Posted on 10/26/2004 3:43:31 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
....Treasure trove
Military analysts had mixed reactions to the significance of the missing explosives.
John Pike, a defense analyst for GlobalSecurity. org, said the explosives, the disappearance of which was first reported in yesterday's New York Times, would prove to be an "unprecedented treasure trove" of bomb-making material.
"I think the evil-doers will put it to good use," he said. "You'd have to be concerned. We'll be hearing about it again."
The missing cache, reported to be about 380 tons of the explosives HMX and RDX, not only offers a large quantity of material but more importantly has useful "fabrication properties" for making bombs, Pike said.
The materials can handily be molded and shaped into bombs, he said, but the explosives are only "slightly more powerful" than TNT and not as explosive as C4 chemical explosives.
While both HMX and RDX can be used in detonating nuclear bombs, there is no indication that whoever took the explosives has materials for building a nuclear weapon. Those materials are more difficult to acquire, Pike said....
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Late Monday, the mystery took another twist -- NBC News, which had a crew embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion, reported that the material had already vanished by the time American troops arrived there on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell. (Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived) http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html
The Bush camp wasted little time in firing back, firing off a statement saying that Kerry's criticism of the president over the missing material has "been proven false before the day is over."
"John Kerry's attacks today were baseless," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said. "He said American troops did not secure the explosives, when the explosives were already missing."
Schmidt also said that Kerry "neglects to mention the 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that are either destroyed or in the process of being destroyed" in Iraq.
But Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart fired back with a statement of his own, accusing the Bush campaign of "distorting" the NBC News report.
"In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame," Lockhart said. "It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous."...
Lockhart did not elaborate on how the Bush campaign was distorting the NBC report.....
Not only that. They ignore the fact that both CNN and NBC are reporting that the explosives have been missing since April 2003. The ONLY reason this is being brought up NOW is to prop up Kerry's Campaign.
Bump!
Question the timing. Expose the inaccuracy. Throw in references to Jayson Blair. Make comparisons to Dan Rather. Most of all, expose Kerry as the kneejerk alarmist he's become, someone who undoubtedly gets an extra spring in his step whenever bad news or allegedly bad news comes out of Iraq.
Lockhart will slime and spin and lie....it's what the Kerry camp does.
Howevewr, the MSM won't help us out on this at all. Is Fox talking about this at all?
"..(Exerpt From John E. Pikes bio at WWW.FAS.ORG) "He advised the 1984 Mondale campaign, the 1988 Dukakis campaign, and the 1992 Clinton campaign on defense and space policy issues. He is frequently called on by print and broadcast media for commentary, and by Congressional Committees for testimony, on space and national security issues." .."
Why does the media think John Pike is a "national security expert"? is a treasure trove of debunking and some of that material has been disappeared, probably to preserve some fraction of this guy's reputation.
He doesn't know from shinola.
E.D. did bring it up and questioned the Dem. spokeswoman.
The Dem just waved it off by saying it is important for Kerry to point out how dangerous things are in Iraq (paraphrased).
It will be on all the radio talk shows...on the socialist controlled network TV? It will be buried and some other lie brought up to cover that.
In other BREAKING NEWS, Francisco Franco has died.
I believe Bush must defend the troops (his troops).
He can't let it stand anymore than he let stand the Tora Bora (bin Laden) business.
Is the media in a sad state of affairs or what? The fact that a story is false doesn't dissuade them in the slightest. Just keep repoting it! It's mind-boggling.
I guess they will keep repeating the lie. Its headline news in my newspaper this morning.
Pike gives the impression he's non-political but if you know his background and track record, it puts a new light on how he spins things.
Hopefully, Dick Cheney will do it. If not him, have Lynne Cheney do it. If not her, have Liz Cheney do it. If not them, have Giuliani do it. If not him, have Gen. Tommy Franks do it. Heck, have the twins do it!
The bottom line is that, assuming the NBC report is correct, this is a golden opportunity presenting itself to the Bush campaign. It shows how Kerry will believe anything as long as it's anti-Bush, anti-troops, anti-commanders, anti-America. It shows this country's undecided voters just how French John Kerry really is.
The MSM is campaigning for Kerry.
Bump!
Bump!
Has the Bush Administration or the Pentagon issued any statement on this yet except to say they question the timing? Good Lord, they must stop this NOW.
Check Post #2.
Fox and Friends is debunking the lie now.
You're right, they must. I'm afraid they'll be too timid to fight back, just like they have been on Kerry's baseless Tora Bora charges. Kerry keeps saying Bush dropped the ball at Tora Bora, but Gen. Franks has contradicted Kerry on just about every one of his points in a little-publicized editorial. Most Americans have only heard Kerry's allegations and not Franks' account. If I was Karl Rove, I'd be making Kerry eat his words. I'd be asking the American people who they trust - Gen. Franks or the goose hunter?
That's odd. Lockhart is usually so talkative.
Kerry wants answers on missing explosives
This story has already been debunked by NBC. Also, AP had a story at the same time in 2003 that mentioned the fact that no explosives of the type cited by the NYT were there. They were gone when we got there. For your information: Polipundit.com has run a contest to name this scandal and the winner was by litig8tr. He proposed NYTrogate....(nitrogate) Hilarious. This is what we will call this fake story. NYTimes ran another story about it today but that was because they were too late to pull it after NBC ran their story last night. Keep hammering on NYT and CBS who collaborated on this fake story to smear Bush.
I is worth noting that neither CNN International nor BBC has reported beyond saying the material was stolen in 2003 and quoting Lockhart. The IAEA report that the materials were missing a month prior to the USA siezure of the sight has only been reported on local news. I am sure I will read the entire story in the International Herald Tribune tomarrow (lol).
Bump!
Thank you for the info and LINKS!
NYT article by Sanger is still spinning this, saying the Bush camp scrambled to get to the bottom of this and that the Atomic International warned the White house. CNN just said Bush says they MAY have disappeared before invasion. This is unreal...everyone spinning and no one telling the truth.
On Fox & Friends this AM Jamie (??) Amanpor's husband - who works as Kerry's foreign affairs advisor said, (paraphrased) that this new information makes no difference. He said it just shows that the Bush administration didn't have enough men on the ground going in to cover all these sights and that he didn't have enough men on the ground in Afghanistan to get bin Laden. Yada yada yada....
The disappearance raised questions about why the United States didn't do more to secure the Al-Qaqaa facility 30 miles south of Baghdad and failed to allow full international inspections to resume after the March 2003 invasion.
But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said coalition forces were present in the vicinity of the site both during and after major combat operations, which ended May 1, 2003 — and searched the facility but found none of the explosives material in question. That raised the possibility that the explosives had disappeared before U.S. soldiers could secure the site in the immediate invasion aftermath.
The Pentagon would not say whether it had informed the nuclear agency at that point that the conventional explosives were not where they were supposed to be.
Al-Qaqaa is near Youssifiyah, an area rife with ambush attacks. An Associated Press Television News crew that drove past the compound Monday saw no visible security at the gates of the site, a jumble of low-slung, yellow-colored storage buildings that appeared deserted.
"The most immediate concern here is that these explosives could have fallen into the wrong hands," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.
The agency first placed a seal over Al-Qaqaa storage bunkers holding the explosives in 1991 as part of U.N. sanctions that ordered the dismantlement of Iraq's nuclear program after the Gulf War.
IAEA inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers, Fleming said. Inspectors visited the site again in March 2003, but didn't view the explosives because the seals were not broken, she said.
http://wcco.com/topstories/topstories_story_300075944.html
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Note to IAEA, never trust a brutal dictator. Break seals and check for yourself.
Well would somebody tell these john f*** kerry affiliates to get up to speed on this lie!!!! Ch 4 here in NoVa just did a lead in with the missing explosives which never went missing.
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