# Al Qaqaa: where the roadside bombs come from **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 25, 2004, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023 "2004-10-25T09:43:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![esquimalt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@esquimalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/esquimalt)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/101 "2004-10-26T13:41:08Z")
Sorry to burst the bubble here folks.[CNN Article](http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html) ---
**Author:** ![esquimalt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@esquimalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/esquimalt)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/102 "2004-10-26T13:43:43Z")
Sorry, didn’t realize there wa a page 2 & others have brought up the story already. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/103 "2004-10-26T14:05:15Z")
> [@Moody Bastard](#): > > It means that this administration had advance knowledge of these missing explosives a looong time before the lying sacks o’ shit are now claiming they did. Or, alternatively, they didn’t have the knowledge because they never thought it very important to inventory what was at these sites in comparison to what the IAEA knew to be there (despite IAEA pleas that all this stuff needed to be kept track of). Hey, what’s a few hundred tons of advanced explosives between friends? ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/104 "2004-10-26T14:13:09Z")
> [@Moody Bastard](#): > > And they did nothing to prepare themselves for the possible ramifications. (Not that that doesn’t fit their pattern of brainless, arrogant denial.) They did nothing by way of providing troops with additional protection in the wake of these discoveries. Ok, these are pretty strong explosives, but is there any reason to believe that there were not already stuff like this and worse out there already. In which case the military should already have been prepared for this (and worse) regardless? ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/105 "2004-10-26T14:17:55Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > My thought at the time was that our intelligence agency was total shit. We all know who defunded it. Are you referring to the small cut that Kerry proposed back in 1994 **or the much bigger cut that Bush’s new CIA director supported back in 1995**? At any rate, neither one passed. **Oh, I suppose what you must be talking about is the Republican-proposed cut similar to Kerry’s which did pass.** From [factcheck.org](http://www.factcheck.org/article291.html): > [@](#): > > Actually, the cut Kerry proposed in 1994 amounted to less than 4 percent, as part of a proposal to cut many programs to reduce the deficit. > > And in 1995 Porter Goss, who is now Bush’s CIA Director, co-sponsored an even stronger deficit-elimination measure that would have cut CIA personnel by 20 percent over five years. When asked about that at his confirmation hearings he didn’t disavow it. > > … > > Another Republican-sponsored cut similar to Kerry’s proposed 1995 measure actually became law. On the same day Kerry proposed his $1.5-billion cut spread over five years, the Senate passed by voice vote an amendment to eliminate $1 billion in intelligence funds for fiscal year 1996. That measure was proposed by Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and a companion measure was co-sponsored by Kerry and Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. The cut eventually became law as part of a House-Senate package endorsed by the Republican leadership. Specter explained at the time that the $1-billion cut was intended to recapture funds that had been appropriated for spy satellites, but which had gone unspent by the National Reconnaissance Office. ---
**Author:** ![Jon\_the\_Geek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bbce88/32.png) [@Jon\_the\_Geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jon_the_Geek)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/106 "2004-10-26T14:22:13Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > Even if all the facts were as presented in the OP, it’s ridiculous to claim that the Bush administration deliberately handed over the explosives. You can accuse them of incompetence, hardly malice. And saying Bush should be held personally responsible is pretty lame. Surely you do not want to hold your president responsible for the day to day operations of war or even the planning thereof?! Having politicians playing generals and you’ve soon have generals playing politicians. Bush has said many times that he listened to his generals, who said they didn’t need more troops (or at least he listened to the ones who would tell him that). Let’s pretend that it was the generals in the field who decided what level of troops we would use. Now we see that those generals were clearly wrong. Have any of them been reprimanded? As citizens, we are unable to reprimand them directly. If their Commander in Chief won’t do it, we’ll have to fire him. Why is that so hard to understand? Even if the Bush Administration itself was not making the collossal mistakes, they should be held accountable for mistakes which they refuse to hold others accountable for. ---
**Author:** ![Mal\_Adroit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df788c/32.png) [@Mal\_Adroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mal_Adroit)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/107 "2004-10-26T14:25:25Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > Ok, these are pretty strong explosives, but is there any reason to believe that there were not already stuff like this and worse out there already. In which case the military should already have been prepared for this (and worse) regardless? Any reasonably well-managed military, yes. But we’re talking about George Bush’s watch. The neocons have about as much foresight and self-awareness as a slew of rutting monkeys. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/108 "2004-10-26T14:49:25Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > Is this the October Surprise you’ve all been waiting for? Seems to surface suspiciously close to the election for a story that has over a year on its back. Guess it must be Karl Rove. Ah, then you must have a cite of when the So-Called Liberal Media (SCLM) initially had access to this story. > [@](#): > > Surely you do not want to hold your president responsible for the day to day operations of war or even the planning thereof?! Having politicians playing generals and you’ve soon have generals playing politicians. Like **Daniel** ’s already pointed out, many of us buy into the idea of a “The Buck Stops Here” sign on the President’s desk. But more significantly, the war plan - and especially the troop strength, or rather the lack thereof - was Rumsfeld’s creation from beginning to end. Rumsfeld reports directly to the President. And some heavy-hitting generals who report directly to Rumsfeld were pretty emphatic that far more troops would be needed. This was public knowledge. If I’m a boss, and my subordinate comes to me with a plan for our biggest project, and I know that _his_ subordinates have serious concerns about his plan, you know what? I’m going to be asking my guy all sorts of questions about what their objections are, and whether his plan addresses those objections. I might even get his key people in the room, so that I can see whether my guy really _is_ addressing their concerns, before I sign off on the plan. This is what a boss _does_. Sure, he lets his people do the heavy lifting, and asks few if any questions about their decisions with routine stuff. But when something’s a big deal, he asks enough questions to make sure his people are doing the right things, because in the end, **it’s his responsibility**. And if the boss isn’t smart or knowledgeable to even figure out which questions are the right ones to ask, then he’s been promoted beyond his level of competence. One of these days, I’m gonna quote Machiavelli on the subject. > [@](#): > > Apparently we’re talking of 380 tons, which is about 0.06% of the total amount of explosives dispersed throughout Iraq before the war. On the face of it that doesn’t seem to be such gigantic problem as it’s made out to be, but apparently this is a type of explosive that is particular potent and suitable for terrorist purposes, and of course any error need to be dealt with. As you’ve already mentioned, some explosives are more powerful than others, and these are about as kick-ass a conventional explosive as there is. Some explosives are also more risky to work with than others; this stuff is very easy to work with: it needs a blasting cap to set it off; it’s not gonna just blow up in your face. A lot of the explosives in Iraq were in inconvenient forms to work with, such as in artillery shells. Apparently it’s pretty damned dangerous for amateurs to take the explosives out of artillery shells and fashion them into homemade bombs; news reports in the summer of 2003 indicated that the occasional Iraqi was blowing himself up doing this sort of thing. So if you’re an amateur revolutionary, this stuff is unquestionably the stuff you want to work with. At any rate, there are two things to point out here: 1. If there really wasn’t much of this stuff floating around Iraq, and most of the other available explosives were difficult and risky to work with, then failing to control this stuff was a serious mistake. After all, we’re talking enough stuff for maybe a quarter of a million roadside bombs, or (according to Phil Carter of Intel Dump) between 2500 and 8500 Oklahoma City-level bombs. 2. If the type and quantity of uncontrolled explosives lying loose in Iraq after the invasion was so great that this was a drop in the bucket, _ **then what the Sam Hill were our planners thinking??** _ To have a workable country, you need a state monopoly on violence over a certain level. Failing to control all these Iraqi munitions dumps from the time we pushed Saddam’s troops back from them pretty much doomed our nation-building designs from the outset. > [@](#): > > Can any of the attacks in Iraq after the disappearance of the explosives be traced back to this source? Anyone know if there have been instances of attacks that have used this kind of explosive? Of course they can’t be traced back; it’s not like we had a chemical fingerprint of this stuff up front. But as cited in the OP, there are Administration officials who strongly believe this stuff has been used extensively against us. ---
**Author:** ![Rufus\_Xavier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@Rufus\_Xavier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rufus_Xavier)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/109 "2004-10-26T14:53:16Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > **Rufus Xavier** , tell me what tomorrow’s lottery numbers will be! Ummmmm… OK: 6, 8, 12, 31, 46; 45; 4 If I’m right, I want a piece of that 20 million. 🙂 I have a question about the pronounciation of Al QaQaa: is it pronounced the same as a well-known euphemism for poop? Because I could see some great headlines. Like: Bush Administration in Deep QaQaa Kerry Tells Bush to Eat QaQaa The QaQaa Hits the Fan ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/110 "2004-10-26T17:08:11Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > Man, if it wasn’t for bad luck, the Lefty attack machine would have no luck. I wonder what their spin on this will be? Hey **Brutus** , are you still pitching BP? I want _my_ turn at these big fat pitches! > [@](#): > > Should have attacked sooner? Shouldn’t have attacked _at all_. (Duh!) > [@](#): > > Should have employed teleporters and/or time-travel to secure the site? If we were going to invade, going in with enough troops to secure both suspected WMD sites and major conventional weapons dumps on the way in, would have been the preferred option. But no, Rumsfeld had a _ **theory** _. Here’s one thing that hasn’t gotten enough play, IMHO: the wingers used to ridicule us lefties as ivory-tower theoreticians, head-in-the-clouds types with lots of ideas about how the world should work, but no practical experience at running things. Hel-_lo_, neocons! > [@](#): > > And they were sooo gleeful in trying to pin this on Dubya…Ah well. If it makes you feel better to believe this, then go ahead and believe it. As for me, it made me sick to think of all those soldiers killed or maimed in explosions, whose deaths and injuries we could have so easily prevented. Getting blown up has to be a horrible way to die, and is surely a horrible thing to survive. So yeah, I’m _livid_ at Bush. I don’t think he planned for young men to die this way; he didn’t plan _at all_, AFAICT, except for the grand photo op as the victorious leader. And American troops have paid the price for his lack of planning, over and over and over again. I don’t have to “pin this on Dubya”; it’s his. This wasn’t just some fall-through-the-cracks deal; this was major both by itself, and as part of the general let’s-do-this-with-too-few-troops plan. ---
**Author:** ![Airblairxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Airblairxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airblairxxx)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/111 "2004-10-26T18:52:10Z")
> [@flickster](#): > > I would assume that NBC is using their own embedded news crew as a source that the explosives were missing upon arrival April 10, 2003 Regarding that NBC crew, one of the embedded reporters who was there that day spoke to MSNBC today. > [@](#): > > \*\*MSNBC, 10/26/04 \*\*(Transcript): > > 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. 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. > > AR: Well, Lai Ling Jew, thank you so much for shedding some light into that situation. We appreciate it. > > LLJ: Thank you. Bolding mine. Transcript taken from [http://www.democraticunderground.com](http://www.democraticunderground.com), admittedly a partisan website, and I didn’t watch the original interview, since I have a job. ---
**Author:** ![ZebraShaSha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/eada6e/32.png) [@ZebraShaSha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZebraShaSha)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/112 "2004-10-26T20:00:30Z")
From my ultra-conservative, Bush apologist friend: “Iraq moved them to another country before we even moved them. Probably Syria. It is a non-issue.” ---
**Author:** ![ZebraShaSha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/eada6e/32.png) [@ZebraShaSha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZebraShaSha)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/113 "2004-10-26T20:04:30Z")
> [@ZebraShaSha](#): > > From my ultra-conservative, Bush apologist friend: > > “Iraq moved them to another country before we even moved them. Probably Syria. It is a non-issue.” Er, before we invaded… ---
**Author:** ![Avenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@Avenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avenger)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/114 "2004-10-26T20:16:50Z")
If your about to be invaded, moving all your good explosives to a neighbouring country is the obvious thing to do… ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/115 "2004-10-26T20:40:40Z")
**RX:** _I have a question about the pronounciation of Al QaQaa: is it pronounced the same as a well-known euphemism for poop? Because I could see some great headlines. Like: Bush Administration in Deep QaQaa Kerry Tells Bush to Eat QaQaa The QaQaa Hits the Fan_ Good to see that somebody is focusing on the important issues here! 🙂 I found a related story on al-Jazira online ([in Arabic](http://suhuf.net/cgi-bin/dailynews/open_doc.cgi?doc=/usr/local/etc/httpd/sites/suhuf.net/htdocs//96821//du9d.htm&keyword=380)). As far as I can tell, the Arabic spelling is qaf-ayin-qaf-ayin (with fatha voweling), the pronunciation of which is not easy to describe in English! I haven’t heard the word pronounced, but according to the spelling it ought to be something like “al-QUH-uh-QUH-uh”, if you can get those gutturals going. I suppose it does sound a little like “caca”. ---
**Author:** ![Razorsharp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/53a042/32.png) [@Razorsharp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Razorsharp)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/116 "2004-10-26T21:09:00Z")
> [@](#): > > 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 and could not (find) the material.** > > [http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html) The use of propaganda by the “Democratic Machine” would make “Uncle Joe Stalin” proud. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/117 "2004-10-26T21:15:46Z")
> [@Razorsharp](#): > > The use of propaganda by the “Democratic Machine” would make “Uncle Joe Stalin” proud. “Democratic Machine” doesn’t mean “Republican Operatives,” old buddy. Read the transcript of the MSNBC interview, just a few posts above yours, before you spin yourself into the ground. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Homebrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@Homebrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Homebrew)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/118 "2004-10-26T21:27:46Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > “Democratic Machine” doesn’t mean “Republican Operatives,” old buddy. Read the transcript of the MSNBC interview, just a few posts above yours, before you spin yourself into the ground. They didn’t find it, because they weren’t looking. I’ll quote part of it again for the betterment of those with poor reading skills. > [@](#): > > 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. They conducted no organized search. They were there no more than ~24 hours, which was insufficient time to fully search the place even if they had begun one. So this report by NBC does nothing to establish that those explosives were gone before April 9. Of course it doesn’t verify they were there either. At best, the NBC report is totally irrelevant; but on the other hand it shows there was no effort to secure the site from looting what munitions they _did_ see which were described as a “vast amount”. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/119 "2004-10-26T21:29:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. According to NBC, troops from the 101st Airborne arrived the next day and could not (find) the material. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. They didn’t _look_ for the stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/120 "2004-10-26T22:01:43Z")
I notoce that Drudge has taken his bullshit “18 months ago” story down from his site. It looks like this is going to be yet another confirmed fuck up by Bush. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023.md?page=7)