Whoops! Iraqi explosives disappear under our guard

[Guest MikeSC]

yeah.. 380 tons of explosives isn't a big deal.

 

When you compare it to the tons of bullets, grenades and so on.

 

Well, that makes us all feel much better.

 

We may have 60 apples missing, but we've found 50,000 oranges!

Let's say you have fifty million sheets of paper.

 

Losing 5 of them isn't a huge failure. It's simply an overwhelming amount.

 

You'd think with all of these "unprotected ammo dumps" that there would have been FAR more.

-=Mike

[snuffbox 0]

Mike, do you realize the amount of damage that can be done with 380 tons of explosives? Its not sheet paper...it is a serious problem. That amount of explosives should not be allowed to slip away.

[Guest MikeSC]

Mike, do you realize the amount of damage that can be done with 380 tons of explosives? Its not sheet paper...it is a serious problem. That amount of explosives should not be allowed to slip away.

Like it or not, perfection is impossible. We secured, what, 99% of the explosives? Yeah, the 1% isn't good --- but Jesus, trying to criticize Bush for a statistically insignificant portion of the material missing is absurd.

 

I know, Kerry would've made sure we didn't misplace a single ounce --- but most people aren't Jesus (or Moses, if the church he was at this weekend is to be believed).

-=Mike

[snuffbox 0]

Mike, do you realize the amount of damage that can be done with 380 tons of explosives? Its not sheet paper...it is a serious problem. That amount of explosives should not be allowed to slip away.

Like it or not, perfection is impossible. We secured, what, 99% of the explosives? Yeah, the 1% isn't good --- but Jesus, trying to criticize Bush for a statistically insignificant portion of the material missing is absurd.

 

I know, Kerry would've made sure we didn't misplace a single ounce --- but most people aren't Jesus (or Moses, if the church he was at this weekend is to be believed).

-=Mike

I doubt George Bush had much anything to do with this...

 

But it does show a problem with our military in Iraq...this sort of thing simply cant happen. 380 tons might be a small percentage overall, but its very terrifying to consider how much damage it can do.

[Guest MikeSC]

Mike, do you realize the amount of damage that can be done with 380 tons of explosives? Its not sheet paper...it is a serious problem. That amount of explosives should not be allowed to slip away.

Like it or not, perfection is impossible. We secured, what, 99% of the explosives? Yeah, the 1% isn't good --- but Jesus, trying to criticize Bush for a statistically insignificant portion of the material missing is absurd.

 

I know, Kerry would've made sure we didn't misplace a single ounce --- but most people aren't Jesus (or Moses, if the church he was at this weekend is to be believed).

-=Mike

I doubt George Bush had much anything to do with this...

 

But it does show a problem with our military in Iraq...this sort of thing simply cant happen. 380 tons might be a small percentage overall, but its very terrifying to consider how much damage it can do.

The problem is that the military cannot secure every single spot Saddam had explosives --- and judging by the amount we secure --- he had them hidden all over the damned place.

 

And, I hope Kerry loses for his sake. His party is setting up a requirement for success that no man can possibly achieve.

-=Mike

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

This is a gun:

 

 

This is a grenade:

 

 

This is a rocket launcher:

 

 

These are munitions:

 

 

What went missing from Al-Qaaqaa?

 

HMX

RDX

PETN

 

but are those just letters?

 

Nope

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/crash/ncrash16.htm

 

PETN explosive explainer

PETN, the explosive reportedly found on wreckage from TWA Flight 800, is a favorite of terrorists because it is powerful, can be easily molded and escapes detection by X-ray machines.

 

PETN was among the ingredients in the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The plastic explosive Semtex, which contains PETN and another explosive known as RDX, was molded inside a radiocassette player. The blast killed 270 people.

 

PETN, itself a white, crystalline substance, is generally mixed with other explosives and materials such as latex to make it malleable. Its legitimate uses include commercial blasting.

 

PETN and the materials it is used with are available for about $20 a pound to anyone with a blasting permit.

 

http://www.totse.com/en/bad_ideas/ka_fucking_boom/rdx.html

 

R.D.X., also called cyclonite, or composition C-1 (when mixed with plasticisers) is one of the most valuable of all military explosives. This is because it has more than 150% of the power of T.N.T., and is much easier to detonate.

 

http://www.islandgroup.com/ExplosiveChemistry.html

 

HMX (Octogen)

HMX is also known as Octogen. This explosive compound is a white, crystalline solid with a nitrogen content of 37.84%. Military grade HMX is offered in accordance with MIL-H-45444B.

 

HMX is used as an explosive charge when desensitized, as a booster charge in mixtures with TNT (octols), and as an oxidizer in solid rocket and gun propellants.

 

Two grades of HMX are used for military applications:

 

Grade A has a minimum purity of 93% and a 7% maximum RDX content.

Grade B has a minimum purity of 98% and a 2% maximum RDX content.

IPI also offers an ultra high purity grade of HMX containing 99.8% minimum HMX.  This grade is primarily used in the manufacturing of perforators for the oil drilling industry.

 

But if you choose to believe Mike, one pound of HMX, RDX or PETN is just as bad as a one pound bullet, a one pound rocket, a one pound grenade

 

Although the world's attention has focused on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, scant attention has been paid to the mountains of weapons of conventional destruction unearthed in Iraq.

 

The bombs, rockets, grenades, cannon shells and bullets amount to the world's fourth-largest stockpile of weapons, Army Corps of Engineers officials say. An estimated 600,000 tons of munitions with markings from all over the world, including the United States, and some so old that the weapons that fired them are no longer made, were stashed in Saddam's innumerable caches.

 

To date, 110,000 tons have been destroyed. An additional 138,000 tons are stored behind protective barriers. Saddam seemed to hoard this cornucopia of death aimlessly. "There are no aisles to walk down. It's just heaped," he said. "It just blows your mind to see this stuff."

 

But wait? aren't all munitions explosives like the ones described?

 

*looks at the picture posted*

 

Nope

 

If you shot caffeine into a hamster, you couldn't get better spin than what Mike is going for here.

[Guest MikeSC]

And, yet again, you ignore that the missing explosives are roughly 1% of the explosives in the country.

-=Mike

[snuffbox 0]

And, yet again, you ignore that the missing explosives are roughly 1% of the explosives in the country.

-=Mike

Mike, what is the excuse for apparently leaving this 1% unguarded and seperated from the other 99%?

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

to quote your article:

 

The bombs, rockets, grenades, cannon shells and bullets amount to the world's fourth-largest stockpile of weapons, Army Corps of Engineers officials say. An estimated 600,000 tons of munitions with markings from all over the world, including the United States, and some so old that the weapons that fired them are no longer made, were stashed in Saddam's innumerable caches.

 

To date, 110,000 tons have been destroyed. An additional 138,000 tons are stored behind protective barriers. Saddam seemed to hoard this cornucopia of death aimlessly. "There are no aisles to walk down. It's just heaped," he said. "It just blows your mind to see this stuff."

 

110K tons of what?

 

it appears that it's 110,000 tons of munitions that was destroyed, and 138,000 tons are on the way out.

 

Now.. what's a munition?

 

What does the US military say?

 

http://pmdtc.org/usml.htm

 

Code Description

I - Firearms, Close Assault Weapons and Combat Shotguns

II - Guns and Armament

III - Ammunition/Ordinance

IV - Launch Vehicles, Guided Missiles, Ballistic Missiles, Rockets, Torpedoes, Bombs, and Mines 

V - Explosives and Energetic Materials, Propellants, Incendiary Agents, and Their Constituents

VI - Vessels of War and Special Naval Equipment

VII - Tanks and Military Vehicles

VIII - Aircraft and Associated Equipment

IX - Military Training Equipment

X - Protective Personnel Equipment

XI - Military Electronics

XII - Fire Control, Range Finder, Optical and Guidance and Control Equipment

XIII - Auxiliary Military Equipment

XIV - Toxicological Agents, Including Chemical Agents, Biological Agents, and Associated Equipment

XV - Spacecraft Systems and Associated Equipment

XVI - Nuclear Weapons, Design and Testing Related Items

XVII - Classified Articles, Technical Data and Defense Services Not Otherwise Enumerated

XVIII - Directed Energy Weapons

XIX - [Reserved]

XX - Submersible Vessels, Oceanographic and Associated Equipment

XXI - Miscellaneous Articles

 

Your article suggests it's tons of MUNITIONS not EXPLOSIVES. Nothing in your article suggests otherwise.

 

110,000 tons of munitions were destroyed. Be honest with us all and stop bullshitting this board.

 

110,000 tons of munitions

 

not 110,000 tons of explosives

 

unless there's explosive handguns now.

[Guest MikeSC]

And, yet again, you ignore that the missing explosives are roughly 1% of the explosives in the country.

                          -=Mike

Mike, what is the excuse for apparently leaving this 1% unguarded and seperated from the other 99%?

Let's see YOU secure 100% of SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND TONS of anything.

 

And, Rob, your attempts at attacking my point is just pathetic.

 

"It can be nothing!"

 

Gee, it could also be the worst stuff on Earth.

-=Mike

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

And, Rob, your attempts at attacking my point is just pathetic.

Your lies in response to this story are the pathetic thing here

 

Do you have anything to show that it's all 110,000 tons of explosives?

 

The bombs, rockets, grenades, cannon shells and bullets amount to the world's fourth-largest stockpile of weapons, Army Corps of Engineers officials say. An estimated 600,000 tons of munitions with markings from all over the world, including the United States, and some so old that the weapons that fired them are no longer made, were stashed in Saddam's innumerable caches.

 

To date, 110,000 tons have been destroyed. An additional 138,000 tons are stored behind protective barriers. Saddam seemed to hoard this cornucopia of death aimlessly. "There are no aisles to walk down. It's just heaped," he said. "It just blows your mind to see this stuff."

 

Now.. if these were explosives that were destroyed and not generally munitions.. wouldn't they note that in the story.

 

"110,000 tons"

 

of what?

 

well.. what was mentioned in the paragraph before that stuff about the destruction?

 

MUNITIONS

[Guest MikeSC]

Often, however, the explosives find their way into the hands of people who use them against U.S. and coalition troops. "Improvised explosive devices," as the U.S. military calls the bombs, is part of the lexicon of this war. Drying up their source fuels the conventional-weapons program's urgency, Murdock said.

-=Mike

[jesse_ewiak 0]

Hell Mike, only 4 planes were hijacked out of thousands of flights yearly, so what's the big deal? I mean, it was probably less than 1%!

[Guest MikeSC]

Hell Mike, only 4 planes were hijacked out of thousands of flights yearly, so what's the big deal? I mean, it was probably less than 1%!

What next, Kerry only wanted to keep $87B from the troops?

-=Mike

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

Often, however, the explosives find their way into the hands of people who use them against U.S. and coalition troops.

 

That's not such a big deal. I'm sure you'd tell that to the Americans who have fallen victim to those attacks.

 

Considering your record of bashing Cleland and Kerry, you'd probably bash them too.

 

"Improvised explosive devices," as the U.S. military calls the bombs, is part of the lexicon of this war. Drying up their source fuels the conventional-weapons program's urgency, Murdock said.

 

we sure did dry up their source when those 380 tons (from one place) fell into the hands of anybody who needed some explosive.

 

It took one pound of PETN to down Pan-Am 101.

 

But hey.. we've got tons and tons of munitions.

 

A few hundred tons of explosives isn't such a big deal.

[jesse_ewiak 0]

Well, if a terrorist group having only 1% of explosives in a country is no big deal, terrorists blowing up less than 1% of yearly plane flights is an even smaller deal, right?

[Guest MikeSC]

Often, however, the explosives find their way into the hands of people who use them against U.S. and coalition troops.

 

That's not such a big deal. I'm sure you'd tell that to the Americans who have fallen victim to those attacks.

 

Considering your record of bashing Cleland and Kerry, you'd probably bash them too.

 

"Improvised explosive devices," as the U.S. military calls the bombs, is part of the lexicon of this war. Drying up their source fuels the conventional-weapons program's urgency, Murdock said.

 

we sure did dry up their source when those 380 tons (from one place) fell into the hands of anybody who needed some explosive.

 

It took one pound of PETN to down Pan-Am 101.

 

But hey.. we've got tons and tons of munitions.

 

A few hundred tons of explosives isn't such a big deal.

Gee, we only managed to kept 249,000 tons out of their hands. But, hey, if we couldn't keep the remaining 380 tons out of their hands, we should have done nothing.

-=Mike

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

Once again.. you are confusing munitions with explosives.

 

I'm sure if Charles Johnson or the Bush adminstration had proof that our army had 99% of their explosives, then they would put it out.

 

Yet.. that's not happening. But we are destroying a lot of munitions.

 

The bombs, rockets, grenades, cannon shells and bullets amount to the world's fourth-largest stockpile of weapons, Army Corps of Engineers officials say. An estimated 600,000 tons of munitions with markings from all over the world, including the United States, and some so old that the weapons that fired them are no longer made, were stashed in Saddam's innumerable caches.

 

It's not a massive problem that we have explosives out in the open. We've whupped ass on bullets. Since all weapons are created equal

[Guest GreatOne]

I didn't equate conventional weapons with WMDs. You did and then tried to backtrack. Then you just start posting little snide comments because you can't back yourself up. Leave it to the people who can make an argument.

 

Of course I await your typical response of

 

A) Shut up!

B) You're Dumb

C) Ripping off LOL2004

 

with bated breath.

Actually you will notice that I, in fact, DIDN'T.

 

I acknowledged the difference and said that NEITHER was acceptable, got it?

 

As if all the reading problems here lately are my fault.....................

[The Robfather 0]

Looks like NBCNews just destroyed the NYT's story.

[Guest MikeSC]

Looks like NBCNews just destroyed the NYT's story.

I doubt it'll get much play.

-=Mike

[teke184 0]

Looks like NBCNews just destroyed the NYT's story.

I doubt it'll get much play.

-=Mike

Still... looks promising that NBCstill has some sembalance of journalistic integrity. ABC, CBS, and the NYTimes have taken huge hits in the past two months.

[Guest MikeSC]

Looks like NBCNews just destroyed the NYT's story.

I doubt it'll get much play.

-=Mike

Still... looks promising that NBCstill has some sembalance of journalistic integrity. ABC, CBS, and the NYTimes have taken huge hits in the past two months.

They were lucky to be embedded there. Otherwise, they would've ignored the truth, too.

 

And, anybody care to guess what page NY Times will report this correction on?

-=Mike

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

The video of Robfather's source:

 

http://video.msn.com/video/p.htm?t=1&i=cdd...67-d13e7832a51a

 

and MSNBC isn't on the same page as NBC

 

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

 

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said U.S.-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. The site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

 

Hmmmm..

[Guest MikeSC]

So, you're now pinning your hopes to a story that is already being contradicted by another MSM member?

-=Mike

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

from TPM (I wonder where Mike will stop reading this)

 

So which is it?

 

The Iraqi interim government says that the explosives at al Qa Qaa went missing some time after April 9th 2003 because of "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."

 

(Remember, Baghdad fell on April 9th, so presumably that's a marker denoting simply that it happened at some point after the fall of the old regime.)

 

Today, Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita suggested that the weapons may have been taken from al Qa Qaa in the final days of the old regime or in fact during the war.

 

Remember, the IAEA inspected the munitions in January 2003 and then returned to the site and saw that the seals were in place in March, just a week or so before the war started. So Di Rita is claiming that the explosives were taken away in a two or three week period in late March of very early April 2003. If Drudge is to be trusted (yes, yes, I know), NBC will be running with some version of this storyline.

 

But there's another version of events.

 

A Pentagon "official who monitors developments in Iraq" told the Associated Press today that "US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact."

 

That of course would mean that the explosives were not removed from the facility until some point after the war. And that would be in line with what the Iraqis two weeks ago told the IAEA.

 

Let's review for a moment. We have a dispute here about a window of time covering two to four weeks, say roughly from March 10th to April 10th 2003 at the longest. But it's an important few weeks because it was over this span of time that the region went from the control of Saddam's government to the US military.

 

If the Di Rita hypothesis rests on the claim that the first US troops that visited al Qa Qaa found that the explosives had already been stolen or looted or otherwise secreted away. (He has, in fact, already said this.) And that would mean that the US government has known the explosives were missing for some eighteen months.

 

The problem is that the White House has spent the entire day claiming that they knew nothing about this until ten days ago, October 15th. Scott McClellan said this repeatedly during his gaggle with reporters this morning. Indeed, he went on to say the following: "Now [i.e., after the notification on October 15th], the Pentagon, upon learning of this, directed the multinational forces and the Iraqi survey group to look into this matter, and that's what they are currently doing."

 

So McClellan says that the Pentagon only just learned about this. And that's why they only now assigned the Iraq Survey Group to examine what happened at al Qa Qaa.

 

But Di Rita says that the US government has known about it for 18 months.

 

So which is it?

 

They've known about it since just after the war and kept it a secret? Or they just found out about it ten days ago and now they're on the case?

 

and the NYT followup:

 

Iraq Explosives Become Issue in Campaign

By DAVID E. SANGER

 

Published: October 26, 2004

 

DAVENPORT, Iowa, Oct. 25 - The White House sought on Monday to explain the disappearance of 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq that American forces were supposed to secure, as Senator John Kerry seized on the missing cache as "one of the great blunders of Iraq" and said President Bush's "incredible incompetence" had put American troops at risk.

 

Mr. Bush never mentioned the disappearance of the high explosives during a long campaign speech in Greeley, Colo., about battling terrorism. Instead, evoking images of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and traveling with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, at his side, Mr. Bush made an impassioned appeal to voters to let him "finish the work we have started." But he also charged that his opponent had abandoned the defense principles of Democrats like John F. Kennedy.

 

"Senator Kerry has turned his back on 'Pay any price and bear any burden,' " Mr. Bush said, "and he has replaced those commitments with 'wait and see' and 'cut and run.' "

 

Yet even as Mr. Bush pressed his case, his aides tried to explain why American forces had ignored warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency about the vulnerability of the huge stockpile of high explosives, whose disappearance was first reported on Monday by CBS and The New York Times.

 

In several sessions with reporters, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, alternately insisted that Mr. Bush "wants to make sure that we get to the bottom of this" and tried to distance the president from knowledge of the issue, saying Mr. Bush was informed of the disappearance only within the last 10 days. White House officials said they could not explain why warnings from the international agency in May 2003 about the stockpile's vulnerability to looting never resulted in action. At one point, Mr. McClellan pointed out that "there were a number of priorities at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom."

 

Asked about accusations from the Kerry campaign that the White House had kept the disappearance secret until The Times and CBS broke the story on Monday morning, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said the White House had decided "to get all the facts and find out exactly what happened in this case, and then whether there are other cases."

 

Ms. Bartlett went on to say, "So doing it piecemeal - I don't think that would have been the responsible thing." He said that so far, no other large-scale cases of looting of explosives had been found.

 

Others in the Bush campaign characterized Mr. Kerry's attack as another instance of his willingness to say anything to be elected.

 

In New Hampshire on Monday, Mr. Kerry wasted no time seizing on the news to bolster his contention that Mr. Bush lacks the competence to act as commander in chief.

 

"Now we know that our country and our troops are less safe because this president failed to do the basics," Mr. Kerry said. "This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration. The incredible incompetence of this president and his administration has put our troops at risk and put our country at greater risk than we ought to be."

 

By the afternoon, Mr. Kerry's surrogates, including his adviser Joe Lockhart and Madeleine K. Albright, the former secretary of state, were deployed on the airwaves to repeat the case, describing in detail how many car bombs, larger explosions or nuclear triggers could be fabricated from the high explosives.

 

"It's an outrageous mistake, and one I'm afraid we will pay for for a long period of time," Dr. Albright said on CNN.

 

And in Toledo, Ohio, Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, was hitting the same notes, telling a crowd: "It is reckless and irresponsible to fail to protect and safeguard one of the largest weapons sites in the country. And by either ignoring these mistakes or being clueless about them, George Bush has failed. He has failed as our commander in chief; he has failed as president."

 

The Republicans mounted a similarly vociferous counterattack, charging Mr. Kerry with seizing on the loss of 380 tons of high explosives and never mentioning what Mr. McClellan called "more than 243,000 tons of munitions" that had been destroyed since the invasion. "Coalition forces have cleared and reviewed a total of 10,033 caches of munitions; another 163,000 tons of munitions have been secured and are on line to be destroyed," he said.

 

On Monday afternoon, Ken Mehlman, the Bush campaign manager, wrote a letter to supporters saying that "every day brings a new charge against the president and every charge is pulled right from the headlines of The New York Times."

 

"John Kerry will say anything he believes will help him politically," Mr. Mehlman wrote, "and today he is grasping at headlines to obscure his record of weakness and indecision in the war on terror."

 

Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, also contended that The Times had chosen to run the article at the end of the campaign, though he argued that the explosives probably disappeared about 18 months ago. The Times article said it was based on a letter reporting the missing explosives dated two weeks ago, on Oct. 10, sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency by the Iraqi interim government. The Times and CBS confirmed the facts in the letter in an interview with the Iraqi minister of science and technology, Rashad M. Omar.

 

On Monday evening, Nicolle Devenish, the spokeswoman for the Bush campaign, noted a section of the Times report indicating that American troops, on the way to Baghdad in April 2003, stopped at the Al Qaqaa complex and saw no evidence of high explosives. Noting that the cache may have been looted before the American invasion, she said Mr. Kerry had exaggerated the administration's responsibility.

 

"John Kerry presumes to know something that he could not know: when the material disappeared," Ms. Devenish said. "Since he does not know whether it was gone before the war began, he can't prove it was there to be secured."

 

While the White House sought to minimize the importance of the loss of the HMX and RDX - two commonly used military explosives that can also be used to bring down airplanes or to create a trigger for nuclear weapons - the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, took the unusual step on Monday of writing to the United Nations Security Council to report that the explosives were gone. He usually sends a report every six months, and his last was just a few weeks ago.

 

"He doesn't do that to report trivia," a European diplomat familiar with Dr. ElBaradei's views said. "It's something that is considered grave."

 

Dr. ElBaradei said his agency, whose inspectors were barred from returning to Iraq by the Bush administration after the invasion, had informed the multinational force in Iraq of the disappearance 10 days ago, hoping for "an opportunity to attempt to recover the explosives before this matter was put into the public domain." However, he noted Monday's news coverage and said he had to inform the full Security Council.

 

The increasingly angry exchanges between the campaigns took place as Mr. Bush sped through three states critical to his re-election. Starting the morning at his ranch in Texas, he flew to Colorado, a state his aides said he had all but wonMr. Bush, Mr. Bartlett said, was unlikely to return to Colorado, whose nine electoral votes are considered safe. Mr. Bush won Colorado by about eight points in 2000.

 

Iowa, with seven electoral votes, is closer, Mr. Bartlett said, and Mr. Bush spoke on Monday in both Council Bluffs and Davenport. With Mr. Giuliani still at his side, Mr. Bush again returned to the terrorism theme, telling several thousand cheering supporters, "On good days and on bad days, whether the polls are up or the polls are down, I am determined to win the war on terror, and I will always support the men and women in uniform."

 

At every stop, Mr. Bush has added a new line of attack on Mr. Kerry, saying he was twisting the facts when he asserted, in the presidential debates, that Mr. Bush let Osama bin Laden escape in the mountains of Tora Bora by "subcontracting" the pursuit to unreliable tribal allies.

 

"This is unjustified criticism of our commanders in the field," Mr. Bush said, citing Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of the coalition forces at the time, who contends that intelligence at the time suggested Mr. bin Laden might have been in any of several countries at the time.

 

"This is the worst kind of Monday morning quarterbacking," Mr. Bush said of Mr. Kerry's criticism. "And it's what we've come to expect from my opponent."

 

 

Jodi Wilgoren contributed reporting from Philadelphia for this article, William J. Broad from New York and Randal C. Archibold from Toledo, Ohio.

 

and here's something interesting..

 

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=2813&art...d=2813&set_id=1

 

It appears that US troops were at al Qa Qaa on April 4th

 

April 04 2003 at 05:41PM

 

Chemical warfare manuals and antidote found

 

By Kimberley Hefling

 

Near Baghdad - United States troops have found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and documents in Arabic on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad. But a senior US official familiar with initial testing said the white powder was believed to be explosives.

 

Colonel John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found on Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex 40km south of Baghdad, the capital.

 

"It is clearly a suspicious site," Peabody said.

 

But in Washington, the senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the material was under further study. The site is enormous and US troops are still investigating it for potential weapons of mass destruction, the official said.

 

"Initial reports are that the material is probably just explosives, but we're still going through the place," the official said.

 

Peabody said US troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.

 

He also said they discovered atropine, used to counter the effects of nerve agents.

 

The facility had been identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons site. UN weapons inspectors visited the plant at least a dozen times, including as recently as February 18.

 

The facility is part of a larger complex known as the Latifiyah Explosives and Ammunition Plant al Qa Qaa.

 

During the 1991 Gulf War, US jets bombed the plant.

 

US troops also discovered what they believe is a training center for nuclear, chemical and biological warfare in Iraq's western desert, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, a spokesperson for US Central Command in Qatar, said on Friday.

 

One bottle found at the site was labeled "tabun" - a nerve agent that the US government says may have been used during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. The American soldiers found only a small amount of the chemical, indicating the site was meant for training, not storing or deploying chemical weapons, Brooks said.

 

"In that particular site, we believe that was the only sample," Brooks said. "That's why we believe it was a training site. Our conclusion is that this was not a (weapons of mass destruction) site... it proved to be far less than that."

 

Photos of the site showed shelves of brown bottles with yellow labels. Brooks said troops did not understand some of the labels and were collecting the bottles for examination by experts.

 

On April 1, Iraqi Vice-resident Taha Yassin Ramadan, in a statement on Iraqi television, repeated Baghdad's position that it had no weapons of mass destruction. Referring to reports that gas masks and other chemical gear had been found elsewhere in the country, he said the coalition might plant weapons of mass destruction to implicate Iraq.

 

"Let me say one more time that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction," he said.

 

"The aggressors may themselves intend to bring those materials to plant them here and say those are weapons of mass destruction," he said. - Sapa-AP

 

Associated Press White House correspondent Ron Fournier contributed to this report.

 

I'm sure there's a correction to be made..

 

that the NBC crew got to al Qaa Qaa on 4/10, yet there were stories talking about how we had that plant on April 4th

[Guest MikeSC]

BWA HA HA!

 

Watching you clutch for straws is great.

 

You don't actually have evidence, so you'll simply throw a mass of shit against the wall, expecting the words of Joshua to be better than ACTUAL evidence.

 

I almost wish I went to Daily Kos, to see how his plan to disprove the story that Kerry lied about meeting with Security Council members is going for him.

-=Mike

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

Nah.. I wanna know how that "breaking" security council story is going for the Washington Times.

 

Any dispute to the article that mentions US troops taking al Qa Qaa on April 4th, 2003?

[Guest MikeSC]

Nah.. I wanna know how that "breaking" security council story is going for the Washington Times.

 

Any dispute to the article that mentions US troops taking al Qa Qaa on April 4th, 2003?

The place was cleaned out before they got there.

 

Nothing else needs to be said nor will anything further be said.

 

Keep clutching for straws, though.

 

It's almost comical.

-=Mike

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

Nah.. I wanna know how that "breaking" security council story is going for the Washington Times.

 

Any dispute to the article that mentions US troops taking al Qa Qaa on April 4th, 2003?

The place was cleaned out before they got there.

 

Nothing else needs to be said nor will anything further be said.

 

Keep clutching for straws, though.

 

It's almost comical.

-=Mike

"Nothing to see here.. move along"

 

troops found thousands of 2-by-5-inch boxes, each containing three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.

Initial reports suggest the powder is an explosive, but tests are still being done, a senior U.S. official said. If confirmed, it would be consistent with what the Iraqis say is the plant's purpose, producing explosives and propellants.

 

no possible explosives were there

 

A Pentagon "official who monitors developments in Iraq" told the Associated Press today that "US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact."

 

these are not the explosives we are looking for.