Why GIs Didn't Hunt Explosives

AP ^

[Happy2BMe]

The first U.S. military units to reach the Al-Qaqaa military installation south of Baghdad after the invasion of Iraq did not have orders to search for some 350 tons of explosives that are now said to be missing from the site.

"We were still in a fight," said the commander of the U.S. military unit that was first to arrive in the area, in an interview with CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin, confirming that they did not search the bunkers at the site for explosives, and did not secure the site against looters.

"Our focus was killing bad guys," he continued, adding that he would have needed four times as many troops to search and secure all the ammo dumps his troops came across during the push into Iraq.

A special unit known as Task Force 75 finally searched the compound seven weeks later and found no sign of the explosives, which experts have said had the potential to be used either conventionally or to trigger nuclear weapons.

And while their whereabouts remains a matter under investigation, David Kay - who once headed up the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - says traces of the same type of explosives were found after a bombing this year outside a mosque in Najaf.

The White House says the unit responsible for searching for weapons of mass destruction has been directed to find out what happened.

Charles Duelfer, the head of that unit, told CBS News Tuesday that he has not received any orders to go looking for the missing explosives and doesn't think he should.

"It's hard for me to get that worked up about it," said Duelfer, in a phone interview from Baghdad, noting that Iraq is awash in hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives.

Duelfer also said U.N. weapons inspectors recommended in 1995 that the high explosives be destroyed because of their potential use in a nuclear weapons program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency instead ordered the explosives stored in sealed bunkers 30 miles south of the Iraqi capital. The last time the IAEA verified that the bunkers were still sealed was in March of last year, about a month before the first U.S. troops moved into the complex as they pushed toward Baghdad.

Pentagon officials contend the explosives could have been spirited away by the Iraqis before u.s. troops ever got there. Other officials, including Delfer, blame looters and the chaos that following the fall of Baghdad.

When troops from the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade arrived at the Al-Qaqaa base a day or so after other coalition troops seized Baghdad on April 9, 2003, there were already looters throughout the facility, Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit, told The Associated Press.

The soldiers "secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemical weapons were not present," said Wellman, in an e-mail message to The Associated Press. "Bombs were found but not chemical weapons in that immediate area. Orders were not given from higher to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions, as they (high-explosive weapons) were everywhere in Iraq."

The 101st Airborne was apparently at least the second military unit to arrive at Al-Qaqaa after the U.S. led invasion began. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told The Washington Post that the 3rd Infantry Division reached the site around April 3, fought with Iraq forces and occupied the site. They left after two days, headed for Baghdad.

AP Correspondent Chris Tomlinson, who was embedded with the 3rd Infantry but didn't go to Al-Qaqaa, described the search of Iraqi military facilities south of Baghdad as brief, cursory missions to seek out hostile troops, not to inventory or secure weapons stockpiles. One task force, he said, searched four Iraqi military bases in a single day, meeting no resistance and finding only abandoned buildings, some containing weapons and ammunition.

The enormous size of the bases, the rapid pace of the advance on Baghdad and the limited number of troops involved, made it impossible for U.S. commanders to allocate any soldiers to guard any of the facilities after making a check, Tomlinson said.

The disappearance of the explosives was first reported in Monday's New York Times and has subsequently become a heated issue in the U.S. presidential campaign, with Vice President Dick Cheney questioning on Tuesday whether the explosives were still at the facility when U.S. troops arrived. The Kerry campaign has called the disappearance the latest in a "tragic series of blunders" by the Bush administration.

Two weeks ago, Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology told the International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives had vanished from the former military installation 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.

The disappearance, which the U.N. nuclear agency reported to the Security Council on Monday, 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 March 2003 invasion.

On Tuesday, Russia, citing the disappearance, called on the U.N. Security Council to discuss the return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq. But the United States said American inspectors were investigating the loss and that there was no need for U.N. experts to return.

The Al-Qaqaa explosives included HMX and RDX, key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in repeated bomb attacks on U.S.-led multinational forces and Iraqi police and national guardsmen. But HMX is also a "dual use" substance powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.

Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said that on May 27, 2003, a U.S. military team specifically looking for weapons went to the site but did not find anything with IAEA stickers on it.

The Pentagon would not say whether it had informed the IAEA that the conventional explosives were not where they were supposed to be. Boykin said that the Pentagon was investigating whether the information was handed on to anyone else at the time.

[Josh in PA]

I meant that we are flying over this area CONSTANTLY..

There is no possible way the insurgents could have gotten 40 semi's and moved this stuff.

It HAD TO HAVE BEEN MOVED BEFORE WE WERE THERE.

What the hell else was moved before we got there!! (WMDS!)


WHERE IS KARL ROVE!

[palmer]

I will disown this party if it doesn't produce Zarqawi within 48 hours.

For me it's enough to know that Kerry would negotiate with him.

[FreedomPoster]

You need to go read up on A-Bombs 101. Fission bombs involve driving chunks of appropriate materials together with explosives, in order to achieve critical mass and a fission reaction. H-bombs typically use a heavy-hydrogen core, inside of an A-bomb, to actually fuse nuclei and create an even bigger explosion.

[Happy2BMe]

From the article:

__________________

"The International Atomic Energy Agency instead ordered the explosives stored in sealed bunkers 30 miles south of the Iraqi capital. The last time the IAEA verified that the bunkers were still sealed was in March of last year, about a month before the first U.S. troops moved into the complex as they pushed toward Baghdad."

__________________

The IAEA (a UN ally) having knowledge of the location of these EX is very telling in that they must have known when they were moved even after the war broke out. Somehow the UN knew these EX were relocated, even though they supposedly had no presence in Iraq to be able to detect their being moved in the first place.

[Techster]

Actually, the process is fission. The fissionable material has to be forced together in a critical mass quick enough for the fission to be an explosive release of energy. Fusion is the forcing of hydrogen atoms together to create helium and the release of energy.

[federal]

to actually fuse nuclei and create an even bigger explosion.This procaess is called nuclear fusion

Look I'm not going to argue with you I know enough about a-bombs and nuclear energy in general, that I know the difference between fusion and fission,

fission is also the process with which nuclear power plants operate which requires no driving together or compacting of materials.

I believe you should do a little more studying of the subject.

[federal]

The fissionable material has to be forced together in a critical mass quick enough for the fission to be an explosive release of energy.

Oh really, then what is the process which is used to drive nuclear power plants? If materials have to be forced together for fission how do power plants work?

[PogySailor]

The first atomic weapon used (Little Boy) was a fission bomb. It worked by creating a driving two pieces of nuclear material together creating a super critical mass and releasing a large amount of energy in a short time span. Nuclear reactors (at least PLWR) are a controlled fission process.

[PreciousLiberty]

Actually the process you are talking about is called fusion not fission. The compacting of material until it combines on a molecular level is nuclear fusion.

No. The "compacting" remark I made referred to the style of atomic weapon used on Nagasaki, known as "Fatman". This type of weapon contains a hollow sphere of fissionable material, which is crushed at detonation by symmetrically placed explosive charges into a lump which thereby achieves critical mass. The resulting mass fissions (the atomic nuclei split) which produces the energy of the blast.

Fusion is the process of combining light atomic nuclei (as opposed to the heavy elements which release energy during fission) to release energy. It produces more energy than fission, but in weapons requires a fission "igniter" to heat the fusible material to the required temperature (hundreds of millions of degrees, or about 10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun). This temperature, not compaction, is what makes the fusion weapon work.

I hope that helped. :-)

[federal]

I understand that and "fatman" was a fusion bomb, which is the compacting of fissionable material to the point of nuclear fusion. Which is much more powerful and is less likely to accidents and is the process with which the USA's bombs have been made every since.

[FreedomPoster]

Yeah, there's no difference in a fission reaction designed to produce heat to make steam to drive a stream turbine-generator, and one designed to create a large explosion.

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/arm/arm41.htm

"A subcritical sphere of plutonium was placed in the center of a hollow sphere of high explosive (HE). Numerous detonators located on the surface of the HE were fired simultaneously to produce a powerful inward pressure on the capsule, squeezing it and increasing its density. This resulted in a supercritical condition and a nuclear explosion."

[EQAndyBuzz]

Rove is sitting there letting this build. Tomorrow he will come out and totally hit Kerry it the head with it.

Waiting patiently.

[FreedomPoster]

Fatman was not a fusion bomb. Period. Stop digging.

http://people.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-bomb6.htm

[shhrubbery!]

Charles Duelfer, the head of that unit, told CBS News Tuesday that he has not received any orders to go looking for the missing explosives and doesn't think he should.

"It's hard for me to get that worked up about it," said Duelfer, in a phone interview from Baghdad, noting that Iraq is awash in hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives.

LOL. Are the lame brains in the mainstream media 'smart' enough to 'get' Duelfer's meaning?

[SuziQ]

After tiresome days of passive defense by the GOP brain trust, I will disown this party if it doesn't produce Zarqawi within 48 hours.

You need to get a BDG (Big Damn Grip) and stop believing everything that emanates from the MSM!!! Everyone was expecting this kind of crap from these folks in the run up to the election!

Instead of throwing in the towel, get your butt out there and tell people that this story is a LIE! Karl Rove and the President can talk all day about what a load of malarkey it is, but do you think we'd ever see that on camera? No possible way! But we, within our circles of friends and acquaintances can spread the word!

[Rakkasan1]

too busy gaurding the museum of torture antiquities

[BlueNgold]

How to win arguments on this matter with a liberal:

I'm sorry, I missed something, who sealed this stuff?
Oh - the IAEA - and who are they again?
The International Atomic Energy Association?
Hey, weren't they the ones doing inspections?
So WMD programs DID exist! (Stand back as the head may explode.)

- If they are able to continue -
Yes of course they are missing, along with the REST of the WMD program components that Saddam hid.
Oh, it's Bush's fault.
Are you actually trying to say the the 101st Airborne and 3rd I.D. are so incompetent as to not only miss this stuff amidst everything else they found when they got there, or that they and the entire Navy/Air Force recon teams couldn't see 38 semi-trucks? Or was it 150 duece-n-a-halfs? Or did they use 760 toyota pickup trucks?

Aren't you guys sick of all that 1971 kick the military stuff yet?

[Rakkasan1]

actually,Rove has the explosives. Proof you say?
Have you ever seen Rove and Saddam together?

[AFPhys]

Dead On comment.
.

[Happy2BMe]

"Aren't you guys (Democrats) sick of all that 1971 kick the military stuff yet?"

_________________

ANSWER: NO

You have the Democrat mindset down very, very good!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Understanding the Mind Of A Democrat ZOMBIEwww.brainterminal.com

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Official Democrat Party Terrorism Policy

Do Nothing Democrats On The War In Terror
By Tamara Wilhite

D = do-nothing democrat, C = concerned citizen

C: What do we do about the terrorists?

D: Do nothing.

C: Shouldn't we be trying to fight them?

D: Certainly not. If we kill them, they'll hate us.

C: Don't they already hate us?

D: That's beside the point. They don't like us, and we can't give them a valid reason for their hatred of us by killing their cohorts.

C: What about the fact that they've been killing us for years?

D: Soldiers volunteered for that when they volunteered for the military, so their deaths don't count unless it furthers our agenda. Conservative black diplomats serving in Africa don't matter. Dead evangelical missionaries get what they asked for - martyrdom. We shouldn't do anything about those idiots who got themselves killed.

C: What should we do if they continue to attack us at home?

D: Nothing! We can't strike back. That would risk enraging the Arab Street.

C: I thought they already hated us.

D: Yes, but striking out at them would breed more terrorists.

C: Aren't they already breeding terrorists?

D: Yes. But the Muslim minority in this nation is very vocal and very active in increasing their numbers by both local production and foreign imports. We can't risk them being angry with us. They're very conservative, but they can be lulled to the Democratic side. Acting against their friends in the Middle East risks them becoming violent in our own streets.

C: Haven't some of those locally born or naturalized citizens sought to act against the US?

D: We can't assume they did anything. We don't have adequate proof yet.

C: Those men from Lackawanna pled guilty.

D: They haven't run out of appeals, so we can't assume that they're guilty.

C: What can we do to defend ourselves from attack?

D: Converting to Islam is a possibility.

C: If we do nothing, we might not be allowed to make that choice willingly.

D: Nonsense! Islam is a religion of peace!

C: The Sunni and Shiite attacks on each other in Iraq and Pakistan are proof that that's not a safe option. They're throwing suicide bombers at other sects of Islam even as they send them at our allies and us.

D: That's a trivial detail. They hate us because we're oppressing them.

C: How are we oppressing them?

D: We're buying their oil!

C: How is that oppressing them?

D: We're bringing capitalism to their socialist dictatorships. Democracy could only be around the corner if that continued.

C: Then how do we stop oppressing them?

D: We should stop buying their oil.

C: Then how will we keep our economy going?

D: We won't. That's part of the beauty of it. We would just do nothing. No oil imports. No problems.

C: Our economy would stall -

D: More Democratic votes.

C: We'd see the transportation network grind to a stop -

D: More people doing nothing, and that would save the environment, too.

C: Shouldn't we build more power plants here, then, to reduce dependence on their oil?

D: Oh, no.

C: Why not?

D: That costs too much.

C: Per your arguments, it would reduce the terrorist motivations.

D: Yes, but it would provide jobs and power. We can't do that.

C: So you vote to turn off the oil imports and to not bother with a replacement fuel source?

D: Of course! Doing nothing about the supply or the demand issues would bring the whole nation to a stop! Imagine it! Everyone doing nothing ... except being motivated to vote for us because we can solve the crisis!