Well, I don't know about any such incident "a few weeks back", but around the middle of last year, there was quite a bit of reporting about Tuwaitha and loose radioactive material.
Looting at Iraq Nuclear Sites
Appeal at Looted Iraq Nuclear Site
Missing Iraqi Uranium Secured
It turned out that much of the material was simply dumped, as the looters were more interested in the storage barrels. We later discovered that many local families were using the highly contaminated barrels for water for food and water storage as well as washing clothes.

CJB, if I helped to make your point, I apologize, as I don't believe there's a shred of validity to your claim.

The US military was prepared to claim and secure munitions and did so, to the number of over 400,000 tons secured to date. It was a priority, as is during any military campaign. There are teams in the military specifically designed to remove and destroy ordinance, I won't bore you with the details. This is a large part of the duty for the Army Corps of Engineers during war.

If one journalist with absolutely no expertise, whom witnessed a small period in the history of these weapons, and knows little about war or these munitions proves that they were taken, then we will have to agree to disagree. There's no conclusive evidence that these munitions have been used against us. Don't you think they'd have surfaced by now? You hinge your argument on the voice of a journalist shrouded in the cloud of war. Interesting... I applaud any veteran that can help discuss this theory with CJ, but sir, war makes things fuzzy and inconclusive. The very fact that there are explosions and bullets flying is disconcerting. There's also the idea that the journalist had no mention of whether another unit was following the 101st in to secure left over munitions, etc.

I also find no weight to your claims about Mr. Bush and "dropping the ball". I believe that there have been numerous posts in this thread explaining how this could've happened and whom is likely to be responsible, but GW isn't in any of them. The reality is that incompetence from our Commander in Chief would be not doing anything at all. Incompetence would be not having the backbone to stand up for what you believe. Incompetence would be using an argument you won't accept yourself (i.e. that WMD's could not possibly have slipped out, but these weapons could've...).

If we have secured over 400K tons of munitions since the beginning of the war, and 380 tons going missing is the President's fault, I suppose we could stretch that logic to anything else. Our nation and this war rest on the shoulders of professionals whom are indeed fallable. However, the fact remains that this isn't the President's fault in any way/shape/form.

Lets review then shall we?

Fact: Munitions from this base turned up missing as reported in the original article that started this topic. You might care to go read it again.

Fact: On page 2 of this debate Yehoshua introduced an source from NBC claiming the munitions disappeared before troops arrived. Link, feel free to review the story.

Fact: The Bush apologists promptly jumped on board and ran with the NBC story until I posted mine on about page 3.

My original post was in response to the "the weapons were missing before we got there" line. You agreed with me in your posts, that is what I was referring to.


I think you may be confused by your own spin, go read the initial story again that Wertz posted. The weapons are gone, that is indisputable. This journalist contends that they were there at the time we invaded. If you want to dispute that, please cite some evidence and not rhetoric. Conclusion: The weapons must have been taken on our watch, which is what the original post by Wertz suggested.

Nope you are right, there isn't. But there is common sense. We now have a full blown insurgency with both very well armed Iraqis and terrorists, where exactly do you think they got those weapons? I don't think Walmart has quite moved in to Iraq yet. The smart money says they got them by looting from the stores of conventional weapons and explosives that Saddam had and we left unguarded.

Gee, thanks for the backhanded insult with absolutely no knowledge about my background or what I know. I'll go ahead and ignore that and move on.

You are completely missing the point. Instead of trying to make the point myself I'll refer you to Amlord's Post in this topic where the information comes to light that securing some weapons dumps wasn't priority. I don't believe WMD's couldn't have slipped out, I believe there never were any in the first place. To me it makes little difference whether these explosives are still in the country or whether they are being used by insurgents, the point is that they were stolen on our watch through our negligence. So either they are in the hands of terrorists to be used at a later date or they are in the hands of insurgents to be used against our soldiers, I really don't see a difference.

The incompetence here is the President's plan™ or lack there of. Please tell me aevans, what George Bush's brilliant plan for the post-invasion conflict was? Did he consider an insurgency? Did it occur to him we might need to protect weapons stores so they don't fall into the wrong hands? The results prove that he considered none of those things.

You are trying to get me to lay blame on Bush for specific tactical errors, that isn't the point, I am not saying the soldiers didn't do the jobs they were supposed to do. I am certain they did them admirably and I think they probably all deserve medals. The problem is the overall strategy which was the basis for those tactical errors. And the blame for that rests squarely on Bush and his advisors.

CJ, you left out two 'facts' from your list.

Fact: We don't know how much of the explosives were destroyed in the bombings that preceded the ground invasion.

Fact: Kerry apologists are running wild with the NYT version before all of the facts are in, And indeed, Kerry himself has already made a TV spot criticizing Bush over these explosives.

In the military we have a saying that a commander is responsible for everything his unit does or fails to do. I suppose that in an extremely indirect way, Bush is indeed responsible for this debacle, if indeed they were stolen.

But isn't it also ridiculous for Kerry and his 'Fresh Start' ad to lay all blame at Bush's feet, when we don't know exactly what happened.........and how will a President Kerry act when something like this happens on his watch.

Let me add to this by saying all the embed journalist were never apart of the actual the military operations. In fact, most were not allowed to give their location, mission, or destination. The fact this reporter knew all of this is specious. This is the reason why Gerald was thrown out of Afghan.

Secondly this report some how through taking a look at all the weapons lying around the bunker was able to assure that there was a total of about 400 tons of weapons. 400 tons of anything is a huge pile. She is talking about weapons lying around not a huge stock pile Lets do the math. Metal has a density of .3 lbs/in^3 (above most metal densities-making it heavier then normal) with 1 ton = 2000 lbs = 800,000 lbs of weapons / .3 = 2.6(10^6) in^3 = 1542 ft^3 = a cube 11.5 ft tall or in a natural cone it would be a pile 14' tall with a base 28' wide. I don't read her describing this at all.

Lets, also do some math. Percentage means more in this case then shear numbers. We are talking about 400000 over lets use 400, then there 0.1 % of all weapons in Iraq were not count for. I think that is a good record. We can not account for that many black market guns switching hands ever day in the US.

Now seeing as how this 'pile' includes no WMDs, what is the fear? Our police in the US have worst numbers then this in keeping track of all weapons. Does that mean I should blame Bush because my local police department can not keep track of black market weapons? Nope.

I must be missing something. According to Amlord’s link, the 101st Airborne found no HMX or RDX stockpiles, though they found many other types of explosives. Your link CJ, does not refute this in any way. Per the other types of stockpiles, I'm not surprised that the embedded journalist saw abandoned weapons caches at that facility. They were coming out of the woodwork from everywhere. Iraqi forces also hid weaponry and ammunition in residential areas to avoid detection, and when the forces fled they left behind such arms caches of weapons and explosives …often even in schools and homes.

This is simply unbelievable to me...

Before Gulf War 2.0 started, many of us were stating that without proof of WMD, invasions of Iraq were unjustified.

So, the boilerplate pro-war response was, "it's up to Saddam to prove he has nothing". Another was, "the absence of evidence does not mean the absence of evidence". Anything to justify in their own heads how proving a negative was somehow possible.

Now, it's shown we left major munitions sites unguarded (which should have been destroyed), we lose many Americans weekly due to powerful improvised explosive devices, and we're back to "well, you can't prove the weapons were even there".

Nevermind many Americans every week are getting killed or mortally wounded. We're still proving negatives to create a case that after 9/11, shouldn't have to be made.

NBC is the new CBS. Their "explosives were already missing" story is complete bunk.

First, their journalist was at Al Qa Qaa on April 10th, 2003, with the 101st Airborne. During that "pit stop", according to the embedded Lai Ling Jew, "there was no search" - no one inspected the facility and no one saw anything except unspecified "munitions". Fine. A week earlier, however - on April 4th, 2003 - as reported here at the time, the 3rd Infantry was there and they did do a bit of searching and they did find something:
Those thousands of boxes of "explosives" sound pretty consistent with HMX or RDX.

That a reporter accompanying some troops who did not search the facility a week later claims that there was nothing there is irrelevant. Thousands of boxes of explosives were there on April 4. The NBC story is bunk - as they seem to be admitting themselves since. At least they have been quicker with their "retraction" than CBS was. Our government, on the other hand, seems to be all over the shop, with people practically competing to contradict each other.

What we know:

• The IAEA confirmed that "the seals on the doors on the bunkers were checked at many of the bunkers to see if they were still there and hadn’t been tampered with, and that was the case" on March 15, 2003.
• The 3rd Infantry identified thousands of boxes of explosives on April 4, 2003.
• The 101st Airborne and Ms. Jew did nothing whatsoever on April 10, 2003.
• David Kay visited the facility in May, 2003, and said "it was heavily looted at that time. Sometime between April and May, most of the stuff was carried off."
• The Iraq Survey Group discovered that the stockpiles of HMX and RDX were missing on May 27, 2003.
• Earlier this month, Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology told the IAEA that the explosives were lost through "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security" after April 9, 2003.

Those who believe that the Bush administration is infallible may still be clinging to the debunked NBC story. To everyone else, it looks as though forty truckloads of explosives were stolen - from Iraq's largest military industrial complex - a month or more after Iraq was occupied. I think we can now return to the original questions of this thread, ignoring the whole NBC fiasco.

At first glance it appears that even at this late stage the Kerry Campaign is in disarray. What we have here is a problem of communication between their Print media division aka The NY Times and their Visual media divison aka CBS News, and one "scooped" the other on a "breaking news" story that is in reality, 18 months old. We also have the IAEA who was worried about some 35 tons of this explosive that they found and sealed and now we find out that there was 380 tons of the stuff. Gee, I thought the inspections were working and we knew about everything. Oh well, what's an order of magnitude between friends? Afterall, the "global test" is probably graded on a curve anyway.....

So, there's 380 tons of stuff out there, possibly in the hands of the bad guys. Of course before Saddam was deposed there was quite a bit more of that nasty stuff in the hands of a known bad guy - Saddam Hussein. We've already destroyed about a half a MILLION tons of the stuff. With this uproar from the left, one would think this was 380 tons of WMD! Blows up planes and buildings, but Saddam didn't have any WMD, or so we're told.

Now, Wertz cites an article where "thousands" of little boxes of powder were discovered at this site by the 3rd ID, and concludes that must have meant 380 tons of the stuff was there at the time. Do the math....

380 tons = 760,000 pounds
5 cm X 12 cm = 2 in X 5 in and assuming it was a rectangular box, 20 cu inches in volume or about 11 ounces, say one beer can.

Ok, so we have 760,000 pounds of explosive beer located by the 3rd ID so the question left for the reader is how many six packs would that be? Thousands? Certainly. 10's of thousands? Likely. 100's of thousands - possibly. I don't know that a simple description of "thousands" of these beer cans is really sufficient to determine if the stuff was still there or not.

So what we have here is a "breaking news story" that is really some 18 months old about something that nobody really knows anything about. If this is the Kerry Campaign's idea of an "October Surprise", then they're worse off than even I thought they were.

There is no conflict of the reports for what the subject of the thread is. These high explosives where not there by the time US troops arrived in April in either search.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/...ives/index.html



http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/25/...s.ap/index.html


All of these explosives had been placed under an IAEA seal. There was no such explosives in either search of the area.

No IAEA seals, no high grade explosives in either search - they where gone.

Since the inspectors reported that 35 tons of it had allready gone missing I would conclude that it was in the process of being sold and or hidden. In other words if we didnt drag our feet through the UN we may have been able to destroy these dangerous explosives that obviously ended up in the hands of terrorists.

Isnt this one of the reason's we went to war with Iraq in the first place?

It has occurred to me that if I am the ruler of a Country that is about to be invaded by a superior force, a force that I have faced before and beat me, and I have between 30 and 400 + tons of high explosives between me (the ruler) and them, would I leave it there for them to use against me? Or, would I move it away from them , sell it in the faint hope that I can get away , or distribute it and urge the resistance to use it against the invaders ?

Of course, in all of the above scenarios except for letting the invader have it to use against me, the explosive would have to go PRIOR to the invasion.

NY Times archive regarding the first search of the compound.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/

April 5, 2003 Times story by Judith Miller and Douglas Jehl

I'll admit, it is a bafoonery of mass proportion if the 3rd Infantry Division simply took a little sample of powder and left the rest without securing it. It is also a bit hard to believe. It just seems unlikely in the extreme that the soldiers would report their find to the media, and then abandon all of this suspicious explosive powder. I'll await something substantial before forming any conclusions here. An interview with Eric Westervelt, the embedded journalist with that Division, would be informative. Maybe one will come out.

But, Mrs. P, if we waited until we had all the facts (or even some of them )--what would we have left to debate? I see everyone else jumping to Conclusion--won't we be left behind if we wait? Anyway, who let common sense into this equation? We should never let a little common sense get in the way of perpetuating a spin cycle.

However, since common sense is already out-of-the-bag, allow me to infer a simple question--were this story true, doesn't it seem logical that the embedded journalist would have either already spoken out about it, or certainly have done so since the latest story broke? This strikes me as odd, but Spin seldom wants to spread any information that might counter the flow.

I can't believe I'm actually laughing at this topic, but I really can't help it.

It seems to me that the two greatest failures in the attack/ liberation of Iraq are represented by this story. On the one hand we have the fact that the US led coalition did not have enough troops to do the job of securing Iraq and on the other we have the distinct lack of understanding on the part of the coalition as to the dynamics of Iraqi culture.

The first issue is the easier to comprehend. When the initial attack took place, the US forces, under the direct orders of Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration had just enough troops to defeat the Iraqi army and secure Baghdad. This they did, and swiftly.

However, they did not have enough troops to stop the nation from then falling into complete chaos. Nor did they have enough troops to secure the Iraqi governments infrastructure, nor allow the Iraqi military command to continue to function, nor guard Iraq's hospitals nor the many munitions dumps that dotted the nation. When Baghdad fell the coalition only had enough troops on the ground to safeguard itself and Iraq's oil infrastructure.
Now, there's nothing wrong with guarding Iraq's oil infrastructure given that it is the nations main asset, but its a direct, bold faced lie to claim that the coalition had enough troops to do the job when clearly it hadn't. If the coalition had waited long enough to gather international support then perhaps it would have had enough troops from other countries to help out.. or perhaps the war would never have happened, who knows?

What I do know for sure is that the coalition forces stood back and did nothing to prevent Iraq from falling to pieces. At the time there were even some US officers who told the worlds media that such excesses were to be expected after such a long period of oppression.

...right.

Like the people of Iraq were just so jubilant about the loss of Saddam Hussein's law and order that they were having a wild party and just happened to destroy all the criminal records at the justice department, and just happened to start carting away all the explosives they could carry.


The second failure of the coalition is slightly harder to grasp since it requires an understanding of the many ways Iraqis think.
I personally am not good at this, and I doubt the average coalition soldier knew much about Iraq before being deployed either.

It seems to me however, in my comfortable northern hide away with its distorted cultural perspective, that the best way to liberate a people is not by taking out their capital with as few troops as possible and then watching with mild curiousity as the nation burns itself in an orgy of self destruction, but by imposing immediate law and order upon the land and by moving to secure every single major asset that nation has. Including such important nodes of government as ministry's, hospitals, military installations and so on.

And an important aspect of such an operation is to locate and remove every single resource left to any rebellious elements of the nations population.

The Pentagon calls this 'impossible', and they are right. When you only have 100,000 troops at your disposal, then it is impossible to secure a nation the size of Iraq.

So why am I laughing?

Because instead of examining what went wrong, or why the US forces are still facing a sophisticated counter attack, now, over a year after Iraq fell, I find nothing here but an argument as to who said what and when.

Any one would think John Kerry's attitude was more dangerous than the prospect of IED's killing another thousand or more US and coalition troops!

Today on Yahoo! News and Iraqi scientist weighs in on this discussion adding to the growing number of people that say the explosives were there when the US invaded.

So, once again people can try to attack this guy's credibility but I'm not sure what interest you think he has in US elections. It seems to me that the situation here is becoming perfectly clear, the explosives were in fact at this facility when we took control and they were stolen sometime after we invaded.

What is so perfectly clear? We have the UN claiming they tagged and sealed all the weapons. We have the NBC embedded reporter reporting that during his 24 hour stay he found no such marked weapons on the site. We have the MSNBC producer reporting that she saw lots of weapons lying around, but none were tagged. So what happened to the UN tagged weapons?

Let's look at the time line. You have US troops surrounding Baghdad, closing the roads and securing the northern, western and southern territories. Yet somehow the weapons escaped right under their noses?

First: We are talking 400 tons of weapons. A normal tractor trailer can hold about two tons, so that would be 200 tractor trailers hauling the equipment.

Second: A tractor trailer with a full load could not travel across the sands of Iraq, it must travel down a paved road.

Third: Who took the weapons? Saddam, at this point had fled Baghdad and was in hiding, so who gave the orders to use 200 trucks to remove the weapons, if Saddam had no ties terrorist?

Forth: The UN had tagged the weapons, some weapons were damaged in the air attacks as reported by both the reporter and the producer, but did not have seals. Did the UN not seal them all?

The problem is not that the weapons where there, it is, and I know you don't want me to discredit the inspector, but (i will) the inspector either did not seal all the weapons as he claimed or did not keep a watchful eye on the weapons. The problem is that the UN dropped the ball on this one by not securing the weapons and tagging all the weapons.

Here is my logic. At some point after the air raids had started and before the troops marched onto Baghdad, Saddam order the transportation of the weapons to a secure place. It is obvious this took place after the bombing began because there were destroyed weapons, it is not possible that the weapons were taking while the area was crawling with US troops. Therefore it would have to be between the start of the bombing and the fall of Baghdad.

moif;
The Pentagon did not call it impossible, and unnamed source at the pentagon called it impossible. That does not make it the official word of the pentagon. If a janitor who worked for the pentagon claimed that it was impossible, the janitor could be labeled as an unnamed pentagon sources.

Probably the most interesting thing about this whole situation in my opinion is that for two days now the President and his administration have made no comment on this matter. Meanwhile, Kerry is destroying him with advertisements, and reporters are hounding him on the campaign trail. Furthermore, the President has become extremely defensive over this issue - See CNN Transcript. (Video here (quicktime) )

I think that silence here is pretty damning, if things really did happen as you say Yehoshua then why doesn't the President or at the very least some member of his administration go on record as saying that is how things went down? The logical conclusion there is that they know they dropped the ball here and the stories stating that the weapons were unguarded after the invasion are true. They are probably either trying to figure out how to lie... I mean respond or they are hoping it will go away and fall out of the news cycle.

To me, that more than anything else lends credence to these stories.

Quite to the contrary CJ. I believe that the administration has a duty to find out what happened and report the truth to the best of their ability. We wouldn't want Mr. Bush to fall into the Kerry trap and make contradictory statements.
You all would have a hay day if the administration had to change their story.

Silence is damming??? What will they think of next... Next they will start to defend Kerry's waivering political stance... OH-THEY ALREADY HAVE!

How do you go from no comment to logical the weapons were there and Bush drop the ball? Its a leap, stretching for a reason to blame Bush on something, anything, even if it is fraud and untrue.

And no comment?



or



I agree, when I heard Bush today speaking out against the fraud, i thought "finally." But then I thought, if Bush would have went half cocked reading the NY Times as a source of foreign intelligents, then this country would be more of mess. As shown by Kerry complete lack of concern for the facts, he was willing to stick his neck out on the line in hopes of knocking Bush off his pedestal, and unfortunately this whole thing is unraveling into a mess of yarn that will not be decided until after the election. Giving no one a solid stance as to whether or not this was truly a dropped ball. And as proof dictates now, and by the change in the NY Times story from the weapons being taken and being used, to who knows where the weapons are, this story is nothing more then a tangled web that Kerry stuck his foot into and will drag him down.

I've seen this sentiment a few times in this thread, and I have a problem with it. Two problems actually... One, you obviously don't understand what the phrase "time line" means.

Two, military operations don't work like a boardgame or videogame. 100,000 troops probably couldn't encompass Baghdad if they were standing in a cicle one person deep. The geography of warfare isn't so simple that you can say "well we had 100,000 troops surrounding the city." Surrounded takes on subjective meanings. It can mean we controlled entry and exit points for example, or it could mean that no military equipment could move in or out. The point is that because troops were in the area and even in control of the area, that does not mean that every square inch was secure and under watch. One of our military people back me up on this...

That isn't to say that the weapons were there are not. The fact is though that simply saying "We had the area secure" in no way proves that the looting didn't take place.

I don't know what information you are reading, but you have that completely twisted and tangled up. I think you are having a hard time separating what we are debating here on AD with what is actually coming to light in the real world, at least that seems to me the only way you could draw the conclusion you are drawing but I could be wrong.

I'd encourage you to go back and read a post that Wertz wrote in this topic yesterday concerning the facts to date and the timeline. The things that you have supplied simply don't jive and rather than rebutting them I really think you should read or re-read this post. If you disagree then please feel free to reply to that post, it is a good summary of the information we have to date.

I will agree and disagree in the same post.
I am a Marine Reservist (1st Lt. 41st MAG, USMC-R), spent time in the Afghanistan, and have seen munitions secured. Often times these weapons are cordoned off by the initial unit that finds them, and generally disposed of by the Army Corps of Engineers (especially live ordinance). With that in mind, if there were bombs hanging out unsecured and there was ample troop support in this area (which is obviously in question), these arms would've been under tight scrutiny.

With that in mind, at the point of discovery, there may have been lag time inbetween forward troops running across these munitions and support personnell arriving on the scene. From what I understand there were munitions found by a random NBC reporter, and it's in question about whether they had IAEA stickers. I guess the 101st Airborne was accompanying the reporter, and hence, this story.

Either way, it's not the President's fault. He cannot possibly stop every issue that arises on the battlefield. We have secured over 400,000 tons of munitions to date. There was a plan for such scenarios, and if indeed these arms were left unsecured, it wasn't an executive blunder... if anything, it was poor planning on the ground and part of the "fog of war". Only people whom have never served or been a part of our armed forces could possible understand the command chain and how military operations work. This thread is interesting because people repeatedly blame GW for a portion of the war that was well planned for (the removal of Iraqi munitions).

Looting? How could this be an act of looting? In Looting you walk into the store, grab a TV and run off. How many people would it take to carry off 800,000 lbs of weapons?

The average human can run carrying 40 lbs (800000/40) meaning 20,000 trips away from the site. When did they do it? Lets say they had large semi tractor trailer that hold 2 tons of materials, that would men 200 trips. And as I mentioned before a fully loaded tractor trailer requires a paved road to drive. SO where did they go with all the exits secure?

Let's say I am all wrong, then what is the story? How did they manage to sneak 400 tons of weapons out of the area without the US seeing this?

I think the point here UJ is that we are talking about A LOT of material - 760,000 pounds! You don't move that kind of bulk by carrying it away in your pockets. It would have required something like 40 18-wheelers loaded up to move that stuff. Those things aren't off-road vehicles by any stretch and all of the reports I have read or heard indicate that the roads in and out of the area were patrolled and secured by the US. Now maybe a few hundred pounds might have been smuggled out, but 380 TONS? HIghly doubtful.

Aquilla pretty much hit this one......but for my two cents.

The roads and intersections were primary concerns throughout the ground war and even after (for convoys). Anytime we are on an offensive operation, especially around built up urban areas, road intersections are always manned and patrolled, as they are avenues of approach for the enemy.

This is a primary reason I believe the explosives may have been moved prior to our arrival. We should have seen 18 wheelers or even a succession of box trucks rolling out of this place. (or even 5,000 dudes with rucksacks)

It's also not inconceivable that military units would retrieve these explosives for any number of purposes before an advancing horde of GI's.

Aquilla



Is it?

Given several months and a steady stream of small pck ups and individual trucks, how long would it take to 380 tons?

I don't see that it could be done in one go, but given the amount of time to move it, 380 tons is not that much to shift.

Under fairly good conditions a Ford F350 super duty pickup has a capacity of 1 ton.

On face value you might then assume 380 trips, however, most Iragi pickups are of the "mini" type and most likely would have a capacity closer to 1/4 to 1/2 ton. They however also have much smaller tires making them need even better road conditions then the F350 super duty.

Anyone who has ever loaded a ton of material in a F350 will note, even as large as a F350 is, it is not an easy load to handle under the best of conditions.

EDITED TO ADD:

A heavily loaded small pickup, say with a 1/4 ton of material will drag in the rear, with it's front end fairly high in the front. Consider that, day in and day out you see 1400 to 1500 of these enter an area in there normal trim, then leave as above described, in a war zone, on bad driving conditions.

I think someone would have noticed.

Case close:
Who took the weapons? Russia. And where? Syria. Is that not what I said? Taken before the troop got there across the Syrian border. See I Told You So.

WOW yehoshua in your usual zealous attempt to set the record straight you have seemed to overlook a few little words in your own quote.



Where do you get this case closed from he believes? Does he have facts more than just believes from your own quote it does not look that way.

How about this:
Back to math 3 of of 400 is 0.75%.

3 tons = 6,000 lbs, one truck. And who was suppose to dispose of this? UN. I guess the UN failed the "global test."

I find it ironic that, in the midst of the furor, none of those criticizing the administration over this issue have stopped to realize that issues such as this only justify the invasion of Iraq. If we had not invaded, ALL of these weapons caches would still exist, with Saddam fully able to distribute them to whomever he saw fit--there would NOT be some 400,000 tons of them already destroyed. These were all permitted for Iraq to have...nothing inspections would have done to remove them. So, it would be very nice if that camp would get together and make up their mind...is removing these types of weapons important, or isn't it. If it is important, stop criticizing the invasion, for you would have just provided the only justification necessary, since no other means would have removed them. After all, inspectors had already found these weapons. If it isn't important, then why make such a fuss now? Most of those making hay out of this issue are all up in arms over a relatively small amount of the weapons cache that Saddam had, and missing the big picture of what that argument must inevitably lead to.

If you read the article you will see where Mr. Shaw obtain his facts, but since it was missed, let me quote here:As we can see it was the Russian that were in charge of Saddam's weapons supply, and had the units, and had the equipment to transportation. Logical? We shall see when the intelligents is released.

So do you believe the same could have happened to WMD's?

There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the tactics used that overthrew Saddam so quickly.

Faster, smaller, lighter units coupled with airpower zooming across the desert was the strategy. That is why we won the conventional war so quickly, that is what saved the lives of many soldiers, was taking Baghdad and taking it out as soon as our fastest units could get there. The larger units would come in days sometimes weeks depending on the route to secure the area and establish the supply lines.

Surprise and speed was a main factor in the swift victory against Saddams army.

Saddam had also located many units in the north because he thought we where going to have a large force coming in from the north. By the time he realized we where not, he didnt know what hit 'em. If we would have waited for another battalion to catch up Saddam would have also relocated some of his own army to counter us.

They where not ordered to secure the area because their objective was to take Baghdad. Baghdad was only 20 miles away from the site.

Do we stop here and guard this area or do we take Baghdad? That is the choice that had to be made.

The site was searched, they found nothing that equated to "WMD" material and they moved on. Other than some "white powder" that they thought was an andidote.

There is absolutely no way to guard all of these storage sites even if we sent in 500,000 troops. A large force would have taken much to long to reach any of them. The only option was to send in smaller lighter elite units to secure the sites which the oil field's and WMD site's where the top priority for these units as well as taking Baghdad, we have a very limited amount of units with such capability! The 3rd ID was the first one to arrive on the scene and guess who it was that took Baghdad? That's right the 3rd ID. They where well ahead of the rest of the allied forces, in fact they even routed the enemy enough to pass the Marines who where supposed to meet up with them the same day but they where held back because of the circumstances that did not allow them to move foward (its called war).

Why the oil fields?

You are ignoring what happened during the first gulf war - they where secured to save the lives of US military personnel and also to prevent enviromental and "post-war" economical disaster. One of Saddam's key tactics in defending against air strikes was to set the oil wells on fire to impede visibility for airplanes, satellites, etc... Securing the oil fields gave the US a tactical advantage and surely resulted in saving the lives of many US soldiers.

They are also funding the rebuilding of Iraq.

The story may have taken another twist, and I'm not referring to the 'Russian Connection' which I'm not quite ready to believe.

From ABCNews.com



I'm usually not one to buy into conspiracy theories, but we have a story coming a UN body that openly dislikes the current administration, through CBS and the NYT, neither of which could be considered friendly to Bush and planned to have been released 36 hours prior to the election, when there conveniently wouldn't be time to refute.
And even after one of Kerry's own staffer said 'we don't know all of the facts', JFK goes on a media blitz to blame the president for not guarding an ammo dump (his words, not mine).

Something just smells funny about this. This isn't an October surprise, this is Trick-or-Treat. I wonder which candidate is going to have the bag of burning poo on his doorstep?

So let me get this straight. You really think that these bombs were sitting out in the open for some extended period of time, and the insurgents carried them out in Pick ups? All of the roads in and out were guarded by US Army soldiers. Don't you think they'd have seen something? How long do you really think the Army would leave bombs unsecured? Finally, 380 tons is a large amount and a great point Aquilla. The whole premise behind the liberal SPIN machine on this one is a stretch. What you all are saying is that MAYBE, just MAYBE, all 380 tons were taken out completely under the noses of our military. The amount of material that a professional trucking company in the US would take possibly a week to move was done without notice. That's just plain absurd.

I prefer to quote Bush with this matter. Bush said in his speech yesterday, "Senator Kerry this week seemed shocked to learn that Iraq was a dangerous place, full of dangerous weapons. ... But after all, that's why we're there" I have listen to weeks of no WMDs so we should not have gone, now that we are there and 3 tons of explosives goes missing, and everyone is, "well these should have been guarded." Guarded? They should have been destroyed, and would have been destroyed like the other 400,000 tons of explosives we found, had they been there.

As released today, the US has been harping on the UN Inspectors to do their jobs and destroy the explosive. What do we do when we get there? Find 400,000 tons of explosives and destroyed them. Had the UN done its job and destroyed the Russian explosive when they original found them, then there would never have been 3 tons missing.

The fuss stems from the leader of the Democratic Party: Kerry. But what is odd is in the thread about whether Bush is a strong leader or not, the idea of a strong leader include a person with a broad mind who listens to his advisors. Kerry's advisor on foreign relations is claiming that he doesn't know if the story is true. Did he tell Kerry this? Kerry is running around the country making a fuss over something his advisor says may not be true. Why? Is Kerry a strong leader?

This story just broke on one of the local ABC channels. You need to look past the quotes I'll provide because there are pictures and video of the Al-QaQaa facility taken by an embedded reporter on about April 18th, 2003 inside the link.

This evidence is suggestive that the explosives were present after the fall of Baghdad and even at this date didn't appear to be guarded by anyone.

Now you can draw whatever conclusions you want about where these explosives went when they were stolen and who they were stolen by, but I think that if this holds to be true this distortion that the explosives were missing before the fall of Baghdad is thouroughly debunked. Take a look for yourself.

ABC news is trying to verify these are the same explosives, but so far the story looks to be plausible:

Explain this one to me - During the early 90's, Saddam had WMD. we knew he had WMD because we sold them to him. He used them against Iran. There can be no dispute of that. But when we went to war against saddam then, he never used them against us or anybody else. And he's never used them even as the UN went in and dismantled what he had left. Furthermore, he never sold any to terrorists or any of our enemies EVER. And why not? Maybe because these same people would use his own weapons against him?

So anyhow, Iraq has never had a history of using WMD outside the scope of defending themselves against the Iranians (who were also using WMD) or selling any type of weaponry to terrorists EVEN AFTER WE ATTACKED HIM and years of sanctions, but you want to state a reason for going to war is to prevent him from doing something he never did anyhow? Do you see how ridiculous that looks?

Secondly, let's take a peek inside the madman. He ran a non-secular country in the middle of an area that knows nothing but violence. People die everyday in that area over land rights (Israel, Iran, Iraq, etc) and religion, and Iraq went to war in recent years because of land disputes.

So, this madman arms himself to the teeth to protect himself from the Muslim nutjobs surrounding his country, but because he armed himself, there's more justification to invade him? Personally, if I ran a country in the middle east, I'd arm myself to the teeth using all the WMD's I could find to protect my country from the United States. Who wouldn't? Using North Korea as an example, it's a perfect strategy. We don't invade countries that can fight back.

You people make it sound like saddam should never have any type of weaponry and/or materials to defend himself and should just wait on the front doorsteps of his presidential palace for someone to invade. Our country now decides who can defend themselves. This is what it amounts to.

But who did a better job of keeping those materials out of the hands of bad guys? The guy in charge when the site was sealed, or the guy in charge when the seals were broken?

I become more convinced everyday that removing saddam was wrong. Not because I like him, but because he did a far better job of securing his country than Bush. This fiasco simply illustrates we are incapable of securing a country that didn't need securing before we touched it.

Incidently, you'll notice that the explosives are labeled 1.1D, which happens to be the designation for RDX. From Global Secutiry.Org You can see in the chart at the bottom that 1.1 is the designation for "mass explosion". A mass explosion is one which affects almost the entire load instantaneously.

Also from Global Security.org you can learn what the "D" means. From the chart:

The chart then lists explosives that happen to be found in that category and guess what RDX and HMX are both in this list.

You'll also notice that the room was filled with detonators... RDX requires a detonator to go off.

edited to add: So as not to try and "spin" anything, technically there are quite a few explosives that have the designation of 1.1D, but all of the ones in question hold it and the physical description seems to match RDX and HMX - white powder. Furthermore, it is logical to conclude that is what these explosives are based on the cirumstances. It would be impossible to nail down for certain unless we could also see the UN Number for the explosive which would narrow it to an exact type. I haven't seen that in the video.

But the point that shouldn't be lost here regardless of what you think this is - 1.1D is a high explosive and I really don't think our troops are going to care what kind of high explosives take their lives and limbs in the streets of Fallujah.

edited to add: It appears that the President is now using Giuliani to blame the troops (WMV)

Will this administration ever take responsibility for anything?

Could this be a WMD? RDX was suppose to be destroyed by the UN. Why is it still in Iraq? You mean that Iraq had weapons? So it wasn't that peaceful place we thought it was.

NEW REPORT:
The same depot that was suppose to have explosives that were destroyed? But then again, Iraq has no WMDs so this won't cause any sort of 'mass' destruction, so why worry?

Yehoshua, please stop trying to use misdirection on this issue. RDX is not a WMD, it is a conventional weapon much like plastic explosives or TNT.

I don't think I have ever suggested that Iraq didn't have conventional weapons and explosives, in fact I am quite sure they did. They did in fact have any army you know. You are trying to use the same tired rhetoric that Bush is using right now (in fact you quoted him in a previous post, but I chose to ignore it because his statement has no substance). The UN nor Bush when he invaded did so because Iraq had conventional weapons and small arms. The UN was inspecting for actual WMD such as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Is this going to be the new tack taken by the GOP to justify Iraq - that we invaded because they had small arms and explosives? Well, if that is the case we sure do have our work cut out for us.

I don't know why you can't just face the facts, the White House has hung their hat on the fact that these explosives were not present after April 9th, 2003. This video proves that they were. Therefore they went missing due to negligence, that negligence is also alluded to in this video although not conclusive.

Why don't you try actually refuting the facts here instead of using partisan rhetoric?


I'm not sure what you are trying to prove with this point, or at the very least how you are trying to refute any argument I have made. Myself and others have consistently claimed that these explosives were stolen and are being used against our soldiers in Iraq. The insurgents did have to get armed somehow you know

And no, the explosives were not supposed to have been destroyed, the story the Bush administration is pushing is that they were carried off before April 9th and the fall of Baghdad. They make no claim they were destroyed. And once again this is not WMD, these are conventional weapons.

As it is, there was a soldier interviewed last night on Hannity & Colmes who claimed to be at the site with the 101st. He says he saw none of the explosives in question.

He layed a pretty detailed claim out, that he was in bunkers and so on.

I have no doubt that these explosives in the video were RDX. What the question for me is.......what was the quantity still at the site.

Was it 3 tons, as IAEA documents suggest?

Or was it 377 tons, as the Iraqi's and the Kerry campaign claim?

If it was merely 3 tons (compared to the 400,000 tons we've already confiscated and/or destroyed) then it's a pretty sad attempt at an October surprise by the NYT, CBS and Kerry.

Do one of the UN resolutions specifically call for the removal or destruction of RDX and HMX as part of the disarmament?

This is all have found, and I'm not sure if this means it was just to be monitored, or destroyed.

Link



And this:


Link

Right, Hannity and Colmes, the bastion of impartial television. Please do tell me then GBA, is that video linked in the article a complete fabrication? Did they film it in some Hollywood studio? Or, did you watch it at all? Are the pictures photoshop reproductions based on some vast left wing conspiracy?

You cannot simply provide absolutely no source and say "some soldier said there were no explosives" when I have provided you with a video by a major news agency showing there were explosives there and the designation of those explosives. If you haven't watched the video, I'd encourage you to do so.

Also, this story appears to be collaborated with the 101st, so I think you have an obligation to tell us why we should believe this one soldier on Hannity and Colmes.

And finally, what exactly did I leave out of my link GBA? The section you quoted was in my original link. All you did was allude to some interview on Hannity and Colmes and provided zero evidence to back it up.

Good afternoon CJ, it appears that we're on the same bandwagon today.
Few quick and easily understood points:
1. The insurgents have a large number of weapons that came from different sources. "The insurgents did have to get armed somehow you know."
What about small arms? RPG's, etc, etc, etc... these people are obviously funded by Anti-American groups throughout the Middle East. Next thing you know you'll be blaming Bush for not securing every AK-47 in the country...

2. The IAEA cannot confirm exact numbers of the explosive present and there are reports that even state that there may only have been 3 tons. This is feasible. However, 380 tons is so much that no one could've ever gotten this out unnoticed. The photos posted don't show how much was present and in the event that these journalists were concerned about this ordinance being secured, why wasn't something said back then?

3. None of the points presented link Mr. Bush. What comes next? If anyone is reponsible, the officer that allowed troops to leave these munitions unsecured is to blame. I know words like "incompetence", etc have been used on this thread. Mr. Kerry is using this as a battlecry to pick up that point and 1/2 he needs... and the sad thing is people are still talking about it as if it was a decision the President made.

I wouldn't hold Bush responsible for securing every AK-47 in the country, that would be impossible. Saddam likely had numerous stores for small arms and conventional weapons all over the place. I think that it is likely many of these were known by the insurgents now causing us problems all over the country. Furthermore, I'm sure that the disbanded members of the army took a lot of their gear home with them.

But, the reason that I think Al-Qaqaa is significant is the fact that it has been known as a major weapons depot and production facility. My first question would be why wasn't it destroyed in the invasion, but the next one would be, why wasn't it a priority to secure the place and/or dispose of the explosives? I don't know if any information will come to light on what exactly the soldiers that encountered this place did or didn't do.

What I do know is that we have an administration claiming these explosives were not there when they arrived and we have numerous stories (including the video I provided) now showing that they were there. The stories make it seem like no one really cared too much about the threat these explosives could present, and admittedly that may not be the whole picture of the truth. But the reason that I hold the Bush administration responsible is 1) They are lying about the explosives and 2) I think it should have been a priority to instruct soldiers to destroy and/or secure explosives where they found them. If they had a more pressing mission like invading Baghdad, they should have at least radioed the information in and a clean up crew could have been dispatched later. Again I don't know to what level this was done, but the fact that the weapons were stolen seems to suggest that wasn't one of the orders our soldiers were given.


To be perfectly honest, I'm not quite sure where the original 380 tons number came from that Kerry is reciting. Based on the video, I'd be inclined to believe it wasn't nearly that much explosives and the 380 number makes for a convenient political tool. If that is the case shame on Kerry.

However, lets say it is 3 tons - how is that acceptable given that this explosive is now probably killing and maiming our soldiers at the hands of insurgents and terrorists? I'm not exactly comfortable with that when it could have been prevented.

I don't think the journalists said anything because if you read the reports by themselves they would have meant nothing. The event that triggered all of this was that someone noticed these explosives were stolen. The reporters then started coming out and saying, hey we were there and we saw them. If they had reported on it back in April 2003 it would have been a non-story. "Soldiers stop and find explosives on the way to Baghdad" is not a story, and there could have been numerous reasons why they didn't do anything about it. Hindsight is what brings the whole story to light.