I had forgotten to post the link. here it is 9and the article in TXT
format):
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html
Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived
NBC News says its crew was embedded with soldiers at time
Tuesday, October 26, 2004 Posted: 3:01 AM EDT (0701 GMT)
(CNN) -- The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of
powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new twist,
after a network embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion of
Iraq reported that the material had already vanished by the time
American troops arrived.
NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded with the
U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al Qaqaa
storage facility south of Baghdad.
While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional explosives, they
did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that
reportedly went missing, according to NBC.
The International Atomic Energy Agency revealed Monday that it had been
told two weeks ago by the Iraqi government that 380 tons of HMX and RDX
disappeared from Al Qaqaa after Saddam Hussein's government fell.
In a letter to the IAEA dated October 10, Iraq's director of planning,
Mohammed Abbas, said the material disappeared sometime after Saddam's
regime fell in April 2003, which he attributed to "the theft and looting
of the governmental installations due to lack of security."
Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. According to NBC, troops from the 101st
Airborne arrived the next day to find that the material was already gone.
Prior to the Iraq war, the high-grade explosives at Al Qaqaa had been
under the control of IAEA inspectors because the material could be used
as a component in a nuclear weapon, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming
said. IAEA and other U.N. inspectors left the country in March 2003
before the fighting began on March 19.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday that five days after
the IAEA received the letter from the Iraqi government, the agency
alerted U.S. officials in Vienna, who in turn told National Security
Director Condoleezza Rice. She then alerted Bush, McClellan said.
Once U.S. officials were alerted, the multinational force in Iraq and
the Iraq Survey Group, charged with hunting for weapons in Iraq, were
both ordered to investigate what was missing and the possible
circumstances, according to State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.
"We, from the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, did everything
we could to secure arms caches throughout the country," Ereli said. "But
given the number of arms and the number of caches and the extent of
militarization of Iraq, it was impossible to provide 100 percent
security for 100 percent of the sites, quite frankly."
The news of the missing explosives followed an IAEA report earlier this
month that said high-end, dual-use machinery that could be used in a
nuclear weapons program was missing from Iraq's nuclear facilities.
(Full story)
"Our immediate concern is that if the explosives did fall into the wrong
hands, they could be used to commit terrorist acts and some of the
bombings that we've seen," the IAEA's Fleming said.
She described Al Qaqaa as "massive" and said it is one of the most
well-known storage sites. Besides the explosives, it also held large
caches of artillery.
Fleming said the IAEA, which is based in Vienna, Austria, did not know
whether some of the explosives may have been used in past attacks.
The IAEA said that before the war it inspected the Al Qaqaa facility
multiple times and verified that the material was present in January
2003. The agency said the material was mentioned in reports to the U.N.
Security Council that were made public.
Ereli said coalition forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings
at the Al Qaqaa facility after the war for weapons of mass destruction.
The troops found none, but did see indications of looting, he said. Bush
declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003.
"Some explosive material at the time was discovered, although none of it
carried IAEA seals, and this discovery was reported to coalition forces
for removal of the material," Ereli said.
Ereli said coalition forces have cleared 10,033 weapons caches and
destroyed 243,000 tons of munitions. Another 162,898 tons of munitions
are at secure locations and awaiting destruction, he said.
A senior administration official played down the importance of the
missing explosives, describing them as dangerous material but "stuff you
can buy anywhere."
The official noted that the administration did not see this necessarily
as a "proliferation risk."
"In the grand scheme -- and on a grand scale -- there are hundreds of
tons of weapons, munitions, artillery, explosives that are unaccounted
for in Iraq," the official said.
"And like the Pentagon has said, there is really no way the U.S.
military could safeguard all of these weapons depots or find all of
these missing materials."
The official said the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Saddam had no
weapons of mass destruction and documented the scope of the problem.
Threat from terrorists
A European diplomat told The New York Times that Mohamed ElBaradei,
director general of the IAEA, is "extremely concerned" about the
potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.
"The immediate danger" of the lost stockpiles is its potential use by
insurgents to make small, but powerful, bombs, an expert told the Times.
The expert said the explosives could be transported easily across the
Middle East.
According to the Times, the stockpiles missing from Al Qaqaa are the
strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the globe.
The Iraqi letter to the IAEA identified the vanished explosives as
containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or "high melting point explosive,"
141.2 metric tons of RDX, or "rapid detonation explosive," among other
designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or "pentaerythritol
tetranitrate."
Fleming said the IAEA, whose mission is to keep track of everything with
potential nuclear weapons applications, had been monitoring about 100
sites in Iraq, but there were only a few of special concern, including
Al Qaqaa.
"This is a real massive quantity of explosives that could have reached
the hands of insurgents and could be used with deadly force and
consequences against people in Iraq," Fleming said.
"One would have to assume it's been stolen by someone who has some sort
of nefarious purpose for it."
Political fallout
With the U.S. presidential election eight days away, news of the missing
explosives quickly became campaign fodder.
Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry immediately seized on the information
to accuse President Bush of incompetence in failing to secure the
material, charging that "this is one of the great blunders of Iraq and
one of the great blunders of this administration."
But in the wake of the NBC report, the Bush campaign fired off a
statement saying that Kerry's criticism of the president over the
missing material has "been proven false before the day is over."
"John Kerry's attacks today were baseless," Bush campaign spokesman
Steve Schmidt said. "He said American troops did not secure the
explosives, when the explosives were already missing."
Schmidt also said that Kerry "neglects to mention the 400,000 tons of
weapons and explosives that are either destroyed or in the process of
being destroyed" in Iraq.
But Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart fired back with a statement of his
own, accusing the Bush campaign of "distorting" the NBC News report.
"In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of
highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately
flailing in an effort to escape blame," Lockhart said. "It is the latest
pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no
matter how disastrous."
Lockhart did not elaborate on how the Bush campaign was distorting the
NBC report.
CNN's Suzanne Malveaux and Elise Labott contributed to this report.
.
|
|
| User: "Jean Guernon" |
|
| Title: Re: Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived |
29 Oct 2004 08:58:54 AM |
|
|
It is the only thing you can say since you don't have the intellectual
honesty or capacity to discuss.
J.
Marvin The Paranoid Android a écrit:
And it was the usual verbal diarrhea you spew.
"Jean Guernon" <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:_W9gd.4093841$6p.682032@news.easynews.com...
You are the idiot here, and the turn coat lies post was replied to.
J.
Marvin The Paranoid Android a écrit:
"Paul" <smrstrauss@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1ac4db3e.0410271632.50f5adb7@posting.google.com...
Jean Guernon <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:<RTOfd.1930817$yk.320003@news.easynews.com>...
Paul a écrit:
abookoflife@yahoo.com (Michael Johnathan McDonald) wrote in message
news:<dd3256f0.0410261906.296c754c@posting.google.com>...
smrstrauss@aol.com (Paul) wrote in message
news:<1ac4db3e.0410261407.4cee5ba@posting.google.com>...
Jean Guernon <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:<Brpfd.3354402$ic1.341754@news.easynews.com>...
I had forgotten to post the link. here it is 9and the article in
TXT
format):
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html
Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived
NBC News says its crew was embedded with soldiers at time
Tuesday, October 26, 2004 Posted: 3:01 AM EDT (0701 GMT)
(CNN) -- The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of
powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new
twist,
after a network embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion
of
Iraq reported that the material had already vanished by the time
American troops arrived.
NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded
with
the
U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al
Qaqaa
storage facility south of Baghdad.
While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional explosives,
they
did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that
reportedly went missing, according to NBC.
The International Atomic Energy Agency revealed Monday that it had
been
told two weeks ago by the Iraqi government that 380 tons of HMX and
RDX
disappeared from Al Qaqaa after Saddam Hussein's government fell.
In a letter to the IAEA dated October 10, Iraq's director of
planning,
Mohammed Abbas, said the material disappeared sometime after
Saddam's
regime fell in April 2003, which he attributed to "the theft and
looting
of the governmental installations due to lack of security."
Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. According to NBC, troops from the
101st
Airborne arrived the next day to find that the material was already
gone.
Prior to the Iraq war, the high-grade explosives at Al Qaqaa had
been
under the control of IAEA inspectors because the material could be
used
as a component in a nuclear weapon, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa
Fleming
said. IAEA and other U.N. inspectors left the country in March 2003
before the fighting began on March 19.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday that five days
after
the IAEA received the letter from the Iraqi government, the agency
alerted U.S. officials in Vienna, who in turn told National
Security
Director Condoleezza Rice. She then alerted Bush, McClellan said.
Once U.S. officials were alerted, the multinational force in Iraq
and
the Iraq Survey Group, charged with hunting for weapons in Iraq,
were
both ordered to investigate what was missing and the possible
circumstances, according to State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.
"We, from the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, did
everything
we could to secure arms caches throughout the country," Ereli said.
"But
given the number of arms and the number of caches and the extent of
militarization of Iraq, it was impossible to provide 100 percent
security for 100 percent of the sites, quite frankly."
The news of the missing explosives followed an IAEA report earlier
this
month that said high-end, dual-use machinery that could be used in
a
nuclear weapons program was missing from Iraq's nuclear facilities.
(Full story)
"Our immediate concern is that if the explosives did fall into the
wrong
hands, they could be used to commit terrorist acts and some of the
bombings that we've seen," the IAEA's Fleming said.
She described Al Qaqaa as "massive" and said it is one of the most
well-known storage sites. Besides the explosives, it also held
large
caches of artillery.
Fleming said the IAEA, which is based in Vienna, Austria, did not
know
whether some of the explosives may have been used in past attacks.
The IAEA said that before the war it inspected the Al Qaqaa
facility
multiple times and verified that the material was present in
January
2003. The agency said the material was mentioned in reports to the
U.N.
Security Council that were made public.
Ereli said coalition forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other
buildings
at the Al Qaqaa facility after the war for weapons of mass
destruction.
The troops found none, but did see indications of looting, he said.
Bush
declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003.
"Some explosive material at the time was discovered, although none
of it
carried IAEA seals, and this discovery was reported to coalition
forces
for removal of the material," Ereli said.
Ereli said coalition forces have cleared 10,033 weapons caches and
destroyed 243,000 tons of munitions. Another 162,898 tons of
munitions
are at secure locations and awaiting destruction, he said.
A senior administration official played down the importance of the
missing explosives, describing them as dangerous material but
"stuff
you
can buy anywhere."
The official noted that the administration did not see this
necessarily
as a "proliferation risk."
"In the grand scheme -- and on a grand scale -- there are hundreds
of
tons of weapons, munitions, artillery, explosives that are
unaccounted
for in Iraq," the official said.
"And like the Pentagon has said, there is really no way the U.S.
military could safeguard all of these weapons depots or find all of
these missing materials."
The official said the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Saddam had
no
weapons of mass destruction and documented the scope of the
problem.
Threat from terrorists
A European diplomat told The New York Times that Mohamed ElBaradei,
director general of the IAEA, is "extremely concerned" about the
potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.
"The immediate danger" of the lost stockpiles is its potential use
by
insurgents to make small, but powerful, bombs, an expert told the
Times.
The expert said the explosives could be transported easily across
the
Middle East.
According to the Times, the stockpiles missing from Al Qaqaa are
the
strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the globe.
The Iraqi letter to the IAEA identified the vanished explosives as
containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or "high melting point
explosive,"
141.2 metric tons of RDX, or "rapid detonation explosive," among
other
designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or "pentaerythritol
tetranitrate."
Fleming said the IAEA, whose mission is to keep track of everything
with
potential nuclear weapons applications, had been monitoring about
100
sites in Iraq, but there were only a few of special concern,
including
Al Qaqaa.
"This is a real massive quantity of explosives that could have
reached
the hands of insurgents and could be used with deadly force and
consequences against people in Iraq," Fleming said.
"One would have to assume it's been stolen by someone who has some
sort
of nefarious purpose for it."
Political fallout
With the U.S. presidential election eight days away, news of the
missing
explosives quickly became campaign fodder.
Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry immediately seized on the
information
to accuse President Bush of incompetence in failing to secure the
material, charging that "this is one of the great blunders of Iraq
and
one of the great blunders of this administration."
But in the wake of the NBC report, the Bush campaign fired off a
statement saying that Kerry's criticism of the president over the
missing material has "been proven false before the day is over."
"John Kerry's attacks today were baseless," Bush campaign spokesman
Steve Schmidt said. "He said American troops did not secure the
explosives, when the explosives were already missing."
Schmidt also said that Kerry "neglects to mention the 400,000 tons
of
weapons and explosives that are either destroyed or in the process
of
being destroyed" in Iraq.
But Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart fired back with a statement
of
his
own, accusing the Bush campaign of "distorting" the NBC News
report.
"In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons
of
highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately
flailing in an effort to escape blame," Lockhart said. "It is the
latest
pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake,
no
matter how disastrous."
Lockhart did not elaborate on how the Bush campaign was distorting
the
NBC report.
CNN's Suzanne Malveaux and Elise Labott contributed to this report.
It seems to me that even if the explosives were taken before US
troops
arrived in Baghdad, then we still had the responsbility to launch an
investingation to find out what had happened to them. If we had done
that early in the days when we first arrived in Baghdad, we might
have
gotten some of them back. But apparently there was no investigation.
So either we failed to protect the explosives or we did not
investigate. A mistake either way.
No, the mistake is that you have not fully understood this but relied
on news sound-bytes. Here is a nice hint. Try reading the article
before you reply ;) Also try understanding what happened before the
war. What happened to Hanz ' the blithering' Blix? He is a dead man
politically at this point, don't ya think? Looks like he missed
400,380 tons of weapons and explosives that were banned, eh? The UN
is
seething that Bush ousted their little $11.4 billion business deal
with Saddam that included weapons that were on the ban list.
In addition, If Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the IAEA,
is "extremely concerned" then why didn't he tell Hanz Blix, eh? If he
did then why didn't Blix scream at the top of his lungs to the world
about this? You know this war brought out a lot of dirty laundry of
some players in this world, and it don't look good.
a) 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives recovered from all around
Iraq.
b) Satellite Photos of truck convoys moving out of Iraq into Syria.
The EU just gave Syria the green light make nuclear WMD (IMO)[see
relevant news].
c) IAEA taken responsibility of being shitheads (see above) by being
silent.
d) UN Oil for Food Program revelation just screwed up many alliances
with Europe and the US.
Many thanks. Good suggestion on reading the entire article. Here is
the full text of the Associated Press article: Tons of Missing
Explosives Have Experts Worrying What Else Is Circulating in Iraq
By William J. Kole Associated Press Writer
Published: Oct 26, 2004
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Revelations that nearly 400 tons of
conventional explosives have disappeared in Iraq have experts worrying
that other weapons might also be in jeopardy of falling into insurgent
or terrorist hands.
Even the State Department concedes it can't provide "100 percent
security for 100 percent of the sites." And by all accounts, Iraq is
studded with weapons depots - many in places where U.S.-led forces are
preoccupied by fierce fighting.
Troubling questions about which other weapons could be vulnerable to
looting have arisen since the U.N. nuclear agency's warning this week
that 377 tons of non-nuclear explosives vanished from the former
Al-Qaqaa military installation south of Baghdad.
International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said
Tuesday that the Iraqis have not told the IAEA about any other missing
materials since their Oct. 10 letter stating that the weapons vanished
from Al-Qaqaa as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of
security" sometime after coalition forces took control of the capital.
But she said the agency's chief Iraq inspector, Jacques Baute, "would
encourage more such reporting on what has happened to sites subject to
IAEA verification." IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei reported the
explosives' disappearance to the U.N. Security Council on Monday.
The missing explosives have become a hot issue in the final week of
the presidential campaign, with the White House stressing that the
U.S.-led coalition has destroyed hundreds of thousands of munitions
and the Kerry campaign calling the disappearance the latest in a
"tragic series of blunders."
"There was an utter lack of curiosity to follow up on what was
well-known to the U.N.," said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons
inspector.
"There was a systematic failure of the military, which overran the
country and left all these explosives behind without protecting its
rear," he said. "The military should have had the sense to either
secure high explosives and armaments or blow them up as they went
through."
The Al-Qaqaa explosives included HMX and RDX, key components in
plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in repeated
bomb attacks on the U.S.-led multinational force.
Among Iraq's known weapons depots is one near Khaldiya - about 50
miles west of the capital - where a suicide car bomber attacked a U.S.
convoy Monday, destroying at least two Humvees. Others have been
identified around Tikrit and near Karbala - places where U.S.-led
forces have battled insurgents and been targeted by car bombs.
Last week, a patrol from the 1st Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade
discovered a weapons cache at a large depot near Salman Pak, south of
Baghdad. The cache included 450 anti-tank mines, 300 grenades, 35
rocket-propelled grenades, as well as mortar shells and primers.
The Pentagon said U.S.-led forces who searched the Al-Qaqaa facility
after last year's invasion found some explosive material but that none
of it carried IAEA seals. The nuclear agency's inspectors had sealed
storage bunkers shortly before the war because HMX is a "dual use"
explosive that also can be used as an ignitor on a nuclear bomb.
"Our greatest concern from both a proliferation standpoint and from a
standpoint of danger to human beings was Al-Qaqaa," the IAEA's Fleming
said.
Weapons experts are questioning why Al-Qaqaa - once a key facility in
Saddam Hussein's effort to build a nuclear bomb - wasn't under 24-hour
guard.
The facility was considered "the pre-eminent site for high explosive
stockpiles," a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The explosives missing from Al-Qaqaa could produce hundreds of
thousands of bombs - more than enough to "fuel an insurgency literally
for years," said Shannon Kyle, a senior researcher at the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said coalition forces were present in
the vicinity of the site both during and after major combat
operations, which ended on May 1, 2003. He said they searched the
facility but found none of the explosives in question.
That raised the possibility the explosives disappeared before U.S.
soldiers could secure the site in the immediate aftermath of the
invasion.
However, some reports suggest otherwise.
Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology told the IAEA the explosives
disappeared sometime after coalition forces took control of Baghdad on
April 9, 2003.
An NBC News reporter embedded with a U.S. Army unit that seized the
Al-Qaqaa base the following day - April 10, 2003 - said Tuesday that
she saw no signs that the Americans searched for the powerful
explosives.
Reporter Lai Ling Jew, who accompanied the Army's 101st Airborne,
Second Brigade, said her news team stayed at the base for about 24
hours en route to the capital.
"There wasn't a search," she told MSNBC, an NBC cable news channel.
"The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. ... As far as
we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to
keep looters away."
On Monday night, NBC reported that its embedded crew said U.S. troops
did discover significant stockpiles of bombs, but no sign of the
missing HMX and RDX explosives.
The Pentagon would not say whether it had informed the IAEA at that
point that the conventional explosives were not where they were
supposed to be.
---
Notice that it says that the explosives may have been taken after we
got to Baghdad, or that we did not find them and have been removed
subsequently. If we failed to find them, or failed to protect the, or
failed to investigate to try to find out what happened to them--in any
case we messed up badly.
Liar. "NBC reported that its embedded crew said U.S. troops did
discover
significant stockpiles of bombs, but no sign of the missing HMX and RDX
explosives."
That Jew says that they didn't look is ludicrous. She just didn't see
them look, or else how could they know the regular explosive was there
and the missing stuff wasn't there.
She either didn't know or see all they did, or she willfully lies using
the parameters of the mission to make her hypothesis.
Either way, the UN should never have allowed Saddam to retain those two
(HMX RDX) components. It is unconscionable but despite objections
weasels in the UN had Saddam make up that it was used in cement
factories which was ludicrous by all accounts and by most of the
experts.
I would blame the UN for the whole mess.
And this is just a symptom of the situation. There are hundreds of
other ammunition dumps that Amb. Paul Bremmer says were never
adequately protected. I am well aware of the corruption at the UN and
I dislike it, and it is indeed possible that someone at the UN thought
to remind us of this situation now that an election is less than a
week away. But these motives do not change the facts. Moreover, the
explosives situation merely substantiates other mismanagement, such as
what General Zinni said about the preparations for war:
"In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a
minimum true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worse,
lying, incompetence and corruption; false rationales presented as a
justification, a flawed strategy, lack of planning, the unnecessary
alienation of our allies, the underestimation of the task, the
unnecessary distraction from real threats, and the unbearable strain
dumped on our overstretched military. All of these caused me," he
said, "to speak out, and I was called a traitor and a turncoat by
civilian Pentagon officials."
Zinni was retired since 2000, how would he know. Of course he is a turn
coat.
J.
And this is what the conservative Detroit News says about the Iraq
situation:
"The management of the conflict in Iraq is abysmal. The United States
went into Iraq without enough international support and brought too
few of our own troops to complete the job.
"In shorting the generals, in allowing political concerns to trump
military strategy, in assuming too much cooperation from the Iraqi
people, Bush allowed Iraq to become a hotbed of terrorism, the very
condition he struck to prevent. The messy result has allowed our
enemies to portray the United States as a villain, and use our role as
a rallying cry for terrorists elsewhere.
"There were too many poor calls, including disbanding the Iraqi army,
leaving the borders undefended and trusting shady Iraqi nationals, all
of which combined to turn what could have been a stunning liberation
into a still uncertain, nation-building morass. Iraq has stretched
America's military capabilities, strained friendships and will
hamstring future strikes against rogue regimes."
So the missing explosives is just another example on top of Zinni--who
you insist on calling a "turncoat," though it is an honorable thing to
criticize bungling when you see it, and on top of the mismanagement
noted by the Detroit News.
Can't wait to see the Village Idiot's reply to this ... nice post.
Thanks.
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|
|
|
| User: "Marvin The Paranoid Android" |
|
| Title: Re: Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived |
29 Oct 2004 01:47:03 PM |
|
|
How's this ...
***** You
***** you antisemite
Go wallow in your fartitude
Only in your terrorist dreams anti-semite
Now go drown yourself
Kiss my *****
Liar
Lies
*****
etc etc
So what you're saying is that you don't have the intellectual honesty or
capacity to discuss the threads that you typically finish with one of these
trademark comments ( which btw is about 99% of the threads you jump into )
??
Interesting Jean. Rarely have I seen you be this honest.
"Jean Guernon" <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:y0sgd.4143899$6p.690112@news.easynews.com...
It is the only thing you can say since you don't have the intellectual
honesty or capacity to discuss.
J.
Marvin The Paranoid Android a écrit:
And it was the usual verbal diarrhea you spew.
"Jean Guernon" <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:_W9gd.4093841$6p.682032@news.easynews.com...
You are the idiot here, and the turn coat lies post was replied to.
J.
Marvin The Paranoid Android a écrit:
"Paul" <smrstrauss@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1ac4db3e.0410271632.50f5adb7@posting.google.com...
Jean Guernon <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:<RTOfd.1930817$yk.320003@news.easynews.com>...
Paul a écrit:
abookoflife@yahoo.com (Michael Johnathan McDonald) wrote in message
news:<dd3256f0.0410261906.296c754c@posting.google.com>...
smrstrauss@aol.com (Paul) wrote in message
news:<1ac4db3e.0410261407.4cee5ba@posting.google.com>...
Jean Guernon <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:<Brpfd.3354402$ic1.341754@news.easynews.com>...
I had forgotten to post the link. here it is 9and the article in
TXT
format):
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html
Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived
NBC News says its crew was embedded with soldiers at time
Tuesday, October 26, 2004 Posted: 3:01 AM EDT (0701 GMT)
(CNN) -- The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of
powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new
twist,
after a network embedded with the U.S. military during the
invasion
of
Iraq reported that the material had already vanished by the time
American troops arrived.
NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded
with
the
U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al
Qaqaa
storage facility south of Baghdad.
While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional
explosives,
they
did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that
reportedly went missing, according to NBC.
The International Atomic Energy Agency revealed Monday that it
had
been
told two weeks ago by the Iraqi government that 380 tons of HMX
and
RDX
disappeared from Al Qaqaa after Saddam Hussein's government fell.
In a letter to the IAEA dated October 10, Iraq's director of
planning,
Mohammed Abbas, said the material disappeared sometime after
Saddam's
regime fell in April 2003, which he attributed to "the theft and
looting
of the governmental installations due to lack of security."
Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. According to NBC, troops from the
101st
Airborne arrived the next day to find that the material was
already
gone.
Prior to the Iraq war, the high-grade explosives at Al Qaqaa had
been
under the control of IAEA inspectors because the material could
be
used
as a component in a nuclear weapon, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa
Fleming
said. IAEA and other U.N. inspectors left the country in March
2003
before the fighting began on March 19.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday that five days
after
the IAEA received the letter from the Iraqi government, the
agency
alerted U.S. officials in Vienna, who in turn told National
Security
Director Condoleezza Rice. She then alerted Bush, McClellan said.
Once U.S. officials were alerted, the multinational force in Iraq
and
the Iraq Survey Group, charged with hunting for weapons in Iraq,
were
both ordered to investigate what was missing and the possible
circumstances, according to State Department spokesman Adam
Ereli.
"We, from the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, did
everything
we could to secure arms caches throughout the country," Ereli
said.
"But
given the number of arms and the number of caches and the extent
of
militarization of Iraq, it was impossible to provide 100 percent
security for 100 percent of the sites, quite frankly."
The news of the missing explosives followed an IAEA report
earlier
this
month that said high-end, dual-use machinery that could be used
in
a
nuclear weapons program was missing from Iraq's nuclear
facilities.
(Full story)
"Our immediate concern is that if the explosives did fall into
the
wrong
hands, they could be used to commit terrorist acts and some of
the
bombings that we've seen," the IAEA's Fleming said.
She described Al Qaqaa as "massive" and said it is one of the
most
well-known storage sites. Besides the explosives, it also held
large
caches of artillery.
Fleming said the IAEA, which is based in Vienna, Austria, did not
know
whether some of the explosives may have been used in past
attacks.
The IAEA said that before the war it inspected the Al Qaqaa
facility
multiple times and verified that the material was present in
January
2003. The agency said the material was mentioned in reports to
the
U.N.
Security Council that were made public.
Ereli said coalition forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other
buildings
at the Al Qaqaa facility after the war for weapons of mass
destruction.
The troops found none, but did see indications of looting, he
said.
Bush
declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1,
2003.
"Some explosive material at the time was discovered, although
none
of it
carried IAEA seals, and this discovery was reported to coalition
forces
for removal of the material," Ereli said.
Ereli said coalition forces have cleared 10,033 weapons caches
and
destroyed 243,000 tons of munitions. Another 162,898 tons of
munitions
are at secure locations and awaiting destruction, he said.
A senior administration official played down the importance of
the
missing explosives, describing them as dangerous material but
"stuff
you
can buy anywhere."
The official noted that the administration did not see this
necessarily
as a "proliferation risk."
"In the grand scheme -- and on a grand scale -- there are
hundreds
of
tons of weapons, munitions, artillery, explosives that are
unaccounted
for in Iraq," the official said.
"And like the Pentagon has said, there is really no way the U.S.
military could safeguard all of these weapons depots or find all
of
these missing materials."
The official said the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Saddam had
no
weapons of mass destruction and documented the scope of the
problem.
Threat from terrorists
A European diplomat told The New York Times that Mohamed
ElBaradei,
director general of the IAEA, is "extremely concerned" about the
potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.
"The immediate danger" of the lost stockpiles is its potential
use
by
insurgents to make small, but powerful, bombs, an expert told the
Times.
The expert said the explosives could be transported easily across
the
Middle East.
According to the Times, the stockpiles missing from Al Qaqaa are
the
strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the
globe.
The Iraqi letter to the IAEA identified the vanished explosives
as
containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or "high melting point
explosive,"
141.2 metric tons of RDX, or "rapid detonation explosive," among
other
designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or "pentaerythritol
tetranitrate."
Fleming said the IAEA, whose mission is to keep track of
everything
with
potential nuclear weapons applications, had been monitoring about
100
sites in Iraq, but there were only a few of special concern,
including
Al Qaqaa.
"This is a real massive quantity of explosives that could have
reached
the hands of insurgents and could be used with deadly force and
consequences against people in Iraq," Fleming said.
"One would have to assume it's been stolen by someone who has
some
sort
of nefarious purpose for it."
Political fallout
With the U.S. presidential election eight days away, news of the
missing
explosives quickly became campaign fodder.
Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry immediately seized on the
information
to accuse President Bush of incompetence in failing to secure the
material, charging that "this is one of the great blunders of
Iraq
and
one of the great blunders of this administration."
But in the wake of the NBC report, the Bush campaign fired off a
statement saying that Kerry's criticism of the president over the
missing material has "been proven false before the day is over."
"John Kerry's attacks today were baseless," Bush campaign
spokesman
Steve Schmidt said. "He said American troops did not secure the
explosives, when the explosives were already missing."
Schmidt also said that Kerry "neglects to mention the 400,000
tons
of
weapons and explosives that are either destroyed or in the
process
of
being destroyed" in Iraq.
But Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart fired back with a statement
of
his
own, accusing the Bush campaign of "distorting" the NBC News
report.
"In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380
tons
of
highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately
flailing in an effort to escape blame," Lockhart said. "It is the
latest
pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a
mistake,
no
matter how disastrous."
Lockhart did not elaborate on how the Bush campaign was
distorting
the
NBC report.
CNN's Suzanne Malveaux and Elise Labott contributed to this
report.
It seems to me that even if the explosives were taken before US
troops
arrived in Baghdad, then we still had the responsbility to launch
an
investingation to find out what had happened to them. If we had
done
that early in the days when we first arrived in Baghdad, we might
have
gotten some of them back. But apparently there was no
investigation.
So either we failed to protect the explosives or we did not
investigate. A mistake either way.
No, the mistake is that you have not fully understood this but
relied
on news sound-bytes. Here is a nice hint. Try reading the article
before you reply ;) Also try understanding what happened before the
war. What happened to Hanz ' the blithering' Blix? He is a dead man
politically at this point, don't ya think? Looks like he missed
400,380 tons of weapons and explosives that were banned, eh? The UN
is
seething that Bush ousted their little $11.4 billion business deal
with Saddam that included weapons that were on the ban list.
In addition, If Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the
IAEA,
is "extremely concerned" then why didn't he tell Hanz Blix, eh? If
he
did then why didn't Blix scream at the top of his lungs to the
world
about this? You know this war brought out a lot of dirty laundry of
some players in this world, and it don't look good.
a) 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives recovered from all
around
Iraq.
b) Satellite Photos of truck convoys moving out of Iraq into Syria.
The EU just gave Syria the green light make nuclear WMD (IMO)[see
relevant news].
c) IAEA taken responsibility of being shitheads (see above) by
being
silent.
d) UN Oil for Food Program revelation just screwed up many
alliances
with Europe and the US.
Many thanks. Good suggestion on reading the entire article. Here is
the full text of the Associated Press article: Tons of Missing
Explosives Have Experts Worrying What Else Is Circulating in Iraq
By William J. Kole Associated Press Writer
Published: Oct 26, 2004
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Revelations that nearly 400 tons of
conventional explosives have disappeared in Iraq have experts
worrying
that other weapons might also be in jeopardy of falling into
insurgent
or terrorist hands.
Even the State Department concedes it can't provide "100 percent
security for 100 percent of the sites." And by all accounts, Iraq is
studded with weapons depots - many in places where U.S.-led forces
are
preoccupied by fierce fighting.
Troubling questions about which other weapons could be vulnerable to
looting have arisen since the U.N. nuclear agency's warning this
week
that 377 tons of non-nuclear explosives vanished from the former
Al-Qaqaa military installation south of Baghdad.
International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said
Tuesday that the Iraqis have not told the IAEA about any other
missing
materials since their Oct. 10 letter stating that the weapons
vanished
from Al-Qaqaa as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of
security" sometime after coalition forces took control of the
capital.
But she said the agency's chief Iraq inspector, Jacques Baute,
"would
encourage more such reporting on what has happened to sites subject
to
IAEA verification." IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei reported the
explosives' disappearance to the U.N. Security Council on Monday.
The missing explosives have become a hot issue in the final week of
the presidential campaign, with the White House stressing that the
U.S.-led coalition has destroyed hundreds of thousands of munitions
and the Kerry campaign calling the disappearance the latest in a
"tragic series of blunders."
"There was an utter lack of curiosity to follow up on what was
well-known to the U.N.," said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons
inspector.
"There was a systematic failure of the military, which overran the
country and left all these explosives behind without protecting its
rear," he said. "The military should have had the sense to either
secure high explosives and armaments or blow them up as they went
through."
The Al-Qaqaa explosives included HMX and RDX, key components in
plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in repeated
bomb attacks on the U.S.-led multinational force.
Among Iraq's known weapons depots is one near Khaldiya - about 50
miles west of the capital - where a suicide car bomber attacked a
U.S.
convoy Monday, destroying at least two Humvees. Others have been
identified around Tikrit and near Karbala - places where U.S.-led
forces have battled insurgents and been targeted by car bombs.
Last week, a patrol from the 1st Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade
discovered a weapons cache at a large depot near Salman Pak, south
of
Baghdad. The cache included 450 anti-tank mines, 300 grenades, 35
rocket-propelled grenades, as well as mortar shells and primers.
The Pentagon said U.S.-led forces who searched the Al-Qaqaa facility
after last year's invasion found some explosive material but that
none
of it carried IAEA seals. The nuclear agency's inspectors had sealed
storage bunkers shortly before the war because HMX is a "dual use"
explosive that also can be used as an ignitor on a nuclear bomb.
"Our greatest concern from both a proliferation standpoint and from
a
standpoint of danger to human beings was Al-Qaqaa," the IAEA's
Fleming
said.
Weapons experts are questioning why Al-Qaqaa - once a key facility
in
Saddam Hussein's effort to build a nuclear bomb - wasn't under
24-hour
guard.
The facility was considered "the pre-eminent site for high explosive
stockpiles," a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
The explosives missing from Al-Qaqaa could produce hundreds of
thousands of bombs - more than enough to "fuel an insurgency
literally
for years," said Shannon Kyle, a senior researcher at the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said coalition forces were present
in
the vicinity of the site both during and after major combat
operations, which ended on May 1, 2003. He said they searched the
facility but found none of the explosives in question.
That raised the possibility the explosives disappeared before U.S.
soldiers could secure the site in the immediate aftermath of the
invasion.
However, some reports suggest otherwise.
Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology told the IAEA the
explosives
disappeared sometime after coalition forces took control of Baghdad
on
April 9, 2003.
An NBC News reporter embedded with a U.S. Army unit that seized the
Al-Qaqaa base the following day - April 10, 2003 - said Tuesday that
she saw no signs that the Americans searched for the powerful
explosives.
Reporter Lai Ling Jew, who accompanied the Army's 101st Airborne,
Second Brigade, said her news team stayed at the base for about 24
hours en route to the capital.
"There wasn't a search," she told MSNBC, an NBC cable news channel.
"The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. ... As far
as
we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to
keep looters away."
On Monday night, NBC reported that its embedded crew said U.S.
troops
did discover significant stockpiles of bombs, but no sign of the
missing HMX and RDX explosives.
The Pentagon would not say whether it had informed the IAEA at that
point that the conventional explosives were not where they were
supposed to be.
---
Notice that it says that the explosives may have been taken after we
got to Baghdad, or that we did not find them and have been removed
subsequently. If we failed to find them, or failed to protect the,
or
failed to investigate to try to find out what happened to them--in
any
case we messed up badly.
Liar. "NBC reported that its embedded crew said U.S. troops did
discover
significant stockpiles of bombs, but no sign of the missing HMX and
RDX
explosives."
That Jew says that they didn't look is ludicrous. She just didn't see
them look, or else how could they know the regular explosive was
there
and the missing stuff wasn't there.
She either didn't know or see all they did, or she willfully lies
using
the parameters of the mission to make her hypothesis.
Either way, the UN should never have allowed Saddam to retain those
two
(HMX RDX) components. It is unconscionable but despite objections
weasels in the UN had Saddam make up that it was used in cement
factories which was ludicrous by all accounts and by most of the
experts.
I would blame the UN for the whole mess.
And this is just a symptom of the situation. There are hundreds of
other ammunition dumps that Amb. Paul Bremmer says were never
adequately protected. I am well aware of the corruption at the UN
and
I dislike it, and it is indeed possible that someone at the UN
thought
to remind us of this situation now that an election is less than a
week away. But these motives do not change the facts. Moreover, the
explosives situation merely substantiates other mismanagement, such
as
what General Zinni said about the preparations for war:
"In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a
minimum true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worse,
lying, incompetence and corruption; false rationales presented as a
justification, a flawed strategy, lack of planning, the unnecessary
alienation of our allies, the underestimation of the task, the
unnecessary distraction from real threats, and the unbearable strain
dumped on our overstretched military. All of these caused me," he
said, "to speak out, and I was called a traitor and a turncoat by
civilian Pentagon officials."
Zinni was retired since 2000, how would he know. Of course he is a
turn
coat.
J.
And this is what the conservative Detroit News says about the Iraq
situation:
"The management of the conflict in Iraq is abysmal. The United States
went into Iraq without enough international support and brought too
few of our own troops to complete the job.
"In shorting the generals, in allowing political concerns to trump
military strategy, in assuming too much cooperation from the Iraqi
people, Bush allowed Iraq to become a hotbed of terrorism, the very
condition he struck to prevent. The messy result has allowed our
enemies to portray the United States as a villain, and use our role as
a rallying cry for terrorists elsewhere.
"There were too many poor calls, including disbanding the Iraqi army,
leaving the borders undefended and trusting shady Iraqi nationals, all
of which combined to turn what could have been a stunning liberation
into a still uncertain, nation-building morass. Iraq has stretched
America's military capabilities, strained friendships and will
hamstring future strikes against rogue regimes."
So the missing explosives is just another example on top of Zinni--who
you insist on calling a "turncoat," though it is an honorable thing to
criticize bungling when you see it, and on top of the mismanagement
noted by the Detroit News.
Can't wait to see the Village Idiot's reply to this ... nice post.
Thanks.
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|
| User: "Jean Guernon" |
|
| Title: Re: Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived |
29 Oct 2004 02:56:33 PM |
|
|
You demonstrate here that it is a matter of intellectual capacity you
lack most, although honesty may play a role.
Thank you very much.
J.
Marvin The Paranoid Android a écrit:
How's this ...
***** You
***** you antisemite
Go wallow in your fartitude
Only in your terrorist dreams anti-semite
Now go drown yourself
Kiss my *****
Liar
Lies
*****
etc etc
So what you're saying is that you don't have the intellectual honesty or
capacity to discuss the threads that you typically finish with one of these
trademark comments ( which btw is about 99% of the threads you jump into )
??
Interesting Jean. Rarely have I seen you be this honest.
"Jean Guernon" <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:y0sgd.4143899$6p.690112@news.easynews.com...
It is the only thing you can say since you don't have the intellectual
honesty or capacity to discuss.
J.
Marvin The Paranoid Android a écrit:
And it was the usual verbal diarrhea you spew.
"Jean Guernon" <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:_W9gd.4093841$6p.682032@news.easynews.com...
You are the idiot here, and the turn coat lies post was replied to.
J.
Marvin The Paranoid Android a écrit:
"Paul" <smrstrauss@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1ac4db3e.0410271632.50f5adb7@posting.google.com...
Jean Guernon <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:<RTOfd.1930817$yk.320003@news.easynews.com>...
Paul a écrit:
abookoflife@yahoo.com (Michael Johnathan McDonald) wrote in message
news:<dd3256f0.0410261906.296c754c@posting.google.com>...
smrstrauss@aol.com (Paul) wrote in message
news:<1ac4db3e.0410261407.4cee5ba@posting.google.com>...
Jean Guernon <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:<Brpfd.3354402$ic1.341754@news.easynews.com>...
I had forgotten to post the link. here it is 9and the article in
TXT
format):
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html
Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived
NBC News says its crew was embedded with soldiers at time
Tuesday, October 26, 2004 Posted: 3:01 AM EDT (0701 GMT)
(CNN) -- The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of
powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new
twist,
after a network embedded with the U.S. military during the
invasion
of
Iraq reported that the material had already vanished by the time
American troops arrived.
NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded
with
the
U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al
Qaqaa
storage facility south of Baghdad.
While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional
explosives,
they
did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that
reportedly went missing, according to NBC.
The International Atomic Energy Agency revealed Monday that it
had
been
told two weeks ago by the Iraqi government that 380 tons of HMX
and
RDX
disappeared from Al Qaqaa after Saddam Hussein's government fell.
In a letter to the IAEA dated October 10, Iraq's director of
planning,
Mohammed Abbas, said the material disappeared sometime after
Saddam's
regime fell in April 2003, which he attributed to "the theft and
looting
of the governmental installations due to lack of security."
Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. According to NBC, troops from the
101st
Airborne arrived the next day to find that the material was
already
gone.
Prior to the Iraq war, the high-grade explosives at Al Qaqaa had
been
under the control of IAEA inspectors because the material could
be
used
as a component in a nuclear weapon, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa
Fleming
said. IAEA and other U.N. inspectors left the country in March
2003
before the fighting began on March 19.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday that five days
after
the IAEA received the letter from the Iraqi government, the
agency
alerted U.S. officials in Vienna, who in turn told National
Security
Director Condoleezza Rice. She then alerted Bush, McClellan said.
Once U.S. officials were alerted, the multinational force in Iraq
and
the Iraq Survey Group, charged with hunting for weapons in Iraq,
were
both ordered to investigate what was missing and the possible
circumstances, according to State Department spokesman Adam
Ereli.
"We, from the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, did
everything
we could to secure arms caches throughout the country," Ereli
said.
"But
given the number of arms and the number of caches and the extent
of
militarization of Iraq, it was impossible to provide 100 percent
security for 100 percent of the sites, quite frankly."
The news of the missing explosives followed an IAEA report
earlier
this
month that said high-end, dual-use machinery that could be used
in
a
nuclear weapons program was missing from Iraq's nuclear
facilities.
(Full story)
"Our immediate concern is that if the explosives did fall into
the
wrong
hands, they could be used to commit terrorist acts and some of
the
bombings that we've seen," the IAEA's Fleming said.
She described Al Qaqaa as "massive" and said it is one of the
most
well-known storage sites. Besides the explosives, it also held
large
caches of artillery.
Fleming said the IAEA, which is based in Vienna, Austria, did not
know
whether some of the explosives may have been used in past
attacks.
The IAEA said that before the war it inspected the Al Qaqaa
facility
multiple times and verified that the material was present in
January
2003. The agency said the material was mentioned in reports to
the
U.N.
Security Council that were made public.
Ereli said coalition forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other
buildings
at the Al Qaqaa facility after the war for weapons of mass
destruction.
The troops found none, but did see indications of looting, he
said.
Bush
declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1,
2003.
"Some explosive material at the time was discovered, although
none
of it
carried IAEA seals, and this discovery was reported to coalition
forces
for removal of the material," Ereli said.
Ereli said coalition forces have cleared 10,033 weapons caches
and
destroyed 243,000 tons of munitions. Another 162,898 tons of
munitions
are at secure locations and awaiting destruction, he said.
A senior administration official played down the importance of
the
missing explosives, describing them as dangerous material but
"stuff
you
can buy anywhere."
The official noted that the administration did not see this
necessarily
as a "proliferation risk."
"In the grand scheme -- and on a grand scale -- there are
hundreds
of
tons of weapons, munitions, artillery, explosives that are
unaccounted
for in Iraq," the official said.
"And like the Pentagon has said, there is really no way the U.S.
military could safeguard all of these weapons depots or find all
of
these missing materials."
The official said the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Saddam had
no
weapons of mass destruction and documented the scope of the
problem.
Threat from terrorists
A European diplomat told The New York Times that Mohamed
ElBaradei,
director general of the IAEA, is "extremely concerned" about the
potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.
"The immediate danger" of the lost stockpiles is its potential
use
by
insurgents to make small, but powerful, bombs, an expert told the
Times.
The expert said the explosives could be transported easily across
the
Middle East.
According to the Times, the stockpiles missing from Al Qaqaa are
the
strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the
globe.
The Iraqi letter to the IAEA identified the vanished explosives
as
containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or "high melting point
explosive,"
141.2 metric tons of RDX, or "rapid detonation explosive," among
other
designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or "pentaerythritol
tetranitrate."
Fleming said the IAEA, whose mission is to keep track of
everything
with
potential nuclear weapons applications, had been monitoring about
100
sites in Iraq, but there were only a few of special concern,
including
Al Qaqaa.
"This is a real massive quantity of explosives that could have
reached
the hands of insurgents and could be used with deadly force and
consequences against people in Iraq," Fleming said.
"One would have to assume it's been stolen by someone who has
some
sort
of nefarious purpose for it."
Political fallout
With the U.S. presidential election eight days away, news of the
missing
explosives quickly became campaign fodder.
Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry immediately seized on the
information
to accuse President Bush of incompetence in failing to secure the
material, charging that "this is one of the great blunders of
Iraq
and
one of the great blunders of this administration."
But in the wake of the NBC report, the Bush campaign fired off a
statement saying that Kerry's criticism of the president over the
missing material has "been proven false before the day is over."
"John Kerry's attacks today were baseless," Bush campaign
spokesman
Steve Schmidt said. "He said American troops did not secure the
explosives, when the explosives were already missing."
Schmidt also said that Kerry "neglects to mention the 400,000
tons
of
weapons and explosives that are either destroyed or in the
process
of
being destroyed" in Iraq.
But Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart fired back with a statement
of
his
own, accusing the Bush campaign of "distorting" the NBC News
report.
"In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380
tons
of
highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately
flailing in an effort to escape blame," Lockhart said. "It is the
latest
pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a
mistake,
no
matter how disastrous."
Lockhart did not elaborate on how the Bush campaign was
distorting
the
NBC report.
CNN's Suzanne Malveaux and Elise Labott contributed to this
report.
It seems to me that even if the explosives were taken before US
troops
arrived in Baghdad, then we still had the responsbility to launch
an
investingation to find out what had happened to them. If we had
done
that early in the days when we first arrived in Baghdad, we might
have
gotten some of them back. But apparently there was no
investigation.
So either we failed to protect the explosives or we did not
investigate. A mistake either way.
No, the mistake is that you have not fully understood this but
relied
on news sound-bytes. Here is a nice hint. Try reading the article
before you reply ;) Also try understanding what happened before the
war. What happened to Hanz ' the blithering' Blix? He is a dead man
politically at this point, don't ya think? Looks like he missed
400,380 tons of weapons and explosives that were banned, eh? The UN
is
seething that Bush ousted their little $11.4 billion business deal
with Saddam that included weapons that were on the ban list.
In addition, If Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the
IAEA,
is "extremely concerned" then why didn't he tell Hanz Blix, eh? If
he
did then why didn't Blix scream at the top of his lungs to the
world
about this? You know this war brought out a lot of dirty laundry of
some players in this world, and it don't look good.
a) 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives recovered from all
around
Iraq.
b) Satellite Photos of truck convoys moving out of Iraq into Syria.
The EU just gave Syria the green light make nuclear WMD (IMO)[see
relevant news].
c) IAEA taken responsibility of being shitheads (see above) by
being
silent.
d) UN Oil for Food Program revelation just screwed up many
alliances
with Europe and the US.
Many thanks. Good suggestion on reading the entire article. Here is
the full text of the Associated Press article: Tons of Missing
Explosives Have Experts Worrying What Else Is Circulating in Iraq
By William J. Kole Associated Press Writer
Published: Oct 26, 2004
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Revelations that nearly 400 tons of
conventional explosives have disappeared in Iraq have experts
worrying
that other weapons might also be in jeopardy of falling into
insurgent
or terrorist hands.
Even the State Department concedes it can't provide "100 percent
security for 100 percent of the sites." And by all accounts, Iraq is
studded with weapons depots - many in places where U.S.-led forces
are
preoccupied by fierce fighting.
Troubling questions about which other weapons could be vulnerable to
looting have arisen since the U.N. nuclear agency's warning this
week
that 377 tons of non-nuclear explosives vanished from the former
Al-Qaqaa military installation south of Baghdad.
International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said
Tuesday that the Iraqis have not told the IAEA about any other
missing
materials since their Oct. 10 letter stating that the weapons
vanished
from Al-Qaqaa as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of
security" sometime after coalition forces took control of the
capital.
But she said the agency's chief Iraq inspector, Jacques Baute,
"would
encourage more such reporting on what has happened to sites subject
to
IAEA verification." IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei reported the
explosives' disappearance to the U.N. Security Council on Monday.
The missing explosives have become a hot issue in the final week of
the presidential campaign, with the White House stressing that the
U.S.-led coalition has destroyed hundreds of thousands of munitions
and the Kerry campaign calling the disappearance the latest in a
"tragic series of blunders."
"There was an utter lack of curiosity to follow up on what was
well-known to the U.N.," said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons
inspector.
"There was a systematic failure of the military, which overran the
country and left all these explosives behind without protecting its
rear," he said. "The military should have had the sense to either
secure high explosives and armaments or blow them up as they went
through."
The Al-Qaqaa explosives included HMX and RDX, key components in
plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in repeated
bomb attacks on the U.S.-led multinational force.
Among Iraq's known weapons depots is one near Khaldiya - about 50
miles west of the capital - where a suicide car bomber attacked a
U.S.
convoy Monday, destroying at least two Humvees. Others have been
identified around Tikrit and near Karbala - places where U.S.-led
forces have battled insurgents and been targeted by car bombs.
Last week, a patrol from the 1st Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade
discovered a weapons cache at a large depot near Salman Pak, south
of
Baghdad. The cache included 450 anti-tank mines, 300 grenades, 35
rocket-propelled grenades, as well as mortar shells and primers.
The Pentagon said U.S.-led forces who searched the Al-Qaqaa facility
after last year's invasion found some explosive material but that
none
of it carried IAEA seals. The nuclear agency's inspectors had sealed
storage bunkers shortly before the war because HMX is a "dual use"
explosive that also can be used as an ignitor on a nuclear bomb.
"Our greatest concern from both a proliferation standpoint and from
a
standpoint of danger to human beings was Al-Qaqaa," the IAEA's
Fleming
said.
Weapons experts are questioning why Al-Qaqaa - once a key facility
in
Saddam Hussein's effort to build a nuclear bomb - wasn't under
24-hour
guard.
The facility was considered "the pre-eminent site for high explosive
stockpiles," a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
The explosives missing from Al-Qaqaa could produce hundreds of
thousands of bombs - more than enough to "fuel an insurgency
literally
for years," said Shannon Kyle, a senior researcher at the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said coalition forces were present
in
the vicinity of the site both during and after major combat
operations, which ended on May 1, 2003. He said they searched the
facility but found none of the explosives in question.
That raised the possibility the explosives disappeared before U.S.
soldiers could secure the site in the immediate aftermath of the
invasion.
However, some reports suggest otherwise.
Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology told the IAEA the
explosives
disappeared sometime after coalition forces took control of Baghdad
on
April 9, 2003.
An NBC News reporter embedded with a U.S. Army unit that seized the
Al-Qaqaa base the following day - April 10, 2003 - said Tuesday that
she saw no signs that the Americans searched for the powerful
explosives.
Reporter Lai Ling Jew, who accompanied the Army's 101st Airborne,
Second Brigade, said her news team stayed at the base for about 24
hours en route to the capital.
"There wasn't a search," she told MSNBC, an NBC cable news channel.
"The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. ... As far
as
we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to
keep looters away."
On Monday night, NBC reported that its embedded crew said U.S.
troops
did discover significant stockpiles of bombs, but no sign of the
missing HMX and RDX explosives.
The Pentagon would not say whether it had informed the IAEA at that
point that the conventional explosives were not where they were
supposed to be.
---
Notice that it says that the explosives may have been taken after we
got to Baghdad, or that we did not find them and have been removed
subsequently. If we failed to find them, or failed to protect the,
or
failed to investigate to try to find out what happened to them--in
any
case we messed up badly.
Liar. "NBC reported that its embedded crew said U.S. troops did
discover
significant stockpiles of bombs, but no sign of the missing HMX and
RDX
explosives."
That Jew says that they didn't look is ludicrous. She just didn't see
them look, or else how could they know the regular explosive was
there
and the missing stuff wasn't there.
She either didn't know or see all they did, or she willfully lies
using
the parameters of the mission to make her hypothesis.
Either way, the UN should never have allowed Saddam to retain those
two
(HMX RDX) components. It is unconscionable but despite objections
weasels in the UN had Saddam make up that it was used in cement
factories which was ludicrous by all accounts and by most of the
experts.
I would blame the UN for the whole mess.
And this is just a symptom of the situation. There are hundreds of
other ammunition dumps that Amb. Paul Bremmer says were never
adequately protected. I am well aware of the corruption at the UN
and
I dislike it, and it is indeed possible that someone at the UN
thought
to remind us of this situation now that an election is less than a
week away. But these motives do not change the facts. Moreover, the
explosives situation merely substantiates other mismanagement, such
as
what General Zinni said about the preparations for war:
"In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a
minimum true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worse,
lying, incompetence and corruption; false rationales presented as a
justification, a flawed strategy, lack of planning, the unnecessary
alienation of our allies, the underestimation of the task, the
unnecessary distraction from real threats, and the unbearable strain
dumped on our overstretched military. All of these caused me," he
said, "to speak out, and I was called a traitor and a turncoat by
civilian Pentagon officials."
Zinni was retired since 2000, how would he know. Of course he is a
turn
coat.
J.
And this is what the conservative Detroit News says about the Iraq
situation:
"The management of the conflict in Iraq is abysmal. The United States
went into Iraq without enough international support and brought too
few of our own troops to complete the job.
"In shorting the generals, in allowing political concerns to trump
military strategy, in assuming too much cooperation from the Iraqi
people, Bush allowed Iraq to become a hotbed of terrorism, the very
condition he struck to prevent. The messy result has allowed our
enemies to portray the United States as a villain, and use our role as
a rallying cry for terrorists elsewhere.
"There were too many poor calls, including disbanding the Iraqi army,
leaving the borders undefended and trusting shady Iraqi nationals, all
of which combined to turn what could have been a stunning liberation
into a still uncertain, nation-building morass. Iraq has stretched
America's military capabilities, strained friendships and will
hamstring future strikes against rogue regimes."
So the missing explosives is just another example on top of Zinni--who
you insist on calling a "turncoat," though it is an honorable thing to
criticize bungling when you see it, and on top of the mismanagement
noted by the Detroit News.
Can't wait to see the Village Idiot's reply to this ... nice post.
Thanks.
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| User: "Michael Johnathan McDonald" |
|
| Title: Re: Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived |
29 Oct 2004 01:57:47 PM |
|
|
Jean Guernon <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message news:<y0sgd.4143899$6p.690112@news.easynews.com>...
It is the only thing you can say since you don't have the intellectual
honesty or capacity to discuss.
lol.
J.
Marvin The Paranoid Android a écrit:
And it was the usual verbal diarrhea you spew.
The terrorist supporting tard has a hard time expressing herself ;)
.
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| User: "Jean Guernon" |
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| Title: Re: Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived |
28 Oct 2004 11:21:26 AM |
|
|
Paul a écrit:
Jean Guernon <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message news:<RTOfd.1930817$yk.320003@news.easynews.com>...
Paul a écrit:
abookoflife@yahoo.com (Michael Johnathan McDonald) wrote in message news:<dd3256f0.0410261906.296c754c@posting.google.com>...
smrstrauss@aol.com (Paul) wrote in message news:<1ac4db3e.0410261407.4cee5ba@posting.google.com>...
Jean Guernon <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message news:<Brpfd.3354402$ic1.341754@news.easynews.com>...
I had forgotten to post the link. here it is 9and the article in TXT
format):
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html
Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived
NBC News says its crew was embedded with soldiers at time
Tuesday, October 26, 2004 Posted: 3:01 AM EDT (0701 GMT)
(CNN) -- The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of
powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new twist,
after a network embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion of
Iraq reported that the material had already vanished by the time
American troops arrived.
NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded with the
U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al Qaqaa
storage facility south of Baghdad.
While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional explosives, they
did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that
reportedly went missing, according to NBC.
The International Atomic Energy Agency revealed Monday that it had been
told two weeks ago by the Iraqi government that 380 tons of HMX and RDX
disappeared from Al Qaqaa after Saddam Hussein's government fell.
In a letter to the IAEA dated October 10, Iraq's director of planning,
Mohammed Abbas, said the material disappeared sometime after Saddam's
regime fell in April 2003, which he attributed to "the theft and looting
of the governmental installations due to lack of security."
Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. According to NBC, troops from the 101st
Airborne arrived the next day to find that the material was already gone.
Prior to the Iraq war, the high-grade explosives at Al Qaqaa had been
under the control of IAEA inspectors because the material could be used
as a component in a nuclear weapon, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming
said. IAEA and other U.N. inspectors left the country in March 2003
before the fighting began on March 19.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday that five days after
the IAEA received the letter from the Iraqi government, the agency
alerted U.S. officials in Vienna, who in turn told National Security
Director Condoleezza Rice. She then alerted Bush, McClellan said.
Once U.S. officials were alerted, the multinational force in Iraq and
the Iraq Survey Group, charged with hunting for weapons in Iraq, were
both ordered to investigate what was missing and the possible
circumstances, according to State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.
"We, from the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, did everything
we could to secure arms caches throughout the country," Ereli said. "But
given the number of arms and the number of caches and the extent of
militarization of Iraq, it was impossible to provide 100 percent
security for 100 percent of the sites, quite frankly."
The news of the missing explosives followed an IAEA report earlier this
month that said high-end, dual-use machinery that could be used in a
nuclear weapons program was missing from Iraq's nuclear facilities.
(Full story)
"Our immediate concern is that if the explosives did fall into the wrong
hands, they could be used to commit terrorist acts and some of the
bombings that we've seen," the IAEA's Fleming said.
She described Al Qaqaa as "massive" and said it is one of the most
well-known storage sites. Besides the explosives, it also held large
caches of artillery.
Fleming said the IAEA, which is based in Vienna, Austria, did not know
whether some of the explosives may have been used in past attacks.
The IAEA said that before the war it inspected the Al Qaqaa facility
multiple times and verified that the material was present in January
2003. The agency said the material was mentioned in reports to the U.N.
Security Council that were made public.
Ereli said coalition forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings
at the Al Qaqaa facility after the war for weapons of mass destruction.
The troops found none, but did see indications of looting, he said. Bush
declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003.
"Some explosive material at the time was discovered, although none of it
carried IAEA seals, and this discovery was reported to coalition forces
for removal of the material," Ereli said.
Ereli said coalition forces have cleared 10,033 weapons caches and
destroyed 243,000 tons of munitions. Another 162,898 tons of munitions
are at secure locations and awaiting destruction, he said.
A senior administration official played down the importance of the
missing explosives, describing them as dangerous material but "stuff you
can buy anywhere."
The official noted that the administration did not see this necessarily
as a "proliferation risk."
"In the grand scheme -- and on a grand scale -- there are hundreds of
tons of weapons, munitions, artillery, explosives that are unaccounted
for in Iraq," the official said.
"And like the Pentagon has said, there is really no way the U.S.
military could safeguard all of these weapons depots or find all of
these missing materials."
The official said the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Saddam had no
weapons of mass destruction and documented the scope of the problem.
Threat from terrorists
A European diplomat told The New York Times that Mohamed ElBaradei,
director general of the IAEA, is "extremely concerned" about the
potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.
"The immediate danger" of the lost stockpiles is its potential use by
insurgents to make small, but powerful, bombs, an expert told the Times.
The expert said the explosives could be transported easily across the
Middle East.
According to the Times, the stockpiles missing from Al Qaqaa are the
strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the globe.
The Iraqi letter to the IAEA identified the vanished explosives as
containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or "high melting point explosive,"
141.2 metric tons of RDX, or "rapid detonation explosive," among other
designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or "pentaerythritol
tetranitrate."
Fleming said the IAEA, whose mission is to keep track of everything with
potential nuclear weapons applications, had been monitoring about 100
sites in Iraq, but there were only a few of special concern, including
Al Qaqaa.
"This is a real massive quantity of explosives that could have reached
the hands of insurgents and could be used with deadly force and
consequences against people in Iraq," Fleming said.
"One would have to assume it's been stolen by someone who has some sort
of nefarious purpose for it."
Political fallout
With the U.S. presidential election eight days away, news of the missing
explosives quickly became campaign fodder.
Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry immediately seized on the information
to accuse President Bush of incompetence in failing to secure the
material, charging that "this is one of the great blunders of Iraq and
one of the great blunders of this administration."
But in the wake of the NBC report, the Bush campaign fired off a
statement saying that Kerry's criticism of the president over the
missing material has "been proven false before the day is over."
"John Kerry's attacks today were baseless," Bush campaign spokesman
Steve Schmidt said. "He said American troops did not secure the
explosives, when the explosives were already missing."
Schmidt also said that Kerry "neglects to mention the 400,000 tons of
weapons and explosives that are either destroyed or in the process of
being destroyed" in Iraq.
But Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart fired back with a statement of his
own, accusing the Bush campaign of "distorting" the NBC News report.
"In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of
highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately
flailing in an effort to escape blame," Lockhart said. "It is the latest
pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no
matter how disastrous."
Lockhart did not elaborate on how the Bush campaign was distorting the
NBC report | |
