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Bush and Rumsfeld and all them Neocons should just God-damn Resign!

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  • #16
    Originally posted by Fonnicker
    I find it convenient that now the the "Iraqi Government" is in place, when something goes wrong we can balme them for it.



    If indeed it's true that it would be impossible for the US to secure all of the weapons and explosives in Iraq, why not just say that? Why skirt around the issue and point the finger of blame?

    Well here we go! The fat baastard Illawi like playing the blame game for the new recruits massacre! He's blaming us that "we " didn't plan right!

    Seems like he's under the illusion tat we can be in Iraq for the rest of his soory asss life and he can count on us? ...Nnooootttttt! As soon as Kerry comes, gooo bye! Take care of your own crap buddy!

    God talk about a total disaster! Now they are saying that this loser coalition of fags has been infiltratd by that Zarqawi terrorist and his gang!

    Man we should just get the hell out of that shiit hole. These A-raanbs are good for nothing! Look at what a stellar job Pakistan has done in containing the fundo mulla's from crossing the border and killing Afghans and U.S. troops! Afghanistan seems to be a success! And look at these baastard A-raanbs in Iraq! We should just let them kill one and other :


    Allawi blames US for recruit massacre
    By Sam Dagher in Baghdad
    October 28, 2004

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    Iraq's interim Prime Minister has blamed the US-led military in Iraq for the slaying of 49 unarmed army recruits and three drivers on Saturday.

    "I think it was because of gross negligence by some elements within the multinational forces," Iyad Allawi told the country's interim parliament on Tuesday.

    "The killings represent the epitome of what could be done to hurt Iraq and the Iraqi people."

    Dr Allawi characterised as a "dangerous precedent" the ambush and killing of army basic-training graduates as they were on their way from the Kirkush base near the Iranian border to their homes in the south.

    Nassir al-Shadershi, an MP, had earlier accused authorities of failing in "their obligation to protect our own security forces". The deaths are being investigated.

    The chief spokesman for US-led foreign troops in Iraq, Brigadier-General Erv Lessel, was not available for comment on Dr Allawi's remarks, but an aide said: "Obviously the training of Iraq's security forces is critical, so we will continue our partnership with the Iraqi government to mature the [Iraqi security forces]."

    Dr Allawi on Tuesday also asked the United Nations to send troops to help secure elections scheduled for January and voiced concern over a manpower shortage in the Iraqi police

    Comment


    • #17
      Originally posted by Fonnicker
      I find it convenient that now the the "Iraqi Government" is in place, when something goes wrong we can balme them for it.



      If indeed it's true that it would be impossible for the US to secure all of the weapons and explosives in Iraq, why not just say that? Why skirt around the issue and point the finger of blame?
      Downplaying and shifting the blame....that's the name of Bush's game. What did Bush call it the other day??? "Bait and switch?"

      Comment


      • #18
        People,

        Back up.

        The stuff was gone long before the Coalition reached it. If anyone was to blame, it was Saddam, not the Bush Admin.

        For current security measures, the Iraqi government is responsible for it up to and including requesting Coalition assistance. Until that request comes through lima charley, shifting the blame ain't the game. It's accepting responsibility and the Iraqis are the ones responsible. That's the way the military works. I don't shift blame nor responsibility when it's my authority and my job.

        As for the Guardsmen, with much sorrow to the Guardsmen, the Iraqi PM is off his rockers. The Guardsmen let their guard down.

        Comment


        • #19
          It's so funny to watch the leftwing freaks to supposedly confirm their already predetermined opinions on the war. NBC had an in-bed with the troops, they didn't see any explosives, end of story. When are you guys gonna give it up?
          Selective common sence....

          Luldapull, take a pill or something, your going to burst a blood vein for some stupid conspiracy theory.
          Facts to a liberal is like Kryptonite to Superman.

          -- Larry Elder

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by Fonnicker
            I find it convenient that now the the "Iraqi Government" is in place, when something goes wrong we can balme them for it.

            If indeed it's true that it would be impossible for the US to secure all of the weapons and explosives in Iraq, why not just say that? Why skirt around the issue and point the finger of blame?
            .....because, those on the left would like to blame every single thing on Bush even the stuff Clinton is guilty of. They constantly use past actions with Saddam as a basis for how we should act now, and yet those past actions are wrong, and somehow get pinned on G.W. Bush. The left simply deny that we are in a new kind of war, one that cannot rely on the presedence of past conflicts or dealings.
            Facts to a liberal is like Kryptonite to Superman.

            -- Larry Elder

            Comment


            • #21
              Read up, its nothing more than a desperate attempt by the Democrats to come up with an October surprize, which is backfiring.

              http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004...lf-little.html

              The RDX Problem Resolves Itself

              A little more data for the RDX pot. Whatever the MSNBC embeds saw with the 101st, the 3ID which preceded them saw more. It searched Al Qa Qaa and found suspicious material Instapundit finds this reference in CBS via the Captain's Quarters.

              April 4, 2003. CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction continues at sites where the U.S. thought chemicals weapons might be hidden. "And although there are no reports of actual weapons being found, there are constant finds of suspicious material," Martin said. "It obviously will take laboratory testing to find out exactly what that powder is." U.S. troops found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad. But a senior U.S. official familiar with initial testing said the materials were believed to be explosives. Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex just south of Baghdad.

              ... The facility had been identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons site. U.N. inspectors visited the plant at least nine times, including as recently as Feb. 18. The facility is part of a larger complex known as the Latifiyah Explosives and Ammunition Plant al Qa Qaa. The senior U.S. official, based in Washington and speaking on condition of anonymity, said the material was under further study. The site is enormous and U.S. troops are still investigating it for potential weapons of mass destruction, the official said. "Initial reports are that the material is probably just explosives, but we're still going through the place," the official said. Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.

              The contemporaneous CBS report, written before anyone knew al Qa Qaa would be a big deal, establishes two important things. The first is that 3ID knew it was looking through an IAEA inspection site. The second was that the site had shown unmistakable signs of tampering before the arrival of US troops. "Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare." Now presumably those thousands of boxes were not all packaged and labeled with chemical warfare instructions under IAEA supervision, so the inescapable conclusion is that a fairly large and organized type of activity had been under way in Al Qa Qaa for some time. It is important to reiterate that these are contemporaneous CBS reports which were filed no with foreknowledge of the political controversy to come.

              Michael Totten wonders why "there is no mention of 380 tons of HDX and RDX". Perhaps the reason the RDX isn't mentioned can be found via a link through Josh Marshall, quoting NBC's Jim Miklaszewski. (Hat tip reader Trebbers in Comments)

              Following up on that story from last night, military officials tell NBC News that on April 10, 2003, when the Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne entered the Al QaQaa weapons facility, south of Baghdad, that those troops were actually on their way to Baghdad, that they were not actively involved in the search for any weapons, including the high explosives, HMX and RDX. The troops did observe stock piles of conventional weapons but no HMX or RDX. And because the Al Qaqaa facility is so huge, it's not clear that those troops from the 101st were actually anywhere near the bunkers that reportedly contained the HMX and RDX. Three months earlier, during an inspection of the Al Qaqaa compound, the International Atomic Energy Agency secured and sealed 350 metric tons of HMX and RDX. Then in March, shortly before the war began, the I.A.E.A. conducted another inspection and found that the HMX stockpile was still intact and still under seal. But inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound.

              Here we discover the rather important fact that the UN inspectors hadn't actually seen the RDX in their final inspections. They just assumed it was there because the seals were intact. So let's put it all together. The UN inspectors conduct their final inspection before OIF without actually having seen the RDX. The 3ID reach the site on April 4, 2003, know they are looking at an IAEA site and find thousands of white boxes which they suspect may be chemical weapons. The boxes are labeled with chemical warfare instructions. On April 10, the Second Brigade of 101st Airborne arrives with press embeds. They look around but press on with their main combat mission. From this the NYT comes to the conclusion that the RDX was lost after the US assumed custody of the site. It is worthwhile to reiterate the NYT's key assertions. In their article of October 25, the Times said:

              The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

              It turned out that White House and Pentagon officials had acknowledged no such thing. The next day, the NYT reported:

              White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell. But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the facility and had merely stopped there for the night on their way to Baghdad. The commander, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said he did not learn until this week that the site, known as Al Qaqaa, was considered highly sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited there shortly before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.

              In the light of the unearthed contemporaneous CBS report, the NYT's use of an interview with the Col. Anderson is totally worthless. They interviewed the wrong unit commander. It was a 3ID outfit that searched the place with the intent of discovering dangerous materials nearly six days before. The 101st had no such mission. Moreover, the NYT's innuendo that "the huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years ..." suggests a well-manicured facility that had been run to seed by knuckle-dragging American incompetence after faithful care by the IAEA. It totally ignores the disorderly condition in which 3ID found it, where, if the NYT correspondents had been present, they might have taken home their own boxes "with three vials of white powder, together with documents in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare" -- surely a sign it was untampered with, unless the NYT wishes to assert the contrary and thereby destroy their own case.

              Incidentally, the condition of Al Qa Qaa is yet more indirect proof of the redeployment of war materiel which took place under the cover of UN obstruction, most notably by barring 4ID from attacking south through Turkey into the Sunni Triangle, which was the subject of Belmont Club's War Plan Orange.
              Facts to a liberal is like Kryptonite to Superman.

              -- Larry Elder

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by smilingassassin
                It's so funny to watch the leftwing freaks to supposedly confirm their already predetermined opinions on the war. NBC had an in-bed with the troops, they didn't see any explosives, end of story. When are you guys gonna give it up?
                Selective common sence....

                Luldapull, take a pill or something, your going to burst a blood vein for some stupid conspiracy theory.
                Yeah I already have! Its the thick purple one on my Dick!
                Now getting back to the topic; let me tell you very honestly that in a matter of a few days it wouldn't matter who cut the cheese in the stinker.....

                The best and my favourite part is that with each pasing day we hold this piece of shiit administration and specially this bible bigot and his God-damn ******y ass Neocon goons accountable for this total disaster that is unfolding in iraq! Pretty soon all these Buffoons wil be God-damn thrown out, whether you like it or not! Whether this is a new kind of a war or old! Dirty or guerilla! The problem is that this Bush has gotten us involved in a war we can't win! :) Dude we can't win in Iraq! money is running out, and we ( yes the Americans come first! )...We need to spend that 1 billion per week on us right here in the U.S., which is fast becoming a god-damn third world country, not killing some 2 cent naked hungry A-raanb in monkey land!! What part of that you don't understand???

                you know it and so do I! bush will lose pal! You better believe it!

                P.S. I'll buy you a cheap beer on Nov 8th! :) With my god-damn work situation, thats about all I can afford! i bet the entire engineering/ manufacturing community as well as the tech sector will heave a sigh of relief as soon as this most incompetent of all aministrations gets booted out, and we get our god-damn jobs back!

                Also FAS.org and global Security are both standing by this missing explosives report:

                Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq
                By James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger
                New York Times
                October 25, 2004


                The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations. The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

                The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes." Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives. American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings.

                The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people. The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. The other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain. "This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," one senior Bush administration official said.

                The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country. A Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said Sunday evening that Saddam Hussein's government "stored weapons in mosques, schools, hospitals and countless other locations," and that the allied forces "have discovered and destroyed perhaps thousands of tons of ordnance of all types." A senior military official noted that HMX and RDX were "available around the world" and not on the nuclear nonproliferation list, even though they are used in the nuclear warheads of many nations.

                The Qaqaa facility, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, was well known to American intelligence officials: Mr. Hussein made conventional warheads at the site, and the I.A.E.A. dismantled parts of his nuclear program there in the early 1990's after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In the prelude to the 2003 invasion, Mr. Bush cited a number of other "dual use" items - including tubes that the administration contended could be converted to use for the nuclear program - as a justification for invading Iraq. After the invasion, when widespread looting began in Iraq, the international weapons experts grew concerned that the Qaqaa stockpile could fall into unfriendly hands. In May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping "themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."

                Earlier this month, in a letter to the I.A.E.A. in Vienna, a senior official from Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology wrote that the stockpile disappeared after early April 2003 because of "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security." In an interview with The Times and "60 Minutes" in Baghdad, the minister of science and technology, Rashad M. Omar, confirmed the facts described in the letter. "Yes, they are missing," Dr. Omar said. "We don't know what happened." The I.A.E.A. says it also does not know, and has reported that machine tools that can be used for either nuclear or non-nuclear purposes have also been looted. Dr. Omar said that after the American-led invasion, the sites containing the explosives were under the control of the Coalition Provisional Authority, an American-led entity that was the highest civilian authority in Iraq until it handed sovereignty of the country over to the interim government on June 28. "After the collapse of the regime, our liberation, everything was under the coalition forces, under their control," Dr. Omar said. "So probably they can answer this question, what happened to the materials."

                Officials in Washington said they had no answers to that question. One senior official noted that the Qaqaa complex where the explosives were stored was listed as a "medium priority" site on the Central Intelligence Agency's list of more than 500 sites that needed to be searched and secured during the invasion. "Should we have gone there? Definitely," said one senior administration official. In the chaos that followed the invasion, however, many of those sites, even some considered a higher priority, were never secured.

                A No Man's Land

                Seeing the ruined bunkers at the vast Qaqaa complex today, it is hard to recall that just two years ago it was part of Saddam Hussein's secret military complex. The bunkers are so large that they are reminiscent of pyramids, though with rounded edges and the tops chopped off. Several are blackened and eviscerated as a result of American bombing. Smokestacks rise in the distance. Today, Al Qaqaa has become a wasteland generally avoided even by the marines in charge of northern Babil Province. Headless bodies are found there. An ammunition dump has been looted, and on Sunday an Iraqi employee of The New York Times who made a furtive visit to the site saw looters tearing out metal fixtures. Bare pipes within the darkened interior of one of the buildings were a tangled mess, zigzagging along charred walls. Someone fired a shot, probably to frighten the visitors off. "It's like Mars on Earth," said Maj. Dan Whisnant, an intelligence officer for the Second Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment. "It would take probably 10 battalions 10 years to clear that out."

                Mr. Hussein's engineers acquired HMX and RDX when they embarked on a crash effort to build an atomic bomb in the late 1980's. It did not go smoothly. In 1989, a huge blast ripped through Al Qaqaa, the boom reportedly heard hundreds of miles away. The explosion, it was later determined, occurred when a stockpile of the high explosives ignited. After the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the United Nations discovered Iraq's clandestine effort and put the United Nations arms agency in charge of Al Qaqaa's huge stockpile. Weapon inspectors determined that Iraq had bought the explosives from France, China and Yugoslavia, a European diplomat said. None of the explosives were destroyed, arms experts familiar with the decision recalled, because Iraq argued that it should be allowed to keep them for eventual use in mining and civilian construction. But Al Qaqaa was still under the authority of the Military Industrial Council, which ran Iraq's sensitive weapons programs and was led for a time by Hussein Kamel, Mr. Hussein's son-in-law. He defected to the West, then returned to Iraq and was immediately killed.

                In 1996, the United Nations hauled away some of the HMX and used it to blow up Al Hakam, a vast Iraqi factory for making germ weapons. The Qaqaa stockpile went unmonitored from late 1998, when United Nations inspectors left Iraq, to late 2002, when they came back. Upon their return, the inspectors discovered that about 35 tons of HMX were missing. The Iraqis said they had used the explosive mainly in civilian programs. The remaining stockpile was no secret. Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the arms agency, frequently talked about it publicly as he investigated - in late 2002 and early 2003 - the Bush administration's claims that Iraq was secretly renewing its pursuit of nuclear arms. He ordered his weapons inspectors to conduct an inventory, and publicly reported their findings to the Security Council on Jan. 9, 2003.

                During the following weeks, the I.A.E.A. repeatedly drew public attention to the explosives. In New York on Feb. 14, nine days after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented his arms case to the Security Council, Dr. ElBaradei reported that the agency had found no sign of new atom endeavors but "has continued to investigate the relocation and consumption of the high explosive HMX."

                A European diplomat reported that Jacques Baute, head of the arms agency's Iraq nuclear inspection team, warned officials at the United States mission in Vienna about the danger of the nuclear sites and materials once under I.A.E.A. supervision, including Al Qaqaa. But apparently, little was done. A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces "went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal." It is unclear whether troops ever returned. By late 2003, diplomats said, arms agency experts had obtained commercial satellite photos of Al Qaqaa showing that two of roughly 10 bunkers that contained HMX appeared to have been leveled by titanic blasts, apparently during the war. They presumed some of the HMX had exploded, but that is unclear.

                Other HMX bunkers were untouched. Some were damaged but not devastated. I.A.E.A. experts say they assume that just before the invasion the Iraqis followed their standard practice of moving crucial explosives out of buildings, so they would not be tempting targets. If so, the experts say, the Iraqi must have broken seals from the arms agency on bunker doors and moved most of the HMX to nearby fields, where it would have been lightly camouflaged - and ripe for looting.

                But the Bush administration would not allow the agency back into the country to verify the status of the stockpile. In May 2004, Iraqi officials say in interviews, they warned L. Paul Bremer III, the American head of the occupation authority, that Al Qaqaa had probably been looted. It is unclear if that warning was passed anywhere. Efforts to reach Mr. Bremer by telephone were unsuccessful.

                But by the spring of 2004, the Americans were preoccupied with the transfer of authority to Iraq, and the insurgency was gaining strength. "It's not an excuse," said one senior administration official. "But a lot of things went by the boards." Early this month, Dr. ElBaradei put public pressure on the interim Iraqi government to start the process of accounting for nuclear-related materials still ostensibly under I.A.E.A. supervision, including the Qaqaa stockpile. "Iraq is obliged," he wrote to the president of the Security Council on Oct. 1, "to declare semiannually changes that have occurred or are foreseen." The agency, Dr. ElBaradei added pointedly, "has received no such notifications or declarations from any state since the agency's inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in March 2003."

                A Lost Stockpile

                Two weeks ago, on Oct. 10, Dr. Mohammed J. Abbas of the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology wrote a letter to the I.A.E.A. to say the Qaqaa stockpile had been lost. He added that his ministry had judged that an "urgent updating of the registered materials is required." A chart in his letter listed 341.7 metric tons, about 377 American tons, of HMX, RDX and PETN as missing.

                The explosives missing from Al Qaqaa are the strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the globe. The Iraqi letter identified the vanished stockpile as containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, which stands for "high melting point explosive," 141.2 metric tons of RDX, which stands for "rapid detonation explosive," among other designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, which stands for "pentaerythritol tetranitrate." The total is roughly 340 metric tons or nearly 380 American tons.

                Five days later, on Oct. 15, European diplomats said, the arms agency wrote the United States mission in Vienna to forward the Iraqi letter and ask that the American authorities inform the international coalition in Iraq of the missing explosives. Dr. ElBaradei, a European diplomat said, is "extremely concerned" about the potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.

                Its fate remains unknown. Glenn Earhart, manager of an Army Corps of Engineers program in Huntsville, Ala., that is in charge of rounding up and destroying lost Iraqi munitions, said he and his colleagues knew nothing of the whereabouts of the Qaqaa stockpile. Administration officials say Iraq was awash in munitions, including other stockpiles of exotic explosives. "The only reason this stockpile was under seal," said one senior administration official, "is because it was located at Al Qaqaa," where nuclear work had gone on years ago.

                As a measure of the size of the stockpile, one large truck can carry about 10 tons, meaning that the missing explosives could fill a fleet of almost 40 trucks. By weight, these explosives pack far more destructive power than TNT, so armies often use them in shells, bombs, mines, mortars and many types of conventional ordinance. "HMX and RDX have a lot of shattering power," said Dr. Van Romero, vice president for research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, or New Mexico Tech, which specializes in explosives. "Getting a large amount is difficult," he added, because most nations carefully regulate who can buy such explosives, though civilian experts can sometimes get licenses to use them for demolition and mining.

                An Immediate Danger

                A special property of HMX and RDX lends them to smuggling and terrorism, experts said. While violently energetic when detonated, they are insensitive to shock and physical abuse during handling and transport because of their chemical stability. A hammer blow does nothing. It takes a detonator, like a blasting cap, to release the stored energy.

                Experts said the insensitivity made them safer to transport than the millions of unexploded shells, mines and pieces of live ammunition that litter Iraq. And its benign appearance makes it easy to disguise as harmless goods, easily slipped across borders. "The immediate danger" of the lost stockpile, said an expert who recently led a team that searched Iraq for deadly arms, "is its potential use with insurgents in very small and powerful explosive devices. The other danger is that it can easily move into the terrorist web across the Middle East."

                More worrisome to the I.A.E.A. - and to some in Washington - is that HMX and RDX are used in standard nuclear weapons design. In a nuclear implosion weapon, the explosives crush a hollow sphere of uranium or plutonium into a critical mass, initiating the nuclear explosion. A crude implosion device - like the one that the United States tested in 1945 in the New Mexican desert and then dropped on Nagasaki, Japan - needs about a ton of high explosive to crush the core and start the chain reaction.
                Last edited by lulldapull; 28 Oct 04,, 03:53.

                Comment


                • #23
                  AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaa

                  Lying pieces of **** Bush and Cheney baastards should be publicly lunched for this sort of treason!

                  LATEST BUSH EXCUSE ON WEAPONS DUMP EVAPORATES

                  George Bush's continuing efforts to avoid responsibility for failing to secure 380 tons of highly dangerous explosives in Iraq just took another blow. The reporter who was actually traveling with the 101st Airborne in the report cited by the Bush campaign has clarified that the unit was not there to secure the massive weapons complex and it was merely a 'pit stop' on their way to Baghdad.

                  Try as it might, the Bush spin machine can not change the truth: the President is responsible for his catastrophic failures in Iraq and needs to personally address this issue.

                  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.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    The problem is that this bible bigot God-damn lying *** wont answer these questions! What does he care if some poor blue colar guy dies in Iraq??? He could give a damn cuz he' s a coward who hid his quivering ass in texas with Daddy throughout the 60's nd 70's! !! only cowards go thru this baptism type ******y rituals like he did with that Billy Graham or that mulla from hell god damn Pat Robertson ******! The guy has zero credibility to be our commander in chief!


                    BREAK THE SILENCE:
                    Key Questions President Bush Must Answer on the Missing Explosives in Iraq:


                    1. Why did the Administration assign such a low priority to securing explosives, munitions and weapons in Iraq?

                    2. The Bush Administration says that it ordered the Iraq Survey Group to look into what happened to the 380 tons of missing explosives (during October 25 briefing, Scott McClellan said it four times) but the head of the unit, Charles Duelfer, says he has not received any orders to do so. What are the facts?

                    3. What is the chronology of action taken by the Bush Administration after being informed that the explosives had gone missing? Who knew what when? When was the civilian leadership at the Pentagon told about the missing explosives? When did Secretary Rumsfeld learn that the explosives had gone missing? When was the President’s National Security Council informed? When National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice briefed on this? When was the President told? And what action was taken?

                    4. Why did the Bush Administration deny the International Atomic Energy Agency’s request to back into Iraq to verify the status of the stockpile?

                    5. What action did Paul Bremer take after reportedly being warned in May 2004 that the explosives had gone missing?

                    6. The 380 tons of missing explosives are the tip of the iceberg. Duelfer reportedly said he wasn’t concerned about al Qaqaa because that Iraq is awash in hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives. Is there an estimate of the total amount of munitions, weapons and explosives that have gone missing in Iraq?

                    7. Since 2003, how many attacks on our troops in Iraq or terrorist bombings in Iraq, Egypt or elsewhere have been carried out using HMX, RDX or PETN – the same kind of explosive that went missing from al Qaqaa?

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      It is not a Democrats' Last Stand.

                      It is for real.

                      The US Invasion force ahd Sensitive Site Monitoring Teams.

                      It is a FAILURE.

                      One must be honest to admit rather than dodge failures.


                      "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

                      I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

                      HAKUNA MATATA

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Lull seems to be trolling......Once again so you understand, They were missing when the Americans got there.
                        Facts to a liberal is like Kryptonite to Superman.

                        -- Larry Elder

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          The Pentagon reported a few days ago that the totals for Munitions secured so far are 400,000 tons of munitions captured with all but 160,000 tons of it destroyed so far.

                          In other words, the 380 tons of missing stuff is less than .1% of the munitions captured by the coalition.

                          Funny how the focus is on 380 tons of explosives that is commonly used to detonate nuclear devices.... that saddam never had of course.
                          Facts to a liberal is like Kryptonite to Superman.

                          -- Larry Elder

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            I have handled enough explosives in my life.

                            I am not concerned with the quantity. I am interested in the quality. WMX and RDX are real bad stuff.

                            They can bring own buildings! Big buildings.

                            There is talk about the AQ doing a second WTC. These would be very useful to those *******s. Very useful.

                            That's what is scary.


                            "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

                            I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

                            HAKUNA MATATA

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Originally posted by smilingassassin
                              The Pentagon reported a few days ago that the totals for Munitions secured so far are 400,000 tons of munitions captured with all but 160,000 tons of it destroyed so far.

                              In other words, the 380 tons of missing stuff is less than .1% of the munitions captured by the coalition.

                              Funny how the focus is on 380 tons of explosives that is commonly used to detonate nuclear devices.... that saddam never had of course.

                              Buddy no matter which way you categorize the missing 400 tons! That much quantity of explosives is enough to last your A-raanb buddies a goddamn lifetime!

                              We are not talking about the how much they have secured out of how much was in Saddams army? We are talking explicitly about the 400 tons that are now missing and some 2 cent militia is now claiming they stole it right from underneath U.S. And Iraqi soldiers noses!

                              Now they will use this to kill thousands of innocent civilians and our soldiers!

                              This baastard Bush wil not admit it anything even if his pathetic bigoted (in denial life) depended on it.

                              I can't believe bush has the audacity to even show his piece of shiit neanderthal face in public anymore!

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Originally posted by Ray
                                I have handled enough explosives in my life.

                                I am not concerned with the quantity. I am interested in the quality. WMX and RDX are real bad stuff.

                                They can bring own buildings! Big buildings.

                                There is talk about the AQ doing a second WTC. These would be very useful to those *******s. Very useful.

                                That's what is scary.

                                Abaay yaar Ray it all over the news here! Now some jahil gaandoo militia in Iraq is saying that they took those explosives! And took way more than 400 tons!

                                I swear to God we have never seen a more incompetent bunch of idiots in the White House! Never in this countries history! The have disgraced us! Our military, and now our governnment!

                                Look at the latest! now this deliberate controversy continues:

                                Uncertainty Remains Over Iraqi Explosives


                                There appear to be two periods of time when the 377 tons of high explosives missing from a military facility in Iraq could have been moved or stolen - in the weeks before the U.S. invasion began or several weeks in April after U.S. troops overran the Al-Qaqaa base and moved on to Baghdad.

                                Iraqi officials told the International Atomic Energy Agency two weeks ago that the explosives vanished as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security."

                                The ministry's letter said the explosives were stolen sometime after coalition forces took control of Baghdad on April 9, 2003. But they have not been able to explain how they know when the explosives were removed from bunkers sealed by the IAEA as part of the weapons inspection program.

                                The disappearance of the explosives has raised questions about why the United States didn't do more to secure the facility and failed to allow full international inspections to resume after the invasion. It has also become an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.

                                The Kerry campaign called the disappearance the latest in a "tragic series of blunders" by the Bush administration in Iraq. The White House has issued a statement saying that the matter is under investigation and the explosives may have been moved before the invasion.

                                IAEA Inspectors report that they checked the seals placed on the bunker storing stockpiles of HMX and RDX kept at al-Qaqaa on March 9. There have been reports that another IAEA team checked the site on March 15, but that has yet to be confirmed.

                                Until March 20, when coalition forces attacked Iraq, the explosives could have been moved to another location without risk of being intercepted by U.S. air or ground forces. U.S. attack jets patrolled Iraq's major highways after March 19 in search of military targets to destroy.

                                Iraqi forces were still at the al-Qaqaa complex on April 3 when Task Force 3-15 of the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division arrived, said Col. Dave Perkins, who commanded the brigade.

                                Troops reported seeing the gates open and several hundred troops were defending the site, Perkins said Wednesday.

                                The infantrymen's mission was to destroy any Iraqi troops in the area and, after defeating the forces in the facility, the task force moved north on April 6 to prepare for the assault on Baghdad. The 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division was the first U.S. unit to enter central Baghdad on April 7.

                                U.S. troops passed through more than a dozen Iraqi military facilities on the march from the Kuwait border to Baghdad, and while cursory checks were made for suspected weapons of mass destruction, large ammunition, weapons and explosives dumps were left unguarded. Commanders reported the coordinates of these sites to higher headquarters so rearguard troops could take care of them.

                                Perkins, now a staff officer at the Pentagon, said that while some looting at the site had taken place, a large-scale operation to remove the explosives using multi-ton trucks would have almost certainly have been detected.

                                There were virtually no civilian vehicles on the roads in late March and early April. U.S. military police patrolled the major roads, which U.S. forces used extensively to resupply the troops in Baghdad.

                                Perkins described Iraq as littered with weapons, and the Qaqaa base was one munitions depot among many. Many other depots his forces found had been cleaned out, with weapons scattered, presumably so they wouldn't be destroyed by airstrikes.

                                "We came upon a lot of these sites," he said. "What we found all the way up was dispersed munitions, dispersed weapons."

                                On April 10, the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division arrived at the perimeter of al-Qaqaa, but did not enter it, said Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit. After 24 hours, the unit moved on, without inspecting the bunkers sealed by the IAEA.

                                The first team with orders to search the facility for dangerous weapons arrived on May 8 to inspect the Latifiyah Phosgene Facility, which was part of the al-Qaqaa complex, Pentagon officials said. Another team inspected a missile and rocket facility also located at al-Qaqaa on May 11.

                                The ammunition storage areas were not inspected until May 27, when the team reported widespread looting of the entire complex. This team reported that the IAEA seals and the high explosives were missing.

                                Throughout Iraq, civilians looted military facilities for anything of potential value between April 11 and May 27, when there were not enough U.S. troops on the ground to stop them.

                                High explosives, such as HMX and RDX, do not explode when exposed to flame, rather burn at a high temperature, which makes them useful for cooking.
                                Last edited by lulldapull; 28 Oct 04,, 14:33.

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