if the US troops weren’t ordered to guard the oil wells when the takeover of Iraq was completed, on behalf of Haliburton, they wouldn’t have the caache missing.
Agreed. Whether the explosives were there or not, it’s pretty obvious that the site was ignored until this month, when we knew all along its significance.
capacitor: bit of a leap, don’t you think? It is fair to say, however, that the administration put a huge post-invasion emphasis on safeguarding the oil infrastructure, with typically shortsighted results.
If one is paranoid that the Democratic Underground version of the MSNBC transcript is not correct, here is an article direct from the MSNBC website where the imbedded reporter is quoted:
Impressive demonstration of transference. Bush was Governor in 1995. Kerry was Senator in 1995. Unless Governor Bush actively promoted this policy in a public forum during the 90’s, his position on the matter falls to his record as President.
Former Congressman Goss’s opinion is reflective of Kerry’s position and not that of the GOP. Unless he is running for president, his position on the matter is purely his own. His appointment to Director of the CIA is the result of his years in Congress combined with a background in both the CIA and the military.
Actually, it’s more like “putting things into context”, than “transference”. You know, since this whole “intelligence cut” is a talking point that republicans seem to like using against Kerry – even though:
You can’t have your cake, and all that.
LilShieste
And this just in …
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041026/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_weapons
(emphasis added in shock, horror, and dismay)
Apparently this is top of the line stuff that’s a form that very easy to handle and transport. It’s th eprimo stuff. Dismatling shells etc is supposedlya trickiy business that’s avoided by having this stuff in the form that it’s in.
Really, the best response I can think of to this is: “Are you suggesting that coconuts migrate?” Or, in other words, once we get beyond your tortured prose, what we are left with is the fact that you are trying to imply that Kerry should somehow be blamed, and presumably be thought of as a less worthy Presidential candidate on the basis of the fact that he proposed some cuts in the intelligence budget in the mid 90s. And yet, it doesn’t bother you in the least that the current President has put in charge of the CIA a man who proposed much more draconian intelligence cuts at that time. But, hey, you Bush-defenders are getting so used to cognitive dissonance that I guess it is pretty much second nature.
I could point out that your whole bringing up of intelligence in the first place was a stretch. There was no failure of intelligence here. To know about these explosives, all the U.S. had to do with talk to the IAEA who knew they were there and had tagged them. So, basically, your snide remark was just a hijack and it turned out that you had your facts wrong on the implication of your hijack anyway.
380 tons of explosives is about 22 tractor trailor loads. Are you guys suggesting that somehow 22 tractor trailers managed to load up explosives and drive away under the noses of the 3rd infantry or 101st Airborne? Not bloody likely.
Once the 3rd infantry arrived, the place was never left unattended again. The 3rd ID was relieved by the 101st Airborne, as I understand it.
The obvious explanation so far is that the weapons were gone before the Americans arrived on the scene.
I have a question about this report of troops who were at the Al Qa Qa Facility on April 4, 03. It says there that they found thousands of vials of white powder which were later proved to be explosives.
Are the HMX and RDX explosives in question in a white powder form? I thought they were putty type explosives? Were other explosives present at that facility?
What I’m trying to get at is - is the April 4th report that last time anyone saw the HMX and RDX explosives or might they have been talking about other explosives?
thanks for your information!
Cite? Here is mine:
So, it sounds like it was not secure but they believe that the fact that the U.S. controlled the general area meant that it would have been difficult for that much material to be looted.
At any rate, it would not be that much less incriminating to find out that the place was looted before the 101st had arrived. After all, I thought the point of this war was to secure WMD and related materials from terrorists. Surely the fact that the war seemed to do the opposite (although we were lucky enough that WMD did not exist) could be taken as its being a less-than-stellar way to accomplish this objective.
Nithotep: Yeah, when I read that “white powder” account, my first reaction was, “Couldn’t the author of this article have tried to find out for us if the white powder could have been the explosives in question or not?” It seemed like a pretty straightforward and obvious question…And, perhaps the answer will come in time.
Military explosives are usually mixed with plasticizers, oils, plastics, etc. to get the desired physical properties. C4 is about 90% RDX, the rest is binder and plasticizer.
Your argument boils down to “They can’t have been this incompetent. Therefore, this did not occur.” However, a number of sources state that the explosives were there after the invasion, including a Pentagon spokesman and the White House press secretary.
From here.
This BBC News piece on the explosives implies that the looted material was not compounded:
Also missing is 5.8 metric tons of PETN.
Kinda like saying, “we’re talking about 3,000 people, which is about 0.015% of the population of New York City” or “we’re talking about 2 buildings, which is about 0.004% of the total buildings in New York City”?
This HMX stuff is pretty significant. The 195 tons of HMX lost comprised essentially all of the HMX known to exist in Iraq. Remember that the IAEA brought it to our attention in their report to the UNSC on January 9, 2003. Perhaps even more interesting, take a look at how the events of the day were reported by [:
Check the link for the complete context. Fascinating. Just Fox being Fox, you say? Hold you horses.
The administration held this stuff out as one of the few reasons to invade Iraq! Check the [url=http://www.un.int/usa/03print_jdn0130.htm]cite](]Fox News[/url) and enjoy the paragraph that follows the quote above.
Oh, and the missing 32 tons from above? That issue was put to rest by Mohamed ElBaradei in his report on February 14, 2003:
To help pull the numbers together, here (sorry, pdf, see page 10) was the pre-war IAEA assessment:
And the NYTimes (sorry, registration may be required, see the image of the letter) shows the recent letter declaring the missing 194.741 tons of HMX.
They knew about this stuff. And they knew it was quite important.
It is unfathomable that we simply failed to secure this stuff, once we got there. I agree with Sam Stone on that point. But I don’t see that as any excuse for Bush. What we do know is that this stuff was secured before the UN inspectors were withdrawn.
I have this hazy recollection of someone predicting that Saddam and his weapons were only a threat if the US invaded Iraq, and then Saddam might be inclined to proliferate weapons to terrorists. In fact, I think it was the head of the CIA…
There are several issues here:
First, is it possible that the military screwed up? I suppose. But it stretches the imagination to believe that a bunch of terrorists could sneak into an occupied area with 22 semi trucks, load up (how long would THAT take? Days? Weeks?), then drive back out of the area undetected. Even if the place was ‘unsecured’, you can be damned sure that the American military was maintaining 24/7 surveillance of the area by air, satellite, radar, you name it. 22 tractor-trailer units is bigger than five tank platoons, and the military isn’t about to let five tank platoons roam around behind the lines.
The military says that when they first arrived at the compound there were already signs of extensive looting. My guess is that when war became imminent Saddam had that stuff removed and either stored around the country for the planned insurgency, or trucked out to Syria for future use. This is the most likely hypothesis at this point. Over on National Review they are publishing letters from military people who were there saying that they knew exactly what to secure when they entered that compound, and it wasn’t plausible that they would somehow forget or not know the stuff was there and also be unable to find it. Yes, it was a huge facility. But we’re talking about a LOT of material. A large warehouse full. And considerable industrial activity required to remove it.
Then there’s the second question: Even assuming the military did screw up, how is this possibly Bush’s fault? What, do you think the White House gives orders over every military action that takes place in a war? I find it unlikely that such a decision over where and how to secure one of many weapons sites never made it past the General Officer level of the military. Kerry’s trying to turn this into an indictment of Bush’s handling of the war, when Bush had nothing to do with it, even if it happened the way they are claiming.
Oh, and there’s a third thing; If this revelation came from a letter written by el-Baradei, whom the U.S. is working to remove from his office, then what we may have here is an intentional act by a U.N. diplomat to influence a U.S. election. That’s a pretty serious matter - one that should be investigated.
And on a final, political note, John Kerry is going to run a serious risk of blowback if he goes after Bush on this one. He’s starting to look opportunistic. The minute the public decides that he’s happier when things get worse in Iraq, he’s going to lose a lot of support.
Does the buck ever stop with this Administration? Or does it just keep going, searching forlornly for someone to take responsibility for it?
I am going to remember this post the very first time – and subsequent times, for that matter – you get in a huff over any participant of the Kerry administration doing something you don’t like, and you then criticise Kerry. Please consider yourself un-inoculated from accusations of hypocrisy should this occur. This is an unbelievably craven and weasling defense.
Well, the stuff was important. If it went missing 18 months ago, you’d think that the administration would have known that it went missing. Yet here we are 18 months later, and the administration has just found out it disappeared. That makes it pretty obvious that they hadn’t looked and confirmed its status before now. It’s their fault that they didn’t. Cheney confirmed their lack of information on the material when he said: “It is not at all clear that those explosives” that were lost “were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived in the area of Baghdad.” Far from absolving the administration from responsibility, Cheney’s statement is an admission that the administration did not take this dual use material seriously enough.