Posted on 10/25/2004 10:59:21 PM PDT by ambrose
Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived NBC News says its crew was embedded with soldiers at time
(CNN) -- The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new twist, after a network embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion of Iraq reported that the material had already vanished by the time American troops arrived.
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 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 to find that the material was already gone.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
MSNBC is reporting that their inbeds arrived at the same time as the troops did and they saw that the stockpile was gone.
Gotta love those inbed reporters :)
The caller said it really was US' fault b/c, after all the 'research' he did, he 'found' that the munitions were actually moved when the UN sanctions were lifted b/c of the US war effort. So, if the UN sanctions were not lifted the munitions could never have been moved, therefore, it is (repeat over and over) Bushs' fault!
OK, I'm sure there are just a few FReepers who could help me out on this.
Alright, I'm sure you all are ready to give up. Do you wanna know how I got all of those explosives out?
I deliberately turned on CNN this morning and am still awaiting word.
HA! Excellent point.
Where is the report on Kerry's bogus campaigning on this issue?
Funny, CNN is no longer playing this story on it's website. Sweeping under the carpet?
It's even worse than that. CBS 60 Minutes was going to run it on 31 Oct, but the NYT ran it first (see Drudge). This is bigger than Rathergate. The amazing thing is FOX is pretty much ignoring it (what's wrong with those guys).
I hope all of those FReepers who criticized President Bush for allowing embedded reporters during the invasion of Iraq now see how important it was that reporters were present. Had NBC not had an embedded reporter in there, the MSM would still be saying that our troops let those weapons be stolen because they were too busy protecting the oil fields.
Maybe if we had gone in there one month earlier (instead of waiting for Senate votes and French chit-chat), we might have captured or destroyed the whole cache of explosives.
There seems to be overwhelming evidence that 380 ton of explosives so powerful that less than a pound brought down an airplane were in Iraq, but not when our troops got there.
So the real news is:
Bush was right all along. Iraq had WMD.
Excuse me Senator but these weapons that Bush can't find?..are they capable of causing MASS DESTRUCTION?
Exactly.
I suspect someone on George W's staff is carring around a laptop dedicated to Free Republic to keep up on what's going on...And to stay ahead of the game...
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