The Command Post - 2004 US Presidential Election - "White House Downplays Missing Iraq Explosives"

October 26, 2004

Bush | "White House Downplays Missing Iraq Explosives"

WASHINGTON — The White House acknowledged Monday that nearly 380 tons of powerful explosives were missing from a weapons facility that American forces failed to guard after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, raising fears that the munitions could be given to militants or used for attacks against troops in Iraq…
Using the report to take the offensive Monday, Kerry tried to turn against Bush a key question the president has raised throughout the campaign: Which candidate is best suited to keep the country safe?

“The incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk and put this country at greater risk than we all need,” Kerry said. “George W. Bush has failed the essential test of any commander in chief, to keep America safe.”…

The timing of the theft was in dispute Monday. One Pentagon official said that when U.S. forces advancing toward Baghdad reached the Al Qaqaa military facility in early April 2003, the weapons cache was already gone. He suggested that the Americans had no chance to safeguard the material, which had been labeled and was being monitored by United Nations weapons inspectors.

“It had already been looted by the time U.S. forces went through there,” the senior Defense official said. “When the troops went in, they never saw anything that was tagged.”

Some cast doubt on the Pentagon’s claim. 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…

From Drudge:

But tonight, NBCNEWS reported: The 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were already missing back in April 10, 2003 — when U.S. troops arrived at the installation south of Baghdad!
An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

“The U.S. Army was at the site one day after the liberation and the weapons were already gone,” a top Republican blasted from Washington late Monday.

However, from this:

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

And, note that the April 10, 2003 visit by NBC was not the first time troops arrived at the facility, and that the facility has 87 or so buildings.

See “Are troops at tip of Iraq chemical weapon cache?” That describes a visit to al Qaqaa on Friday, April 4, 2003:

Closer to Baghdad, troops at Iraq’s largest military industrial complex found nerve agent antidotes, documents describing chemical warfare and a white powder that appeared to be used for explosives.
U.N. weapons inspectors went repeatedly to the vast al Qa Qaa complex - most recently on March 8 - but found nothing during spot visits to some of the 1,100 buildings at the site 25 miles south of Baghdad…

…[…troops find thousands of boxes with powder believed to be explosives…]

…For years, the al Qa Qaa site has raised the suspicions of weapons inspectors who believed the facilities could be converted for the production of missiles and chemical and nuclear weapons. It was visited repeatedly during the 1990s and during the last cycle of inspections - between Nov. 27 and March 17 - when U.N. experts went to the complex more than 10 times.

The NYT has more on the political ramifications and statements from administration officials in “Iraq Explosives Become Issue in Campaign”.

UPDATE: The oft-repeated phrase “the explosives weren’t there when troops arrived” could be correct. However, it’s also quite misleading, and perhaps intentionally so. That phrase does not acknowledge that the troops in question were not the first U.S. troops at the site.

The NBC reporter visited the site on April 10. However, another group of U.S. troops visited the site six days earlier, on April 4. And, those April 4 troops found “thousands of 2-inch by 5-inch boxes, each containing three vials of white powder.” The white powder was believed to be explosives. I included this information in the original post, but it bears repeating.

Note also this:

IAEA inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers, Fleming said. [U.N.] Inspectors visited the site again in March 2003, but didn’t view the explosives because the seals were not broken, she said.

UPDATE 2: On MSNBC today (October 26), the NBC Dateline producer (Lai Ling Jew) who arrived on the scene on April 10 was interviewed. A partial transcript is here:

Lai Ling Jew (LLJ): 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. 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. 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 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.

UPDATE 3: The AP report Embedded Reporter Saw No Explosives Search summarizes the transcript in Update 2.

Posted by Lonewacko at October 26, 2004 03:39 AM | TrackBack

Comments

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html
” According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.”
Now that statment is is talking about particular weapons.
“Are troops at tip of Iraq chemical weapon cache?”
And this is talking about what…
So this breaking news is pure bs..7 days and counting..and it wont be too soon…

Posted by: Rob_NC at October 26, 2004 08:57 AM

Another Kerry lie, shot down in Flames.

kerry mentioned this “ammo dump” on Oct 10.
A cnn report from cnn Jan24 2003, before the war even started, stated the UN was visiting this site everyday at the time, and there was NOTHING THERE, and when we got there on april 10,2003, there was NOTHING THERE, as another CNS reporter cofirms, who was imbedded with the Ist.

Kerry planned this media scam with CBS and the NYT, their big Oct. Suprize? It BLEW UP in their face!
This is also showing us how dirty the MSM is, it’s basicly coordinating with the KErry campaign, trying to sway an election. Kerry never fails to immediately trash the nation, and trash the troops.
How can any sane person vote for this idiot.

Further in regards to this terrible high explosive,
A key point is that this is not dense stuff, where you can get a lot of weight into a small vehicle. If this was really in its raw form, it is white powder, like cornstarch or a light powdered sugar (NOT granulated sugar). Blow on it and it flies in the breeze- the stories I’ve seen haven’t said much about what form it was in, but you would want it to be relatively raw so you could form it into main charges for artillery, etc. They don’t pour granules into shells, it is mixed with binders and melted sonit will take a shape. You can’t be a nice terrorist, happen by, stick some in your pocket, and run away while the US Army isn’t looking- it isn’t “plastic” (like, say, comp C4, which is a plastic matrix impregnated with HE, thus has a lot of filler to make it shapeable). The kinds of trucks you would need to haul it are like grain hoppers, and lots of them. You can’t stack it on pallets.

That is why the nonsense about vandals running off with the stuff is just that — nonsense.

The issue, as always with explosives, is not HE- it is how to get the stuff to blow up. You can hit compressed RDX or HMX with a hammer and not set it off. And you can properly detonate ammonium nitrate fertilizer, as was done at the Oklahoma City Federal building by McVeigh et al, and have a disaster. You can also detonate wheat dust in a rural grain elevator and re-create the bombing of the African embassies.

The reason that old artillery ammunition is desired for creation of IEDs is not that it has high explosive in it, it is because those rounds have fuzes, lead cups, and boosters- the full fire train needed to make HE go “boom”. Remember your fireplace- you need to start with a match, then crumpled newspaper, add twigs when they are roaring effectively, then sticks, then small branches, etc. Trying to do something useful with pure HMX or RDX is like trying to flick your BIC lighter at a 20 pound pure oak log. It will be a long time before you warm up. When I was waling around Holston Army Ammunition Plant one time, where the US manufactured its RDX and HMX, there were cloth laundry carts all over the place full of white powder that looked and felt like conrstarch. I wasn’t in the least worried that if I tripped and fell against the cart I would be blown up.

The only way you make those 40 trucks crammed full of HE blow up is to set off an explosion near them. The Saddam drivers carrying them all to Syria and elsewhere in mid-March were probably smoking as they drove, with relative safety. Raw HE is easy to find- what is a challenge is making it controllably useful.

Posted by: Nathan at October 26, 2004 02:08 PM

Nathan

If there is a CNN report on that date to that effect, it is incorrect. The IAEA confirmed in its 27 January 2003 report that there was 196 tons of HMX at this facility, as per the 2002 Iraqi declaration…which was around 35 tons less than the last time the IAEA had been able to check in the late 90’s.

The IAEA were in Iraq until two days before the war started in March, and had their eye on the place.

http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/SV/Invo/reports/s_2003_95.pdf (page 12)

Posted by: Ian at October 26, 2004 02:24 PM

So Nathan. Have you read the updates to this story? Still think that the “thousands of 2-inch by 5-inch boxes, each containing three vials of white powder … believed to be explosives” still wasn’t there when the troops visited on (or around) April 4.

Still think that Kerry conspired with NYTimes, CBS, IAEA, and the Iraqi Interim Government (!?!)?

Posted by: James at October 26, 2004 03:29 PM

hey, do we have new folks speaking for the left? How nice!!!

Yes, I think Kerry et al co ordinated this. There are three issues I have with the media: form, content and timing.

Form: NYT splashes something on page one in a huge font and then retracts on page b 27 in agate type.

Content: CBS relies on documents that were easily vetted to launch a smear campaign. The truth of the matter is never an issue for CBS. or in the reverse: how much press have the SBVT group received? X approaches zero, right?

Timing: CBS admits that they intended to wait on the ammo dump story to maximize damage to Bush. As Drudge points out: an October surprise generated by the MSM is not all that uncommon.

Looking at this in terms of form, content and timing it’s hard not to conclude that the MSM and the DNC are co operating quite well.

Posted by: skip at October 26, 2004 03:58 PM

James - Your last question - That’s inferring an awful lot there, even for you. I don’t think he mentioned anything about conspiring with the IAEA (despite the fact I SUSPECT the whole lot of them) or the ICG. Lower the shrill level a tad there, if you don’t mind.

So. Just for drill, let’s say that this stuff was REALLY there, and it REALLY got pilfered. Now for a moment, let us say that we actually believe the UN Inspectors who were in Iraq to VERIFY that SH disposed of the WMD that he had.

I say he had it (the WMD) James, and I say he had it because the UN Inspectors say he had it. It is now up to you to prove that he didn’t ever have it.

Or did. If I say he had it, it would appear that he ‘made it disappear’ just as easily as this 40+ Grainhopper full of ‘volatile (under the right conditions) chemical’ were made to disappear.

IAEA is already wearing plenty of egg on their French collared shirts for this one, so don’t make it any easier for them to recover, James. It just makes you look bad and them worse.

Posted by: Cap'n DOC at October 26, 2004 04:09 PM