NBC: Explosives Vanished Before Troops Arrived

Drudge is now reporting that the "News of missing explosives in Iraq -- first reported in April 2003 -- was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode..."

Was this the Democrats' October Surprise? Wow. There were over 400,000 tons of explosives in Iraq. Even if the story would have been true, the amount missing would have been only about 0.1%

I hope the NYT/CBS fraud is exposed all over the news tonight. The only thing missing is the connection to the Kerry campaign.

 

Maybe, the thing to do, is get thinking about what went wrong, and why so many sites that should have been secured, like this one, were not secured until it was too late.

Instead of blaming the administration for failure, hopefully, someone is applying "lessons learned" to this fiasco, which seems to have provided terrorists with a large amount of high-grade explosives.

I'd like to kick Bush for this and many other things, but maybe the point is to learn from it and prevent the same thing from happening in the future.

 

As one person said, Kerry seems to be saying we should have gone in earlier. The weapons were there in January before the troops went in, gone in April when the troops got there. If only we had gone in January instead of April, we would still have them. We just didn't act soon enough.

And Kerry knows that these explosives were not there when the troops got there. He was hoping people would be too stupid to know that and that the mainstream media wouldn't point that out.

 

We don't know exactly when these explosives were removed except that they were removed before we got to the place. And we got there rather quickly but the way there was not exactly like a Sunday drive.

With this the Kerry campaign looks desperate. I think they see a major defeat coming.

 

According to a 2003 CNN story the site was a supposed WMD site.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/01/24/sprj.irq.inspections/index.html

If somebody took off with 380 tons of explosives, they clearly had a change to remove the WMDs as well.

This might just help Bush (once the bloggers fact check the mainstream media).

 

You're telling us that Saddam looted his own armory before the war? Or are you saying he let civilians come in and help themselves? I'd sure like to see the evidence for either of those.

Whatever happened, attacking Iraq put tons of explosives in the hands of terrorists. Yeah, I know, the neocons hadn't planned on that.

It's the "we didn't plan" part that bothers me.

 

UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL BRIEFING BY MOHAMMED ELBARADEI DIRECTOR GENERAL, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY

INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY

January 9, 2003

Status of the Agency's Verification Activities in Iraq As of 8 January 2003

"Other Dual Use Items

The relocation and consumption of some dual use materials has been among the questions raised in connection with Iraq's backlog of semi-annual declarations. The high explosive "HMX" is a prime example of such material. The removal of Agency seals on the HMX and the declared relocation and consumption of some of the HMX must be explained and documented by Iraq before the Agency can reach a conclusion with regard to the use of such material. The Iraqi declarations indicate that out, of the 228 tonnes of HMX available in Iraq at the end of 1998, 196 remained at the facility where the HMX was previously under IAEA seal. Iraq also declared that it had blended the remaining 32 tonnes with sulphur and turned them into 45.6 tonnes of "industrial explosive" provided mainly to cement plants for mining. The material balance, current stock, whereabouts and final use of such material are currently being investigated."

http://www.iraqwatch.org/un/iaea/iaea-elbaradei-unscbriefing-010903.htm

The inability of Saddam to declare what Iraq had done with their stockpiles of HMX was one of the reasons Saddam was declared in breach of UN Resolutions!

 

Was there a shortage of explosives available to terrorists before the U.S entered Iraq?

 

Today's New York Sun article (link below) points out that the NYTimes report was based on a letter from Mohamed ElBaradei, who is seeking a third term as head of the International Atomic Energy Commission. The Bush administration opposes ElBaradei's reappointment, so one suspects that this was a foreign effort to influence the outcome of America's presidential election, aided by our domestic partisan liberal media.

http://www.nysun.com/article/3783

 

Hard to say. What we can say now, is thanks to the Bush administration there's no shortage now.

BTW, the claim that this happended before we invaded was false:

"The newspaper cited White House and Pentagon officials and at least one Iraqi minister as acknowledging the explosives vanished from the site shortly after the invasion in March 2003 amid widespread looting."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002071912_idig25.html

In short, while we were securing Saddam's playhouses, and occupying government ministries, no one thought to secure this area.

But remember, the neocons said that the Iraqis would all love us. Who would have imagined that terrorists would have taken advantage of our failure to secure the base?

 

Completely wrong.

Bush supplied no terrorists with weapons.

They were gone before be got to the place. Saddam had them removed. There is no telling where they are now but if the terrorists have them Saddam would have been their source.

 

Barbarian observes:
What we can say now, is thanks to the Bush administration there's no shortage now.

So which administration didn't make this location a priority when Iraq fell? I was under there impression that Bush was calling the shots.

More precisely, US forces secured other areas first, and by the time they got to this one, it had been looted. Saddam's palace might have been more interesting, but I think 380 tons of high-tech explosives should have had a higher priority.

Don't you?

He did? I thought the story was the looters got them? Where did you get that story? Is there any evidence for it?

So if you have a gun, and a burglar steals it, then you are the source?

Maybe. But after Saddam lost power, wasn't it up to us to protect the site?

If not, who?

 

The Galatian sez:

Is John Kerry paying you to post here?

Your logic(?) seems to indicate such!

 

We don't know that looters carried off any of those explosives. Much more likely Saddam had them removed or carried to another country.

Much of your arguement makes little sense. You keep trying to make a sutle implication that Bush was somehow in cahoots with the terrorists by not going to this place in the first hours of the war.

 

Kerry is desperate and is going to try to say that Bush and his administration are not planning, etc. And the mainstream media is doing the same thing.

They were GONE!!! And if they were gone, the same people could have taken the WMD to another country, or who knows, buried them in the sand somewhere.

To accuse the Bush administration for this is past ridiculous.

 

The explosives had been removed before our troops got there. We could not have stopped it. But apparently there are bomb craters in the area. Maybe we bombed the stuff out of existence first.

The New York Times had no business trying to blatantly help the Kerry campaign. Then again, as poorly as Senator Kerry is doing in the polls, maybe he does need the help.

 

While the story is dropping off many news websites, the Kerry-Edwards campaign released the new television ad “Obligation” blaming Bush for his failure to secure the explosives in Iraq.

See for yourself:

http://www.johnkerry.com/video/102604_obligation.html