Missing explosives [This kind of sucks]

[Snow]

Kerry continues to step into it. He's still stumping on this issue.

The developing kicker to this story is that 60 minutes was going to run with it on October 31 as a last minute bomb before the election. I bet they're happy the NYT beat them to the punch on this one

[RunningMn9]

Kerry continues to step into it. He's still stumping on this issue.

Will that matter if the corrections/updates are buried?

[Eco-Logic]

And so many people still don't believe the mainstream media is liberal.

Piff.

[LawBeefaroni]

And so many people still don't believe the mainstream media is liberal.

Piff.

Mainstream media is profit driven first, politically/morally driven second. "The media" is neither liberal nor conservative. It is greedy.

[noxiousdog]

And so many people still don't believe the mainstream media is liberal.

Piff.

Mainstream media is profit driven first, politically/morally driven second. "The media" is neither liberal nor conservative. It is greedy.

While I tend to agree with you, that doesn't explain Dan Rather or Tom Hayes.

[WAW]

This Pentagon official says they still there whenwe got there

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said 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. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

And 101st was not the first US unit there the 3rd ID was there a week before.

[WAW]

And so many people still don't believe the mainstream media is liberal.

Piff.

Mainstream media is profit driven first, politically/morally driven second. "The media" is neither liberal nor conservative. It is greedy.

And lazy. Don't forget lazy.

[noxiousdog]

This Pentagon official says they still there whenwe got there

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said 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. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

And 101st was not the first US unit there the 3rd ID was there a week before.

No, an anonymous pentagon official according to the AP, says that.

CNN says

The Pentagon said the Al Qaqaa facility was a "level 2" priority on a list of 500 sites to be searched and secured. U.S. officials say it was visited dozens of times by U.S. troops in the months following the invasion, and -- after searching 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings -- they never came upon the stockpile.

It also says

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.

Any munitions experts on board?

A senior administration official played down the importance of the missing explosives, describing them as dangerous material but "stuff you can buy anywhere."

So bottom line is the last inventory was taken January 2003. The invasion started March 19. By April 10th, we know they were gone.

We also know that it would take a minimum 20 truck convoy to move it, and a 20 truck convoy would definitely be a target of opportunity once the airspace is under control.

So which is more likely? Between Jan and March, or between March 19 and April 10?

[Snow]

The corporations owning "The media" might be profit driven, but I can assure you that you're hard pressed to find a Republican among the producers and reporters in most newsrooms

It's makes a difference in all sorts of little ways that add up. Personal bias affects what you're willing to believe and report on, affects the angle you use to approach a story and affects who gets the last word in a story.

Edit to add: It's true there a are lot of "lazy" media types out there. That's when bias comes into play even more. Hey, it's on the wire and confirms my anti-Bush position, it must be true! You'd be amazed how many "errors" get prograted by anonymous AP sources.

[triggercut]

Don't let some good reportage get in the way of Snow and Noxious doing their best Scott McClellan impersonations.

Come on, guys, you can do better than to expect us to buy into this stuff.

Yeah, RDX and HMX aren't dangerous, and you can buy 'em anywhere. Suuuure. Just yesterday, I was at WalMart picking up some laundry detergent, vacuum-cleaner bags, and high-yield explosives.

Look guys. The IAEA didn't call these explosives highly dangerous to "get back" at President Bush and mess with his reelection chances. They said it years beforehand. Ok?

Next up, this AP article, not sourced through *any* anonymous sources whatsoever.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/ ... ness01.htm

Guess that screws up the Republican-happy timeline, huh? UN Inspectors were at Qa Qaa on March 8. Not "January", as ND and the Presidents frantic disaster spinners want you to believe. Those explosives were "under seal" from January going forward. If the seals are intact on March 8, the material under them hasn't been tampered with. The seals were intact on March 8.

And also, we've got first-hand that the 101st and an NBC news crew *weren't* the first folks at Al Qa Qaa. Right there, in that AP article, you've got engineers from the 3ID talking on-record about their findings at AQQ.

What else you got? You current dog don't hunt lads.

[RunningMn9]

Uhhh, trig - I think we're going to need more than you simply saying that MSNBC and CNN are wrong here.

Come on, guys, you can do better than to expect us to buy into this stuff.

I believe that ND just asked a question - since he's not an explosives expert and would have no way of knowing the availability of this stuff.

Beyond that - the CNN article claims that the IAEA last inventoried the materials in January 2003. Not March 8. And IIRC, someone earlier posted a timeline (don't know if it was sourced) that said that the IAEA inspectors were booted on March 3.

Guess that screws up the Republican-happy timeline, huh? UN Inspectors were at Qa Qaa on March 8.

This is violating me "It's on the internet and it must be true" law. It doesn't screw up any Republican-happy timeline. It screws up the timeline that CNN is offering (or CNN is screwing up the timeline that globalsecurity.org is offering).

And also, we've got first-hand that the 101st and an NBC news crew *weren't* the first folks at Al Qa Qaa. Right there, in that AP article, you've got engineers from the 3ID talking on-record about their findings at AQQ.

Well, I suppose I'll have to read that article then.

I'm assuming that you are referring to the engineer talking about the 5cm by 12 cm vials of white powder?

Admittedly, I don't know what the hell those two explosives look like - but one part of that isn't adding up.

They claim that we lost 350 tons of this stuff, right. This engineer is claiming that they found "thousands" of boxes of vials of this powder. Each BOX is 5 cm x 12 cm. Even if we say that this shit is REALLY dense, and that 5 cm x 12 cm weighed 1 pound. That's 700,000 boxes of this crap?

Even if it weighs 5 pounds per box (which seems absurd to me) - that's nearly 150,000 of those boxes.

"Thousands" isn't the word I would use to describe that kind of quantity. Is it possible that the engineer is describing some of the other crap that we did find there?

[noxiousdog]

Thanks for your link (which I don't know how corresponds to the AP quote). It let me know that Al Qa Qaa is less than 80km (20 miles) from Baghdad, which means there weren't ground forces there until at least March 31, because the 50 mile Baghdad perimeter wasn't breached until then.

So, now your theory is that between March 31 and April 9, someone came in with 20 trucks (and the heavy machinery required to load this shit up) and got out without being noticed by the constant air patrols?

And you think we're the ones not using critical thinking?

[noxiousdog]

Trig, I'm either blind, or there's nothing on HDX/RDX in there.

[Exodor]

My take:

March, 2003 - IEA inspectors check the site, find the seals on the explosives intact, then leave the country prior to the US invasion

Sometime thereafter, the explosives disappear.

Whether that occurred before or after the invasion is a moot point to me - the point to me is those weapons were controlled and accounted for until we forced the inspectors out of the country.

How, exactly, can the current administration spin this as another other than a colossal screw-up? Sure, if they disappeared before our troops reached the site it's not quite as bad as if the explosives were simply left unguarded, but either way the loss of those explosives is a direct consequence of the decision to invade Iraq.[/img]

[noxiousdog]

My take:

March, 2003 - IEA inspectors check the site, find the seals on the explosives intact, then leave the country prior to the US invasion

Sometime thereafter, the explosives disappear.

Whether that occurred before or after the invasion is a moot point to me - the point to me is those weapons were controlled and accounted for until we forced the inspectors out of the country.

How, exactly, can the current administration spin this as another other than a colossal screw-up? Sure, if they disappeared before our troops reached the site it's not quite as bad as if the explosives were simply left unguarded, but either way the loss of those explosives is a direct consequence of the decision to invade Iraq.[/img]

Fair enough. Except that the only reason the inspectors were there were to enforce the UN resolutions. Had the invasion not occurred, the sanctions would have been lifted and therefore the inspectors would no longer be there either.

[Exodor]

Fair enough. Except that the only reason the inspectors were there were to enforce the UN resolutions. Had the invasion not occurred, the sanctions would have been lifted and therefore the inspectors would no longer be there either.

I ask because I really don't know - do you have any sort of timetable or evidence that the sanctions were going to be lifted?


I'm not an expect on UN/Iraq policy, but it was my impression that the sanctionns were pretty much a permanent state of affairs - at least until Saddam provided evidence of the destruction of his known WMD stocks.

UN veto power works both ways - if the Frenchies can stop us from gaining UN approval of the Iraq war, it seems to me that the US delegation could have stopped any more to lift the sanctions on Iraq.

[Defiant]

.

[Enough]

It's looking like CNN got burned by Drudge more and more on this one.

MSNBC today. Jim Miklaszewski reporting....

Following up on that story from last night, military officials tell NBC News that on April 10, 2003, when the Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne entered the Al QaQaa weapons facility, south of Baghdad, that those troops were actually on their way to Baghdad, that they were not actively involved in the search for any weapons, including the high explosives, HMX and RDX. The troops did observe stock piles of conventional weapons but no HMX or RDX. And because the Al Qaqaa facility is so huge, it's not clear that those troops from the 101st were actually anywhere near the bunkers that reportedly contained the HMX and RDX. Three months earlier, during an inspection of the Al Qaqaa compound, the International Atomic Energy Agency secured and sealed 350 metric tons of HMX and RDX. Then in March, shortly before the war began, the I.A.E.A. conducted another inspection and found that the HMX stockpile was still intact and still under seal. But inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound.

Pentagon officials say elements of the 101st airborne did conduct a thorough search of several facilities around the Al QaQaa compound for several weeks during the month of April in search of WMD. They found no WMD. And Pentagon officials say it's not clear at that time whether those other elements of the 101st actually searched the Al QaQaa compound.

Now, Pentagon officials say U.S. troops and members of the Iraq Survey Group did arrive at the Al QaQaa compound on May 27. And when they did, they found no HMX or RDX or any other weapons under seal at the time. Now, the Iraqi government is officially said that the high explosives were stolen by looters. Pentagon officials claim it's possible -- they're not sure, they say, but it's possible that Saddam Hussein himself ordered that these high explosives be removed and hidden before the war. What is clear is that the 350 metric tons of high explosives are still missing, and that the U.S. or Iraqi governments or international inspectors, for that matter, cannot say with any certainty where they are today.

I guess we know now why NBC didn't push this story as hard as CNN did. They may have known it didn't have a leg to stand on.

Edit, Oops ment to include this snippet too on the NBC embeds:

From an MSNBC interview of one of the producers from their news crew that visited al Qaqaa as embeds with the 101st Airborne, Second brigade on April 10th, 2003. IE this is the much talked about search in parts of this thread, on CNN and from the White House. But apparently it wasn't really a "search."

Amy Robach: And it's still unclear exactly when those explosives disappeared. Here to help shed some light on that question is Lai Ling. She was part of an NBC news crew that traveled to that facility with the 101st Airborne Division back in April of 2003. Lai Ling, can you set the stage for us? What was the situation like when you went into the area?

Lai Ling Jew: When we went into the area, we were actually leaving Karbala and we were initially heading to Baghdad with the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. The situation in Baghdad, the Third Infantry Division had taken over Baghdad and so they were trying to carve up the area that the 101st Airborne Division would be in charge of. Um, as a result, they had trouble figuring out who was going to take up what piece of Baghdad. They sent us over to this area in Iskanderia. We didn't know it as the Qaqaa facility at that point but when they did bring us over there we stayed there for quite a while. Almost, we stayed overnight, almost 24 hours. And we walked around, we saw the bunkers that had been bombed, and that exposed all of the ordinances that just lied dormant on the desert.

AR: Was there a search at all underway or was, did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?

LLJ: No. There wasn't a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was – at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.

AR: And there was no talk of securing the area after you left. There was no discussion of that?

LLJ: Not for the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. They were -- once they were in Baghdad, it was all about Baghdad, you know, and then they ended up moving north to Mosul. Once we left the area, that was the last that the brigade had anything to do with the area.

AR: Well, Lai Ling Jew, thank you so much for shedding some light into that situation. We appreciate it.

I saw this second one on Talking Points Memo originally, but both stories are being repeated across the blogosphere.

[Mr. Sparkle]

Here is Josh Marshall's summary

Here is a quote he takes from the LA times:

Given the size of the missing cache, it would have been difficult to relocate undetected before the invasion, when U.S. spy satellites were monitoring activity at sites suspected of concealing nuclear and biological weapons.

"You don't just move this stuff in the middle of the night," said a former U.S. intelligence official who worked in Baghdad.

Supposedly, it would have taken 40 trucks to move it from a site thought to house WMD's. Are you trying to tell me that they weren't watching every single vehicle that moved from there?

Josh's comments:

If we had seen something like that happening, it's hard to figure we wouldn't have bombed the convoy, since the US had complete air superiority through the entire campaign. And if the thought that WMD might be on those trucks had prevented such an attack, certainly there would have been running surveillance of where the stuff was going and where it ended up.

My point here is not to say that this could not have occurred. What I am trying to show is that Pentagon appointees like Di Rita don't seem to have any clear idea what happened to this stuff. And in an attempt to push back the story, they're cooking up various theories, most with very short half-lives, that just don't seem credible to a lot of folks who follow these issues.

The more they spin, the more they look incompetent.

[Poleaxe]

My take:

March, 2003 - IEA inspectors check the site, find the seals on the explosives intact, then leave the country prior to the US invasion

Sometime thereafter, the explosives disappear.

Whether that occurred before or after the invasion is a moot point to me - the point to me is those weapons were controlled and accounted for until we forced the inspectors out of the country.

How, exactly, can the current administration spin this as another other than a colossal screw-up? Sure, if they disappeared before our troops reached the site it's not quite as bad as if the explosives were simply left unguarded, but either way the loss of those explosives is a direct consequence of the decision to invade Iraq.[/img]

Inspectors would not have been in the country at all if not for American pressure. Yes inspections were taking place at the end but only when we had amassed an invasion force on the Iraq border. Were we supposed to keep those troops there in order to contain Saddam?

[Poleaxe]

The more they spin, the more they look incompetent.

And yet we should believe that in a nine day period looters made off with explosives that would fill a forty truck convoy? How many looters was it? Were they working in concert? Where did they store the stuff? If it was individual looters, how many pounds each did they get away with? How far away do these looters live from the facility?

[Enough]

Hey Poleaxe, after a few moments of surfing I wasn't able to pin down the date we started massing troops on the border, have a link? Or any idea? I had thought it was around February or Jan. of 2003 prior Bush's talk before the UN in March?

I do know that Saddam had caved by Sept. 2002, so I am assuming we were deploying prior to Sept and I am mistaken? Or were you referring to November when inspectors actually returned? Either way that would seem to be before we really got going with massing troops on his borders. And fwiw, I think getting inspectors back into Iraq was the single best accomplishment of Bush foreign policy, too bad he has sucked from my pov since.

Link

[Enough]

The more they spin, the more they look incompetent.

And yet we should believe that in a nine day period looters made off with explosives that would fill a forty truck convoy? How many looters was it? Were they working in concert? Where did they store the stuff? If it was individual looters, how many pounds each did they get away with? How far away do these looters live from the facility?

Umm you may want to read the stuff from MSNBC before you start going down that road...

[Poleaxe]

Hey Poleaxe, after a few moments of surfing I wasn't able to pin down the date we started massing troops on the border, have a link? Or any idea? I had thought it was around February or Jan. of 2003 prior Bush's talk before the UN in March?

I do know that Saddam had caved by Sept. 2002, so I am assuming we were deploying prior to Sept and I am mistaken? Or were you referring to November when inspectors actually returned? Either way that would seem to be before we really got going with massing troops on his borders. And fwiw, I think getting inspectors back into Iraq was the single best accomplishment of Bush foreign policy, too bad he has sucked from my pov since.

Link

But if you recall, the inspectors were not accomadated when they first returned to the country. They were not allowed to inspect some facilities. They were not allowed to do confidential interviews with Iraqi scientists. Other scientists the Iraqi govt. said had refused to meet with the inspectors. They could not take the scientists out of the country to do interviews. All of this changed when troops started showing up on the border.

I don't have citations right now because I'm about to start the evening commute. I'll come back after soccer practice and dinner.

[Defiant]

.

[Enough]

Thanks Nade, I will have time later to come back to this I hope but I have got to get a couple of data projects out to folks to finish my work day grrr.

[Meghan]

one point I want to reiterate, courtesy of Josh Micah.

While pointing out that the troops & reporters who visited the Al Ca Ca facility on April 10 didn't examine anything, they just passed through briefly. TPM goes on to say,

In any case, that visit wasn't the first time US troops went to the facility. That happened a week earlier, on April 4th, as was reported at the time. According to an AP account from the following day, the troops made spot visits to some of the buildings and found chemical warfare antidotes but no WMD.

The same report says they also found "thousands of five-centimetre by 12-centimetre boxes, each containing three vials of white powder" which were initially believed to be chemical agents but were later determined to be "explosives."

So.

1. The troops and reporters that NBC mentioned (and CNN keeps thump[ing) didn't stop to examine things and weren't the first troops there. And

2. The first troops there on 4/9/03 found lots of explosives.

Therefore - the explosives were not looted before the US troops arrived.

And yet, somehow, CNN keeps harping on the idea that NBC's original story was true even after NBC backed away from it. That darned librul media!

Link to original AP article about finding 'chemicals' at Al Qa Qa
Link to the Talking Point Memo post to which I'm refering

[WAW]

Iraq is about the size of California. The island of Tarawa is about 1 sq. mile. We used 35,000 men at Tarawa. We used 175,000 some odd troops in Iraq . It seems clear we have never had full control of the ground in Iraq.

[Defiant]

.

[RunningMn9]

The same report says they also found "thousands of five-centimetre by 12-centimetre boxes, each containing three vials of white powder" which were initially believed to be chemical agents but were later determined to be "explosives."

Meghan, this is something that I asked about earlier (don't know if anyone responded). 5 cm x 12 cm. We would have to be talking about HUNDREDS of thousands of these boxes. And that seems a strange way to describe that kind of quantity. That's like using "several" to describe 400.

Unless these 5 cm x 12 cm boxes weight like 45 lbs each.

The article says "explosives" - which everyone acknowledges was there after the invasion (and still is presumably if it hasn't been destroyed). If the article said that there were hundreds of thousands of vials of RDX (or whatever the acronym is) - then you could use this to definatively rebut the MSNBC/CNN articles.

And thus far, MSNBC was still going with their story as of 4 hours ago (don't know if that has changed since them).

I'm not trying to argue here to protect Bush. I'm trying to be somewhat critical here in evaluating conflicting reports. That's all. If the final result is that the goods were taken in April 2003 because we weren't watching the joint - then it's time to criticize. I'm fine with that.

I'd just like to know that digging up a year old newstory that seems to be questionable at this point is something more than partisan hackery being released (again) the week before an election.

What's next? Stories of Haliburton being given no-bid contracts?

[Poleaxe]

Hey Poleaxe, after a few moments of surfing I wasn't able to pin down the date we started massing troops on the border, have a link? Or any idea? I had thought it was around February or Jan. of 2003 prior Bush's talk before the UN in March?

Here's what I found:

Dec. 21, 2002 President Bush approves the deployment of U.S. troops to the Gulf region. By March an estimated 200,000 troops will be stationed there. British and Australian troops will join them over the coming months.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/iraqtimeline2.html

Here is a story from the BBC indicating that the troop build up was already starting in October of 2002.

On Jan 27, three months after inspections resumed, Blix made a report to the UN in which he was critical of Iraq's cooperation. (but Blix also wanted to continue inspections)

[Meghan]

Runningmn9 - may I call you RM9? - it took me three tries to get it right.

re "thousands" - "thousands" is a generality. Yesterday, Andrea Martin called the crowd in Philly "hundreds." We know that the crowd that in Philly was well over 100 thousand. So her estimate was off. So what.

So the inital estimate of the number of explosives was a maybe a bit low. 100 thousand is, in fact, thousands.

In short, I don't find it significant.

Re "explosives" - we know that there were tons of explosives in Al Qa Qa. We know they were there in 3/04. In 4/03 we get a report saying that our troops had found a whole bunch of explosives there.

Which is likely - that the explosives were the ones we knew about in March or that they were random other explosives unrelated to the stuff we knew was there.

In short, I find the worrying about the word "explosives" less persuasive than the worrying about the word "thousands.

re MSNBC - this was already answered by the earlier quote from Jim Miklaszewski (damn that name!!). He works for NBC but appearing on MSNBC he corrected the original story of the US troops finding no explosives on 4/10/03 by pointing out that
a) they weren't in fact the first troops there, as the original story had it, and
b) they didn't stop to look around, they just passed through and
c) earlier troops had seen the explosives (disagreement on the use of the word explosives noted)

According to TPM, this morning MSNBC intereviewed the producer from the news crew that was there on 4/10 and the producer said, no, they didn't inspect anything, it was just a "pit stop" and they moved on.

Whatever you might have seen on MSNBC (and heaven knows CNN is running the White House line) the original story of the explosives being gone when our troops got there for the first time on the 10th has been shown to be incorrect.

One might wonder why the original incorrect story still is in play. One might be tempted to make further snotty remarks about the liberal media.

To sum up:

The explosives were there on April 4th. Barring some new revelation that there were thousands of other random explosives in Al Qa Qa, I will continue to believe that the explosives are the ones the IAEA had been monitoring all along, the ones everyone knew were there in March, and that they disappeared sometime between 4/4 & 4/10 or possibly later - that is, long after the US troops had control of ther area (skipping lightly over the incompetance noted by WaW in the actual reduced numbers of troops present.)

Further, I do in fact think this news is relevant, seeing as it calls into question the judgement and capability of our current leadership, now up for reelection. And yes, ditto for the Haliburton sweetheart deals.

[RunningMn9]

The explosives were there on April 4th. Barring some new revelation that there were thousands of other random explosives in Al Qa Qa

Then let's deal just with this. Because the NBC corrections don't establish that the RDX was there on April 4th. At least not based on the articles that you and trig have linked. Not yet.

The high explosives in question weren't the only explosives at AQQ. That's the problem. Noting that we found "thousands" of vials of "explosives" does NOT necessarily mean that we found 350 tons of RDX (or whatever).

That's why I have a problem with the way that trig (and now you) are dismissing the contrary articles posted.

Now - it seems clear that we can conclude that the 101st airborne wasn't the first people there. Ok. We can also conclude that they didn't search the facilities. Fine.

But we have the Pentagon statement, which I think ND quoted which said that we had investigate the site over a period of time, and at NO time did we find the high explosives in question.

The problem here is that we did find other explosives there. And so we ask again, for any explosive experts in the house - do we know for a fact that the white powder in those "thousands" of very small vials is in fact RDX (or whatever).

If the answer is yes, then please link me to something establishing that, and I'll have no objection.

And just because - considering that the 5 cm x 12 cm box held three vials, we can presume that these are actually relatively small vials. If we get absurd, and we say that each vial weighs about 4 ounces. That's 2.8 MILLION vials.

That's still "technically" thousands, but it's an odd way of referrring to it.

And yes, you can call me RM9.

[noxiousdog]

Fair enough. Except that the only reason the inspectors were there were to enforce the UN resolutions. Had the invasion not occurred, the sanctions would have been lifted and therefore the inspectors would no longer be there either.

I ask because I really don't know - do you have any sort of timetable or evidence that the sanctions were going to be lifted?

It's mostly conjecture, but we know that:
1) Saddam was continued to be shipped arms post UN sanctions, so obviously not all countries (read: France, Russia, China) were playing along.
2) The Oil for Food program involved over a 100 billion in bribery and graft.
3) The widely spoken about French and Russian oil contracts were worthless with sanctions in place.
4) At the time there was plenty of rumbling that the only people suffering under Iraqi sanctions were the Iraqis. Certainly Saddam wasn't, and neither was the Ba'ath party.
5) The sanctions were put into place in order to -disarm- Saddam. When the weapons inspectors couldn't find WMD's and France, Russia, and China didn't seem to care they were missing (no evidence of destruction), there is no longer any need for sanctions, that weren't really doing their job in the first place. For instance, is there any country that is currently on a world embargo list? Maybe North Korea? Maybe? And they certainly aren't sitting on 200 (allegedly) billion barrels of oil.

[Poleaxe]

Here is an entry on RDX. It seems to be naturally chrystaline rather than granular. However, this part:

RDX forms the base for a number of common military explosives: Composition A (wax-coated, granular explosive consisting of RDX and plasticizing wax),

indicates that in one form it is granular, though it does not give a color.


This site indicates that HMX is also a crystalline solid.

[noxiousdog]

Good wrapup by Khepri on Captain's Quarters Blog

The 101st not searching is irrelevent. What is relevent is that 3ID was there and did condcut a thorough search of the complex. Reuters was embedded with 3ID at the time.

Initial careful readings of reports seem to indicate the some elements of 3ID were there searching through the complex for at least two days. Reports are unclear but these dates have allbeen mentioned in one report or another in connection with 3ID and Col. Peabody. April 3rd, April 4th, and April 5th. It seems they proceeded from there toward the airport which fell on the 6th or the 7th.

WaPo reported on the 5th that the previous days first discovery at the site was the three-in-a-box vilas of white powder. Followed by this, "This morning, however, investigators said initial tests indicated the
white powder was not a component of a chemical weapon. "On first analysis it does not appear to be a chemical that could be used in a chemical
weapons attack," Col. John Peabody, commander of the division's engineering brigade, told a Reuters reporter with his unit."

I've run numerous Google seraches and I cannot find any indication that HMX or any other explosive is ever stored in this "vial" manner. It is only ever in a vial for testing purposes it seems. If the IAEA had previously described the HMX/RDX being stored in this manner I'd like to see it.

Al Qaqaa was an explosives manufacturing facility so it's not an automatic that the "white powder" was an HE at all. At the time one British analyst went so far as to suggest that at that site it could even be rocket fuel.

The "tabun" was found at a second site west of the Al Qaqaa site. The CBS report indicates that pretty clearly.

The CBS report alsoincludes this;

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

It is no surprise at all the the 101st had no orders to search the place when HQ already knew the 3ID had gone over the place with a fine-toothed comb!

Being that a nuke would have been the ultimate WMD, I'm sure that IAEA tags would have attracted some attention.

Speaking of IAEA, this website:
http://www.vertic.org/onlinedatabase/un ... m?siteID=9
- seems to indicate that the last time IAEA-specific inspectors were at the site was March 01 and that it was only to verify activity. And that the last time IAEA-specfic inspectors went for the purpose to "verify dual use equipment" was Dec 25 2002! We know the HMX was/is considered dual use.

That needs to be looked at more carefully, IMO. By their own admissionduring the "last visit" they only saw seals for HMX and did not verify if the RDX was still there or not! A seal on a door does not tell me that beyond a doubt the material is inside. Especially in light of Oil-For-Food in their minds and the build up well underway during the mystery convoys into Syria.

On another note I thought it was interesting that the Iraqis claimed this went missing sometime after the 9th. And that the 101st was there on the 10th and never mention 38 truckloads of HE laying around. It seems even the Iraqi insider forgot about 3ID!

[Eco-Logic]

[noxiousdog]

Oh man, this just gets worse and worse.

ABC News Report:

The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.

But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over three tons of RDX were stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

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

The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.

[RunningMn9]

Why aren't triggercut and Meghan in here to address these turns of events?

How will I know what Josh Marshall is telling me to think about all of this?

[Enough]

Good wrapup by Khepri on Captain's Quarters Blog

The 101st not searching is irrelevent. What is relevent is that 3ID was there and did condcut a thorough search of the complex. Reuters was embedded with 3ID at the time.

Initial careful readings of reports seem to indicate the some elements of 3ID were there searching through the complex for at least two days. Reports are unclear but these dates have allbeen mentioned in one report or another in connection with 3ID and Col. Peabody. April 3rd, April 4th, and April 5th. It seems they proceeded from there toward the airport which fell on the 6th or the 7th.

WaPo reported on the 5th that the previous days first discovery at the site was the three-in-a-box vilas of white powder. Followed by this, "This morning, however, investigators said initial tests indicated the
white powder was not a component of a chemical weapon. "On first analysis it does not appear to be a chemical that could be used in a chemical
weapons attack," Col. John Peabody, commander of the division's engineering brigade, told a Reuters reporter with his unit."

I've run numerous Google seraches and I cannot find any indication that HMX or any other explosive is ever stored in this "vial" manner. It is only ever in a vial for testing purposes it seems. If the IAEA had previously described the HMX/RDX being stored in this manner I'd like to see it.

Al Qaqaa was an explosives manufacturing facility so it's not an automatic that the "white powder" was an HE at all. At the time one British analyst went so far as to suggest that at that site it could even be rocket fuel.

The "tabun" was found at a second site west of the Al Qaqaa site. The CBS report indicates that pretty clearly.

The CBS report alsoincludes this;

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

It is no surprise at all the the 101st had no orders to search the place when HQ already knew the 3ID had gone over the place with a fine-toothed comb!

Being that a nuke would have been the ultimate WMD, I'm sure that IAEA tags would have attracted some attention.

Speaking of IAEA, this website:
http://www.vertic.org/onlinedatabase/un ... m?siteID=9
- seems to indicate that the last time IAEA-specific inspectors were at the site was March 01 and that it was only to verify activity. And that the last time IAEA-specfic inspectors went for the purpose to "verify dual use equipment" was Dec 25 2002! We know the HMX was/is considered dual use.

That needs to be looked at more carefully, IMO. By their own admissionduring the "last visit" they only saw seals for HMX and did not verify if the RDX was still there or not! A seal on a door does not tell me that beyond a doubt the material is inside. Especially in light of Oil-For-Food in their minds and the build up well underway during the mystery convoys into Syria.

On another note I thought it was interesting that the Iraqis claimed this went missing sometime after the 9th. And that the 101st was there on the 10th and never mention 38 truckloads of HE laying around. It seems even the Iraqi insider forgot about 3ID!

Yeah, this story does keep changing, eh? Now this 3ID searched it theory you posted yesterday is dead in the water.

The first U.S. military unit to reach the site in Iraq where U.N. officials say 377 tons of high explosives are missing did not carry out a hunt for such material, the unit's commander said on Wednesday.

Col. Dave Perkins, then the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said the immediate concern when his troops reached the Al Qaqaa site on April 3, 2003, was to defeat a couple of hundred Iraqi troops who were firing from the compound as the Americans surged toward Baghdad [...]

Perkins also said it was "very highly improbable" that enemy forces could have trucked out such a huge amount of explosives in the weeks after U.S. forces first arrived there, considering the high level of U.S. military presence and how clogged the roads around the site were with U.S. convoys.

First U.S. Unit at Iraq Site Did Not Hunt Explosives

And we already knew that the 101st, who arrived at the facility after 3ID, also didn't do any searches. And of course now we have the ABC article that the amount of explosives there could have been considerably less. Which if true would be a relief, but this story still brings up the old issue of us not doing a good job protecting critical sites from looters following the downfall of Saddam (see the article in today's NYTs).

The one thing I will note is it seems the spin is out of control on this story. The Bush administration keeps running with whatever story and when it dies like the original NBC one they shift on to the next. Pretty curious behavior regardless of what happened. It's also odd that the military keeps contradicting the latest WH story. And given how the story continues to change day by day I am not convinced yet that the ABC report is even correct. We shall see.