The Command Post - 2004 US Presidential Election - Munitions Issue Dwarfs the Big Picture

October 29, 2004

| Munitions Issue Dwarfs the Big Picture

The Washington Post offers some main stream media perspective on the 377 tons of Iraqi explosives reported to have gone missing:

U.S. military commanders estimated last fall that Iraqi military sites contained 650,000 to 1 million tons of explosives, artillery shells, aviation bombs and other ammunition. The Bush administration cited official figures this week showing about 400,000 tons destroyed or in the process of being eliminated. That leaves the whereabouts of more than 250,000 tons unknown.

Against that background, this week’s assertions by Sen. John F. Kerry’s campaign about the few hundred tons said to have vanished from Iraq’s Qaqaa facility have struck some defense experts as exaggerated.

“There is something truly absurd about focusing on 377 tons of rather ordinary explosives, regardless of what actually happened at al Qaqaa,” Anthony H. Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in an assessment yesterday. “The munitions at al Qaqaa were at most around 0.06 percent of the total.”

[. . .]

Although invading U.S. forces never secured the facility, defense officials have disputed the notion that such a large quantity of explosives could have been transported without notice by the U.S. military.

Bolstering the possibility that the munitions were removed before U.S. troops arrived, defense officials say, is the Hussein government’s history of moving weapons to elude air attack. An official also said intelligence photos show lots of activity at Qaqaa before U.S. forces reached the site.

Posted by Dan Spencer at October 29, 2004 03:35 PM | TrackBack

Comments

On the one hand it really appears that Kerry is clutching at straws.

On the other hand, four fingers and a thumb.

Posted by: skip at October 29, 2004 03:59 PM

OK, so where’s the remaining 99.94% of Iraq’s arsenal?

Who’s got those thousands and thousands of pounds of war materiel, perhaps including nuclear equipment?

I guess we’ll have to wait until 2005 for the constant media scrutiny of that issue as well as the books and the leaks…

Posted by: Lonewacko at October 29, 2004 08:00 PM

Actually; there is footage of American soldiers inspecting the site after the fall of Baghdad, filled with high explosives of all sorts. Bush screwed up. 200,000 troops weren’t enough to control Iraq in ‘91, 40,000 troops weren’t enough to control Iraq in ‘03.

Posted by: redSun at October 29, 2004 09:28 PM

redSun - So Bush ‘screwed up’. Took on what was once the 4th largest standing army in the world, a country that had fired missiles into 5 neighboring countries, gassed the Kurds, the Iranians, and the Marsh Arabs, admitted to possessing tabun, sarin, mustard agents, aflatoxin, VX and anthrax, took their capital in 3 weeks and, after 18 months, we’ve suffered 1000 dead?

By modern standards, what has been achieved is nothing short of miraculous. No, it wasn’t pretty and I’m sure Kerry with his Outer Limits brain could have taken the capital in 3 days with NO CASUALTIES, but you have to remember, he’s a higher life form than the rest of us. Yeah, we crushed a brutal regime, dismantled a base for such Boy Scouts as Abu Nidal, but we forgot to pick your dry cleaning on the way. WHaaaaaaa!!

Personally, I’m sick to death of twits 2nd guessing the American military. Prior to 2003 you couldn’t spell Bradley, but now you’re all tiny Longstreets, with your little maps and smug total knowledge of all things military bursting from your iPods. Save it for your next Texas hold-em dorm marathon. We all know what you did in the war, daddy. nothing.

Posted by: torpedo_eight at October 29, 2004 09:49 PM

..RS your numbers are a tad off..but thats ok we understand..even the professionals at IAEA cant seem to get the numbers right..could be something in the water seems the UN has the same problem with accounting…

Posted by: Rob_NC at October 29, 2004 10:19 PM

Defense Enterprise Fund (DEF) was a program to convert former Russian producers of weapons of mass destruction. DEF was financed with $67M of US public funds. It was a venture capital fund that was supposed to bring profit to the US Treasury.

According to the Department of Defense Audit, DEF spent half of its grant on itself. The auditors noted that this was twenty five times the industry average. The auditors listed $2.2M of “unallowable” expenses, such as $100K golf club fees.

As far as DEF’s investment portfolio of $30M, $20M disappeared from it under very suspicious circumstances. DEF was closed as of the end of 2003, its mission not accomplished at all.

When Vector Plant of Novossibirsk, the Soviet Army’s prime facility for producing militarized anthrax and smallpox spores, asked for just $1M to convert itself, DEF did not have the money.

Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA�) is DEF’s program supervisor and it maintained a DEF-related webpage. This page used to state that the number of former Soviet WMD scientists converted by DEF to peaceful pursuits was 3370. When a reporter called DTRA, DTRA reduced this figure to 1250 overnight. But the real figure could not be more than 200 Russian scientists, and even this is a very generous estimate.

The $67M WMD conversion program is destroyed, stolen outright, and yet the guilty were not punished because they are Bush’s supporters.

On February 11, 2004 President Bush gave a speech at the National Defense University. Here is what he said:

In 1991, Congress passed the Nunn-Lugar legislation. Senator Lugar had a clear vision, along with Senator Nunn, about what to do with the old Soviet Union. Under this program, we’re helping former Soviet states find productive employment for former weapons scientists. We’re dismantling, destroying and securing weapons and materials left over from the Soviet WMD arsenal. We have more work to do there.

Indeed. We do have more work to do there. But not with this President.

Relevant documents are here: http://nunn-lugar.com/def/
A more complete description is here: http://nunn-lugar.com/def/articles/1.shtml

Matthew Maly
US citizen living in Kiev, Ukraine
http://matthew-maly.ru

Posted by: MatthewMaly at October 30, 2004 05:19 AM

MathewMaly And this has what to do with KAKA?

Worn me next time, will ya?

Posted by: Cap'n DOC at October 30, 2004 08:03 AM

Torpedo_eight.

I love phrases like “Took on what was once* the 4th largest standing army…” In other words took on paper tiger who *once had teeth. And I have to wonder where Torpedo_eight was when Pres. Reagan was calling Hussein “an important ally who’s getting a bum rap from human rights organizations,” as Hussein was busy using his WMD, which he created with US supplied chemicals. (Talk about appeasement! That takes the cake.) And by the way, nobody is 2nd guessing the military. It’s the incompetent politicians we’re 2nd guessing — no, make that 1st guessing, because many of us predicted the chaos we now see in Iraq. Please don’t make excuses. Leaving explosives unguarded in war time is stupid. That’s a no-brainer. And it’s irresponsible. And it helps the terrorists who killed a friend of mine. Bush isn’t a soldier, he’s a chickenhawk. That’s why so many retired Generals and Admirals (more of those 1st guessers) have endored Kerry.

Posted by: MiguelM at October 30, 2004 10:39 PM