't dispute that some of the insurgent weapons out there are "made by mattel" to quote a phrase from the Vietnam era.

[Jice Virago]

Well it will be interesting, to say the least, if it comes out that many of the suicide bombs, ect, were made from explosives from this stockpile. That is really immaterial, though, since a determined partisan fighter trying to rid themselves of an occupying force would use rocks if they had to. The explosives are probably either distributed among underground Ba'ath loyalists, or smuggled into Syria (our next likely target, if W remains in power and Israel continues down its current path) like the NYT article eludes to.

[Winnow]

This whole thing does need to be looked into but the way it's been presented is a campaign maneuver by Kerry. It's being blown out of proportion and that's easy to see if you've heard some of Kerry's soundbites about it from his speechs yesterday that were probably written long before the story was released to the public. This is a story that makes CNNs headline page for no more than an hour or two if it wasn't being hyped up.

[Rekaar.]

Apparently the UN verified Iraq had found about 400,000 tons of this stuff throughout the country and were supposed to destroy it immediately when they encountered it. Instead they effectively put a padlock on it and walked away =p Granted they knew the war was coming, but "light a match" or something.

If this was known to be missing in 04/03 why is it being brought to light at this time? Even the most hardened political hack on the left has to look honestly at that question, then ask just how it would be possible to run 40 dumptruck sized loads of explosives out from the 4th infantry battalion after the area was occupied, with surveillance blanketing the region. This story smells fishy as hell guys. The weapons were there, but the unfortunate thing for Kerry in all this, is that it sheds even more doubt on just what else was moved before we got there...

I see this blowing up in his face badly. Naturally I'll be ok with that!

[Midnyte_Ragebringer]

.

If this was known to be missing in 04/03 why is it being brought to light at this time?

To try to get more votes. Plain and simple.

[Winnow]

I see this blowing up in his face badly. Naturally I'll be ok with that!

--------
The United Nations inspectors determined that this material did not qualify as WMDs and therefore would not destroy it, instead they sealed it but their seals were ineffective because of venting outlets on the sides of these bunkers. Nice going UN!
---------
An american military specialist was interviewed last night and said he was personally in the bunkers that are supposed to have this 380 tons of explosives on april 3rd and there was none to be found. If this stuff wass taken, it WAS NOT under the nose of the US military and would have been taken between the UN screwing up the seal job and the US reaching the dump.
---------
People that were actually on site during when this allegedly happened said it would have been impossible for 380 tons of material to be "stolen" after the US troops arrived taking the terrain and traffic into account...not even mentioning that US military personnel are saying there was nothing there that actually inspected the bunkers.

Kerry or the NY Times has no evidence at all of these claims being true yet Kerry jumped on this like a bitch in heat.
-----------

Kerry is a fool for ranting and raving and blaming the US troops for this. He once again is trying his best to blame the americans for screwing something up when if anything it was the UN that caused the problem. He also is ranting and raving about explosives missing that could be used to terrorists attacks while flopping the other direction in saying "wrong war, wrong time."

Kerry is an assclown. I do get a chuckle out of Kerry supporters questioning Bush's integrity when they are cheering on a man that has far less integrity in his ranting and raving which would carry right over into his presidency.

I've got four words for you:

WORST OCTOBER SURPRISE....EVAH!

[Voronwë]

it wasnt known to be missing on 4/3

it is propaganda that the NY Times report was refuted by the NBC report.

On October 10th, the Iraqi govt (our ally) sent a letter to the IAEA (UN weapons monitoring grp) to say that some time since the invasion these explosives were missing.

An NBC embedded reporter w/ 101st airborne didnt see the explosives when the group went by the site during the invasion because THEY DIDNT LOOK in the weapons bunkers.

so the way i understand the facts is that according to the NBC story there was no confirmation that the weapons were either there or not there.

CBS didnt air it because it was going to leak before Sunday, so they let the NY Times take it. I also think that they were gunshy about airing it in the wake of the Dan Rather scandal.

Regardless, the military was not told that the site was something they should even guard. so they didn't. at the time of the invasion there was no reason to believe those bunkers weren't loaded down with munitions, and the Pentagon and CIA can produce all kinds of 'facts' about Iraq's military assets.

Anyway, the genesis of this story is not some kind of anti-Bush hit piece. It is a letter from the US-installed Iraqi regime.

[Voronwë]

According to this report, it suggests weapons were there on April 18, 2003. This is the Minneapolis/St. Paul ABC affiliate, KSTP

Using GPS technology and talking with members of the 101st Airborne 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS determined our crew embedded with them may have been on the southern edge of the Al Qaqaa installation, where that ammunition disappeared. Our crew was based just south of Al Qaqaa. On April 18, 2003 they drove two or three miles north into what is believed to be that area.

During that trip, members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew bunker after bunker of material labelled explosives. Usually it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get in 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.

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 in Iraq, said Iraqis were coming and going freely.

so if this report is true, it obviously directly controverts the Right Wing Talking Point that you have heard echoed on Hannity, O'Reilly, Scarborough, Limbaugh, etc. That talking point being "we know the weapons were not in the bunker before the war even started"

the report obviously isnt conclusive, but it certainly suggests that the explosives were indeed there.

there is a video segment as well.

[Winnow]

An NBC embedded reporter w/ 101st airborne didnt see the explosives when the group went by the site during the invasion because THEY DIDNT LOOK in the weapons bunkers.

Voro, this story is full of holes. The 101st airborne was not the first US military unit on the scene. An embedded NBC reporter isn't going to see all the activity and he wasn't even with the right unit that arrived first that went into the bunkers as reported by a US soldier. He was in the bunkers and confirms that the explosives in question were not there. It's true that their orders didn't say to secure those bunkers but they did on their own anyway.

[Voronwë]

hey winnow, watch the Minnesota TV video. I'm not saying it is conclusive, but it certainly suggests shows bunkers that aren't empty with 101st airborne leading embedded reporters through them discussing fuses and other items.

it doesnt necessarily confirm the specific explosives that are central to this story, but neither side knows the story right now, no matter how they want to spin it.

a few conservatives have already started blaming the troops for the problem though: William Kristol and Rudy Giuliani for starters. And that may be fair. This may be a Tommy Franks problem not a George Bush problem.

[Winnow]

ABC reported that confidential documents of the United Nations agency showed that just over three tons of the explosive RDX was stored at the facility, which could mean that well in excess of 100 tons were removed before the invasion.

[Voronwë]

are you quoting Dick Cheney for comedic effect? nice edit to remove that part

i'll provide the context of Winnow's quote since he had to remove it to give it credibilty. Cheney was asserting that he knew for a fact that RDX was removed prior to the invasion. The sentence Winnow quotes is basically summarizing Cheney's assertion. It is not stating for a fact that the RDX was removed in January.

Interestingly, Dick Cheney also knew the following for a fact:

Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons programs
Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and we knew where they were
The US army would be greeted as liberators with flowers and chocolates.
That Iraqi intelligence met with Mohammed Atta in Prague prior to 9/11.

he then also knew for a fact that he never said that.

he also knew for a fact that even though there was video tape of him saying that, that he still didn't say that he said that he didnt say it.


so in other words Winnow, try again.

[Lohrno]

I don't consider Dick Cheney a credible source of information.

-=Lohrno

[Winnow]

are you quoting Dick Cheney for comedic effect?

Who's quoting Dick Cheney? : )

[Winnow]

ABC News:

Oct. 27, 2004 — Iraqi officials may be overstating the amount of explosives reported to have disappeared from a weapons depot, documents obtained by ABC News show.

The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S. military control.

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.

The missing explosives have become an issue in the presidential campaign. Sen. John Kerry has pointed to the disappearance as evidence of the Bush administration's poor handling of the war. The Bush camp has responded that more than a thousand times that amount of explosives or munitions have been recovered or destroyed in Iraq.

Another Concern

The IAEA documents from January 2003 found no discrepancy in the amount of the more dangerous HMX explosives thought to be stored at Al-Qaqaa, but they do raise another disturbing possibility.

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.

[Voronwë]

Yesterday Don Rumsfeld disputed the statement regarding the Russian connection the the RDX/HMX movement. Said the man quoted in the news story did not speak for DoD.

But senior Pentagon officials told CNN they have seen no intelligence information that would corroborate Shaw's assessment.

Asked about Shaw's comments during an interview on WABC radio in New York, Rumsfeld said, "No, I have no information on that at all and cannot validate that even slightly."

David Kay, the White House's weapons inspector in Iraq following the war, said on Newsnight last night (know Winnow loves Aaron Brown), that the video from KSTP that I linked above shows a few things:

1. the bunkers had the IAEA seal on them
2. the soldiers did show the news crew something that was most likely RDX or MDX in the containers.
3. the soldiers didn't secure the bunkers once they left.

So he viewed it as strong supporting evidence for the case

BROWN: 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?

KAY: 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 is the seal broken and the lock broken but the soldiers left after opening it up. I mean to rephrase the so-called (UNINTELLIGIBLE) rule if you open an arms bunker, you own it. You have to provide security.

BROWN: That raises a number of questions. Let me throw out one. It suggests that maybe they just didn't know what they had.

KAY: I think quite likely they didn't know they had HMX, which speaks to the 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.

BROWN: Could you -- I'm trying to stay out of the realm of politics.

KAY: So am I. BROWN: I'm not sure you can necessarily. I know. It's a little tricky here but 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?

KAY: Absolutely not. For example, al Qa Qaa was a site of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 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 U.S. has in its entire inventory. The country was an armed camp.

BROWN: 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?

KAY: Oh, absolutely not.

BROWN: Thank you.

News Story that covers both, and offers a counter opinion to Kay's assertion

anyway, i think the jury is still out, but you hear people like Sean Hannity saying "we know that stuff was moved before the war", and he is simply lieing.

[Lisandre]

nm. Vor already posted about it.

[Wulfran]

What I love about this was illustrated last night on the Daily Show. Bush attacks Kerry/his advisors "for not knowing the facts" about this, and saying something to the effect that " Someone who doesn't know all the facts isn't fit to be the chief executive of this country"... then they you see Bush back pedaling on WMDs and links between Iraq and 9/11...

Can't say I would be a huge Kerry fan if I was an American voter either, but at this point it wouldn't matter.

[Pherr the Dorf]

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=206847

The strongest evidence to date indicates that conventional explosives missing from Iraq's Al-Qaqaa installation disappeared after the United States had taken control of Iraq.

Barrels inside the Al-Qaqaa facility appear on videotape shot by ABC television affiliate KSTP of St. Paul, Minn., which had a crew embedded with the 101st Airborne Division when it passed through Al-Qaqaa on April 18, 2003 — nine days after Baghdad fell


The barrels were found inside sealed bunkers, which American soldiers are seen on the videotape cutting through. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency sealed the bunkers where the explosives were kept just before the war began.

"The seal's critical," Albright said. "The fact that there's a photo of what looks like an IAEA seal means that what's behind those doors is HMX. They only sealed bunkers that had HMX in them."

After the bunkers were opened, the 101st was not ordered to secure the facility. A senior officer told ABC News the division would not have had nearly enough soldiers to do so.

It remains unclear how much HMX was at the facility, but what does seem clear is that the U.S. military opened the bunkers at Al-Qaqaa and left them unguarded. Since then, the material has disappeared.

[Zaelath]

Kerry is a fool for ranting and raving and blaming the US troops for this. He once again is trying his best to blame the americans for screwing something up when if anything it was the UN that caused the problem. He also is ranting and raving about explosives missing that could be used to terrorists attacks while flopping the other direction in saying "wrong war, wrong time."

Speaking of assclowns. It's much easier for me just to listen to Bush on the news than you regurgitating his bullshit.

These are high explosives we knew existed; they are NOT your long lost WMD, they are NOT a justification for the war.

There is no flip flop at all in saying if you're going to go in and destabilize a foreign country you should secure this kind of massive cache of explosives. Frankly if you don't see how it's better for Saddam to have control over a known, tagged, and sealed store of RDX/HMX instead of "duhhhhhh I dunno", then you really are a moron.

This shit will come back to haunt you, and I almost hope you idiots do re-elect Bush, and the next gung ho idiot after him, all the way along until the inevitable next attack on your homeland so you can see how worthless your elephant repellant really is. Unfortunately there are decent people around you that will pay along with you.

[Winnow]

Again, I appreciate Kerry trying anything he can to gain a vote but I'd expect the average libs here to have a little more common sense.

380 Tons of Explosives are in question from an ammo dump...Major Pearson stated yesterday that he's personally destroyed over 7,000 tons of this stuff.

There are 10,000 ammo dumps in Iraq and 400,000+ Tons of weapons and munitions have been destroyed since the beginning of the conflict.

Please people. You act like this is some huge deal

380 tons "possibly" missing
1 ammo dump in question

vs

7,000 tons already destroyed (possibly including the 380 in question)
400,000 tons total of weapons, munitions destroyed
10,000 ammo dumps present in a country that Kerry didn't think was worth going in to...wrong war, wrong time.

Do you honestly buy into the spin campaign Kerry feeds you? The United States has been cleaning up a country awash in weapons and Kerry tries to point out one instance out of the bazillion ammo dumps that the UN failed to properly seal as an October Surprise?

Kerry deserves to lose and you should be ashamed of the effort your candidate is putting out and his disregard for the overwhelmingly positive mission the military has carried out destroying the arms in Iraq.

You guys are great...no WMDs...wait! OMG some explosives that will destroy us all are missing! We shouldn't have gone in...but wait...we already destroyed 7,000 tons of this shit you didn't want to go in after and are pissed that one ammo dump out of 10,000 has issues? That's rich.

[Lohrno]

First:

The order was given to the soldiers to move onto Baghdad without securing the munitions when they found them. This is documented on video.

Second:

Not securing them directly lead to insurgents getting them. Does that make our troops safer?

-=Lohrno

[Winnow]

First:

The order was given to the soldiers to move onto Baghdad without securing the munitions when they found them. This is documented on video.

Second:

Not securing them directly lead to insurgents getting them. Does that make our troops safer?

-=Lohrno

You need to prioritize orders in a conflict. Stopping to secure 10,000 ammo dumps isn't a strategy anyone would undertake when trying to take out the command and control centers and end the war as quickly as possible. This isn't even a case of Monday Morning quarterback. They still wouldn't have stopped to secure the ammo dumps given a second chance. It doesn't make sense in the strategy of the campaign in the first few days of the ground conflict. It makes great whining material though.

Drama.

[Fat]

7,000 tons already destroyed (possibly including the 380 in question)
400,000 tons total of weapons, munitions destroyed
10,000 ammo dumps present in a country that Kerry didn't think was worth going in to...wrong war, wrong time.

I've heard this argument used over and over on a certain news network and I keep asking myself why anybody would argue this direction. We destroyed 400,000 tons of weapons, munitions etc. That's just dandy, but they weren't going to the terrorists before this war (at least not that we can prove) and it probably wasn't 400,000 tons of explosive material.

Now we are missing 380 TONS of highgrade explosives. Doesn't that disconcert anyone? Let's do the math. 380 * 2000 = 760,000 pounds of explosives. Who cares that they've destroyed a bunch of shit. 380 tons of explosives is plenty of shit to blow something up.

-Alfan

[Voronwë]

Winnow the Major at the press conference did not destroy any RDX because he said they did not open any bunkers under IAEA seal, and the RDX was under IAEA seal.

again i think this may be more of a Tommy Franks issue than a George Bush issue. But Franks wanted more troops in Iraq like all of the other generals. Rumsfeld's initial offer was on the order of 40,000 troops.

Rumsfeld is Bush's direct report and on something significant like a war plan, he either got specific approval from Bush, or Bush granted Rumsfeld the authority to approve it on his behalf.

This is potentially a side effect of Mr. Rumsfeld's desire to have a smaller force on the ground and they had to unfortunately pick and choose what sorts of things they could do. A plan that Bush agreed to.

It is interesting to look at the administration's response to this over the past week. They've been all over the map, and uncharacteristically not "on message".

[Winnow]

Now we are missing 380 TONS of highgrade explosives. Doesn't that disconcert anyone? Let's do the math. 380 * 2000 = 760,000 pounds of explosives. Who cares that they've destroyed a bunch of shit. 380 tons of explosives is plenty of shit to blow something up.

-Alfan

Do the math on the 7,000 tons we have destroyed while you're at it and who's saying the stuff wasn't going to terrorists? Did Saddam cross his heart and swear none of it was going to be given to them?

Your argument is weak. I'm happy that 7,000 is destroyed leaving 380 possibly that needs to be destroyed along with the bulk that already has been. This 380 tons isn't necessarily accurate either. possibly 250 Tons of that may have been destroyed as well.

[Crav]

First:

The order was given to the soldiers to move onto Baghdad without securing the munitions when they found them. This is documented on video.

Second:

Not securing them directly lead to insurgents getting them. Does that make our troops safer?

-=Lohrno

You need to prioritize orders in a conflict. Stopping to secure 10,000 ammo dumps isn't a strategy anyone would undertake when trying to take out the command and control centers and end the war as quickly as possible. This isn't even a case of Monday Morning quarterback. They still wouldn't have stopped to secure the ammo dumps given a second chance. It doesn't make sense in the strategy of the campaign in the first few days of the ground conflict. It makes great whining material though.

Drama.

Unless of course the argument is that the administration did a miserable job of planning and conducting the war and uses this as just another example of that lack of foresight. They didn't know exactly what was in the munitions dumps and the administration didn't allocate the man power to secure the munitions even if they had the intelligence to know that it needed to be secured because of what it contained.

You are correct in saying that capturing key strategic targets are more important to a campaign, however much like the current situation of having to reoccupy areas that we had already paid for during the original campaign, allowing munitions that we had already captured to fall into enemy hands is inexcusable.

[Winnow]

allowing munitions that we had already captured to fall into enemy hands is inexcusable.

That's still speculation. The amount in question and where it went is still undetermined. The amount we have destroyed is well known. It's inexcusable that Kerry didn't think Iraq was a threat worth taking care of and all of this explosive material is suddenly a huge deal now which thankfully Bush made the decision that it was part of the larger problem and worth taking care of.

Kerry is pathetic. The guy is imposible to read because he's all over the map. Keep listening until you hear something good and forget the rest that comes out of his grill. Kerry and his followers both practice selective amnesia.

PS: I garan-fucking-t you that a Kerry run campaign would have had just as many little things that could be torn apart. That's part of a massive campaign. Squabbling over a problem in one ammo dump out of 10K is a sad state of affairs for Kerry's chances.


What's next?

NEWFLASH! GEORGE BUSH PULLS HAND AWAY INSTEAD OF SHAKING AN AFRICAN AMERICAN's HAND IN FLORIDA!*


*not reported is that he shook 1,000 hands the past 2 hours of which 82 percent were african american and had already spent and extra 15 minutes at the campaign stop.

DEVELOPING STORY!

[Midnyte_Ragebringer]

What's next?

NEWFLASH! GEORGE BUSH PULLS HAND AWAY INSTEAD OF SHAKING AN AFRICAN AMERICAN's HAND IN FLORIDA!*


*not reported is that he shook 1,000 hands the past 2 hours of which 82 percent were african american and had already spent and extra 15 minutes at the campaign stop.

DEVELOPING STORY!

Reason and common sense is not a common trait found in many VV'ers. You have just made one of the most logical statement ever in the boards history. This is indeed what is going on every day.

[Forthe]

Winnow you make a great Bush apologist but you seem confused.

You are all over the place. Blurring the lines between the high explosives and other crap munitions, blurring the difference between high explosives and WMD, blurring the lines between IEAE sealed installations and 10k other munition dumps.

In any case, this has already worked for Kerry. He can now move on to other topics and Bush is stuck defending himself. Seems to me Kerry stole Bush's playbook.

[Crav]

allowing munitions that we had already captured to fall into enemy hands is inexcusable.

That's still speculation. The amount in question and where it went is still undetermined. The amount we have destroyed is well known. It's inexcusable that Kerry didn't think Iraq was a threat worth taking care of and all of this explosive material is suddenly a huge deal now which thankfully Bush made the decision that it was part of the larger problem and worth taking care of.

The thing is that those explosives before the invasion were no threat to anyone. Saying that Saddam planned on giving those explosives to terrorist would be horrendous supposition. It's a big deal now because of the situation we are in, a situation brought about by horrid planning by the Pentagon, the Department of Defense and the administration as a whole.

I understand that campaigns never go like you plan it, but that shouldn't stop you from trying to take care of some basic items of war. Defeating an enemy on the field has always been a small part of a war, not planning for what happens after a battle can lead to a defeat just as easily as being encircled. Having to pay for the same ground with more lives because of lack of planning is inexcusable. Compounding that by not securing dangerous materials that can be used against your army only makes it worse.

I'm not blaming the soldier that didn't secure the dumps, they had orders to push forward, the blame lies in those people that drew up the plan of attack. I mean we were there to secure all dangerous materials from reaching the hands of terrorist, does 380 tons of explosives not count as dangerous enough?

[Midnyte_Ragebringer]

Winnow you make a great Bush apologist but you seem confused.

You are all over the place. Blurring the lines between the high explosives and other crap munitions, blurring the difference between high explosives and WMD, blurring the lines between IEAE sealed installations and 10k other munition dumps.

In any case, this has already worked for Kerry. He can now move on to other topics and Bush is stuck defending himself. Seems to me Kerry stole Bush's playbook.

I can't wait till this is over so you Kerry apologists can crawl back into whatever delusional hole you came from.

[Voronwë]

well Mid i think it is fair to say that the Bush campaign was on the defensive on this one going into the final weekend.

Kerry took a bit of a risk and went after Bush on something that is really not 100% certain, though the facts are inching towards Kerry's position.

But i think from a political standpoint, the damage is done. Bush's campaign has had to redesign its final 4 day strategy and message, and in that respect it is a success for the Kerry campaign.

I still think the election is super close and either side can win. I do think that Kerry's momentum in the critical states is really strong right now.

Kerry is really building a lead in Michigan and Pennsylvania from what i've seen, and in Ohio has a small lead. He has closed an 8 pt lead in Florida to a 2 pt lead. Momentum is on his side where the election will be won, but there is time for that to fade.

It will be interesting to see how this new Bin Laden tape that just came out will effect things. I think we can both predict how each campaign will attempt to utilize it.

Will the specter of Bin Laden help Bush by coalescing support for the president? Or will the the fact that he is healthy, at large, and talking shit to the United States hurt Bush - indicating a failing perhaps?

[Forthe]

Winnow you make a great Bush apologist but you seem confused.

You are all over the place. Blurring the lines between the high explosives and other crap munitions, blurring the difference between high explosives and WMD, blurring the lines between IEAE sealed installations and 10k other munition dumps.

In any case, this has already worked for Kerry. He can now move on to other topics and Bush is stuck defending himself. Seems to me Kerry stole Bush's playbook.

I can't wait till this is over so you Kerry apologists can crawl back into whatever delusional hole you came from.

I don't recall making excuses for any Kerry actions.

If you want your guy to win Midnyte I suggest you get out there and do your part to suppress the vote.

[Winnow]

Winnow you make a great Bush apologist but you seem confused.

You are all over the place. Blurring the lines between the high explosives and other crap munitions, blurring the difference between high explosives and WMD, blurring the lines between IEAE sealed installations and 10k other munition dumps.

In any case, this has already worked for Kerry. He can now move on to other topics and Bush is stuck defending himself. Seems to me Kerry stole Bush's playbook.

Kerry is a little late on stealing Bush's playbook. The undecideds are tired of the drama over things that turn out to be much less of a factor in the big picture than Kerry continues to try and make them be.

BTW, Bush is winning all of the mock elections held in schools this week. It's not a stretch to imagine that their parents will vote the same way.


And in more news, even the liberal slanted CNN failed to convert these youngsters!

Eighth-grader Hannah Page, 13, said she had voted for President Bush.

“I think he’s a better real person and has a better personality,” she said. “I’d rather him be my president.”

While the results of the election will not be known until Friday, several students said they had also voted for Bush.

“I like Bush; I think he’s better overall,” said Poorvie Patel, who said she had voted straight Republican. “Kerry has wrong thoughts and I disagree with everything he says.”

To prepare for the mock election, the social studies department has spent an entire unit devoted to politics. Spires said his classes had watched a CNN documentary on the presidential race that took students through the election process, from primaries to inauguration.

[Marbus]

Considering he is saying the President won't matter and he is healthy I'm going for it will help Kerry. Kerry focused a good deal of attention in the debates on Bush not getting Bin Laden the fact that he pops up just before the election proves interesting and I hope will give Kerry the final push to win the White House. I know I will sleep much better knowing that we will at least try, not saying it will happen, to bring our allies back into the picture.

Marb

[Midnyte_Ragebringer]

I just heard it is going to rain in many highly populated black voter areas on Tuesday.

It appears this was a scheme set forth by the Bush people and their evil weather machine.

Kerry has said in a campaign speech today that he loathes yet loves rain. He continued, if he was a cloud he would rain on areas in which white rich voters were, not on areas on hard working minority americans.

In related news, CBS is reporting that the Bush campaign was trying to hide reports of possible rainfall in highly populated black voter areas.

[Pherr the Dorf]

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=206847

The strongest evidence to date indicates that conventional explosives missing from Iraq's Al-Qaqaa installation disappeared after the United States had taken control of Iraq.

Barrels inside the Al-Qaqaa facility appear on videotape shot by ABC television affiliate KSTP of St. Paul, Minn., which had a crew embedded with the 101st Airborne Division when it passed through Al-Qaqaa on April 18, 2003 — nine days after Baghdad fell


The barrels were found inside sealed bunkers, which American soldiers are seen on the videotape cutting through. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency sealed the bunkers where the explosives were kept just before the war began.

"The seal's critical," Albright said. "The fact that there's a photo of what looks like an IAEA seal means that what's behind those doors is HMX. They only sealed bunkers that had HMX in them."

After the bunkers were opened, the 101st was not ordered to secure the facility. A senior officer told ABC News the division would not have had nearly enough soldiers to do so.

It remains unclear how much HMX was at the facility, but what does seem clear is that the U.S. military opened the bunkers at Al-Qaqaa and left them unguarded. Since then, the material has disappeared.

UMMM hello, I am on topic!

[Kelshara]

I find it hillarious that the reporter embedded with the forces as a publicity stunt by Bush now proves he is a liar and also proves the horrible planning for the invasion.