Posted on 10/26/2004 9:12:27 PM PDT by conservativepoet
CBS Reported Suspicious Powder At Al Qaqaa In April 2003 (CBS Blows It Again)
Alert CQ reader Samuel Silver sent me this article from the archives of CBS News -- the same organization that helped prepped NYTrogate with the New York Times -- which shows that the Third Infantry Division had reached Al Qaqaa and discovered thousands of vials of a mysterious powdered explosive by April 3, 2003 (coincidentally, my birthday):
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 is part of a larger complex known as the Latifiyah Explosives and Ammunition Plant al Qa Qaa [emph mine -- CE].
Troops of the 3ID discovered thousands of boxes, each with three vials of white powder, the form in which the explosive agents that the IAEA claim went missing were stored. From this description, it sounds as if the material left at Al Qaqaa would have only been samples or starter materials, as storing 380 tons of powdered explosive in vials would have taken most of Baghdad to store.
Nevertheless, the contemporaneous CBS report showed that the 3ID knew what they had at Al Qaqaa and did more than just a cursory look around the joint to go sightseeing. They suspected that the facility held WMD or chemical-weapons manufacturing capability. A bottle labeled "tabun," a nerve agent, was found with a small amount of the chemical inside. The troops also discovered atropine stored at the bunker, an antidote for nerve agents, making them very suspicious of the shells stored at Al Qaqaa.
With all of the pressure on the Bush administration to find WMD, does anyone seriously think for a moment that they left Al Qaqaa without checking for UNSCOM and/or IAEA seals? From the description that CBS gave at the time, the Army took a very close look at the materiel at Al Qaqaa:
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. ...
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 idea that various Army units showed up at the weapons facility and strolled around a few minutes before moving up the road to Baghdad, leaving the lights on and the front door unlocked, looks more and more ridiculous. The Army knew very well what it had found, and it searched the bunkers carefully looking for the most dangerous and high-priority items.
Shame on CBS for not even checking its own archives in order to research their hit piece on Bush. Shame also on the NY Times for not reviewing the embeds for the units in the area during the invasion to verify the contemporaneous reporting. Even if one wants to write a hit piece, doing the proper research should be a basic part of the job.
Heh.
Full CBS Story link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/04/iraq/main547667.shtml
first time i saw NYTro Gate, very clever.
Wow, beat me to it :)
bttt
Betcha Drudge carries this later tonight or tomorrow. Egads, the leftists' wild-eyed plot for an October Surprise is melting like so much goo.
well, they'll say "See, it was there in those boxes. Now it's gone -- obviously Bush's fault"
What are the chances our guys destroyed it at some point?
COOL!!!
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Doesn't all of this make you wonder what total crap these "news" organizations have been pushing all these years? They probably wouldn't know the truth if it bit them in the fanny.
This should be sent to Rush and Fox news. Great job by the blogger.
Some reporter needs to ask if the chemical signatures of the C4 precursors held at Al Qaqaa are on file with the US military.
Some reporter needs to ask if the Al Qaqaa facility was on the IAEA or UN inspectors' lists of known locations holding chem/bio weapons. And follow up with a question if the site was under guard to monitor chem/bio agents still located at the facility.
Why I can't get these answers yet, can be answered by explaining the failure of the media to re-report their own damn stories during the time of invasion and occupation of Iraq.
ping
"Egads, the leftists' wild-eyed plot for an October Surprise is melting like so much goo."
Yes. But the harms already done. To many people heard the CBS report, and have heard the hundreds of replays of the Lurch castigating GWB on this issue. That is all Lurch wanted to do. Plant the seeds of doubt, and then force GWB
to counter. Meanwhile all those millions of folks watching the original TV reports, and Lurches venom, now have it planted in their head that our military, therefore GWB, and Rummy etc., are at fault.
This is the problem all along. Lurch speaks, those that do not know the facts on given issue, think he may be right, then switch there channels to some stupid show and break out the fatty salty treats.
This is the has keeped the demos alive all these years.
Veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery interesting and yet another nail in the coffin of this story.
I agree.
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