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NY Times: Iraqis Tell of Looting at Munitions Site
NY Times ^ | 10/28/04

Posted on 10/27/2004 7:03:43 PM PDT by ambrose

MISSING EXPLOSIVES

4 Iraqis Tell of Looting at Munitions Site in '03

By JAMES GLANZ and JIM DWYER

Published: October 28, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 27 - Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday.

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The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and later heaving unwanted items off the trucks.

Two witnesses were employees of Al Qaqaa - one a chemical engineer and the other a mechanic - and the third was a former employee, a chemist, who had come back to retrieve his records, determined to keep them out of American hands. The mechanic, Ahmed Saleh Mezher, said employees asked the Americans to protect the site but were told this was not the soldiers' responsibility.

The accounts do not directly address the question of when 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives vanished from the site sometime after early March, the last time international inspectors checked the seals on the bunkers where the material was stored. It is possible that Iraqi forces removed some explosives before the invasion.

But the accounts make clear that what set off much if not all of the looting was the arrival and swift departure of American troops, who did not secure the site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it.

"The looting started after the collapse of the regime," said Wathiq al-Dulaimi, a regional security chief, who was based nearby in Latifiya. But once it had begun, he said, the booty streamed toward Baghdad.

Earlier this month, on Oct. 10, the directorate of national monitoring at the Ministry of Science and Technology notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives, which are used in demolition and missiles and are the raw material for plastic explosives, were missing. The agency has monitored the explosives because they can also be used as the initiator of an atomic bomb.

Agency officials examined the explosives in January 2003 and noted in early March that their seals were still in place. On April 3, the Third Infantry Division arrived with the first American troops.

Chris Anderson, a photographer for U.S. News and World Report who was with the division's Second Brigade, recalled that the area was jammed with American armor on April 3 and 4, which he believed made the removal of the explosives unlikely. "It would be quite improbable for this amount of weapons to be looted at that time because of the traffic jam of armor," he said.

The brigade blew up numerous caches of arms throughout the area, he said. Mr. Anderson said he did not enter the munitions compound.

The Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division arrived outside the site on April 10, under the command of Col. Joseph Anderson. The brigade had been ordered to move quickly to Baghdad because of civil disorder there after Mr. Hussein's government fell on April 9.

They gathered at Al Qaqaa, about 30 miles south, simply as a matter of convenience, Colonel Anderson said in an interview this week. He said that when he arrived at the site - unaware of its significance - he saw no signs of looting, but was not paying close attention.

Because he thought the brigade would be moving on to Baghdad within hours, Al Qaqaa was of no importance to his mission, he said, and he was unaware of the explosives that international inspectors said were hidden inside.

Pentagon officials said Wednesday that analysts were examining surveillance photographs of the munitions site. But they expressed doubts that the photographs, which showed vehicles at the location on several occasions early in the conflict, before American troops moved through the area, would be able to indicate conclusively when the explosives were removed.

Col. David Perkins, who commanded the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, called it "very highly improbable" that 380 tons of explosives could have been trucked out of Al Qaqaa in the weeks after American troops arrived.

Moving that much material, said Colonel Perkins, who spoke Wednesday to news agencies and cable television, "would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks."

He conceded that some looting of the site had taken place. But a chemical engineer who worked at Al Qaqaa and identified himself only as Khalid said that once troops left the base itself, people streamed in to steal computers and anything else of value from the offices. They also took munitions like artillery shells, he said.

Mr. Mezher, the mechanic, said it took the looters about two weeks to disassemble heavy machinery at the site and carry that off after the smaller items were gone.

James Glanz reported from Baghdad for this article and Jim Dwyer from New York. Ali Adeeb contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Khalid W. Hussein and Zainab Obeid fromAl Qaqaa.


TOPICS: Front Page News; Politics/Elections; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: alqaqaa; ammogate; iraq
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To: jackbill
Three Iraq's carried off 380 TONS of explosive??????

Sure. They each put about a half pound in their pockets. Let's see that's 760,000 pounds of explosives times 2. Heck, that's only 1.52 million Iraqis. I bet there's at least that many people passing by there each day. The New York Times probably had at least a million reporters at that storage site.

81 posted on 10/27/2004 7:58:12 PM PDT by Log
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To: HawaiianGecko

Yugo, must have been the Turbo .4 Liter with dual overhead squirrels.


82 posted on 10/27/2004 7:58:32 PM PDT by agincourt1415 (Wolves are gathering)
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To: ambrose
New York Times source of absolute truth about 'missing explosives': Iraqi looters and Baathist officers

ABC source of absolut truth about John Kerry's 'tour' in Vitenam: Vietcong terrorists

I think I'm detecting a pattern here.....

83 posted on 10/27/2004 7:59:51 PM PDT by Phsstpok (often wrong, but never in doubt)
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To: Phsstpok
By the way did anyone in the Government leak a copy of Kerry's BAD CONDUCT DISCHARGE?

Remember, You heard if first on Freeper!

84 posted on 10/27/2004 8:02:09 PM PDT by agincourt1415 (Wolves are gathering)
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To: HawaiianGecko
I was just looking at the same link. From other links I've found that RDX has a 170% TNT equivalent. So this 380 tons is equivalent to less that 700 tons of TNT or a .7 kiloton nuclear device. I'm not even sure a nuke can be made with that small of a yield. This is much ado about little. Terrorists with enough money should be able to get their hands on all of the high explosives they want.
85 posted on 10/27/2004 8:03:57 PM PDT by ml1954 (Kerry, A Legend In His Own Mind.)
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To: Drango
Can you say CBS? The Slimes didn't vet the story...they just ran with it.

That's my understanding also. Can you say Mary Mapes? CBS producer and left wingnut. I'd bet a cold one her finger prints are all over this one just like Rather's "memos".

FGS

86 posted on 10/27/2004 8:25:23 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (ABCNNBCBS: An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.)
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To: ml1954

I agree 380 tons of 400,000 + 380 tons is only nine ten thousandths of the total or nine one hundreths of one percent. BIG DEAL, lol... Oh My God, there are explosives in Iraq! Kerry is making himself look like a foolish putz.


87 posted on 10/27/2004 8:28:04 PM PDT by HawaiianGecko (Just try to reason a man out of a position he wasn't reasoned into to begin with...)
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To: ambrose

Did 400 looters take 2,000 pounds each or did 2,000 looters take 400 pounds each?


88 posted on 10/27/2004 8:31:05 PM PDT by Mike Darancette (Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.)
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To: jimbo123
The Washington Times will not load. This article; main page; nothing.

FGS

89 posted on 10/27/2004 8:41:27 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (ABCNNBCBS: An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.)
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To: ForGod'sSake

The Washington Times will not load. This article; main page; nothing. FGS

I has to try several times to get it. The site must be getting hammered.

90 posted on 10/27/2004 8:44:15 PM PDT by ml1954 (Kerry, A Legend In His Own Mind.)
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To: HawaiianGecko

Not only that, but using artillery shells for bombs instead of a box of RDX has a desirable and much sought after side affect, for those intent on using explosives to maximize damage and kill people. It's called shrapnel.


91 posted on 10/27/2004 8:49:32 PM PDT by ml1954 (Kerry, A Legend In His Own Mind.)
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To: ml1954
Yep. Finally loaded. I didn't check to see if this article had been posted as its own thread on FR. If not, it should be. I'll poke around some.

FGS

92 posted on 10/27/2004 8:49:40 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (ABCNNBCBS: An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.)
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To: ml1954
Posted HERE at 10:34 P.M.
93 posted on 10/27/2004 8:56:15 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (ABCNNBCBS: An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.)
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To: bahblahbah
"a former employee, a chemist, who had come back to retrieve his records, determined to keep them out of American hands."

This I believe. That site was a nuclear research facility. Who knows what names and damaging info was in there?

94 posted on 10/27/2004 9:19:23 PM PDT by endthematrix (10 out of 10 terrorists agree-Anybody but Bush!)
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To: ambrose
One wonders how it is possible for anyone to be so gullible to swallow anything at the NYT but already some of the spin is taking hold - so much so that part of the original 'facts' as told have now gone by the wayside as if they never existed. Remember how when the story was first released it was deliberately slanted to make it look like the whole sorry 'missing explosives' episode was something that just happened recently - like maybe last week? This aspect has very conveniently been slowly fading into the fog and replaced with an argument that the exact time of disappearance is still not known but was sometime after the troops first came to the site. This has been hammered upon by the NYT in subsequent articles (and of course picked up by all the shills on the boob-tube) such that it's as if this is what they had said all along. One can't ever lose sight that the original insinuation (that it was a recent event)was the part of the lie that caught everyone's attention first - and by allowing it to be ignored is to let the slimes escape unscathed from the false pretext that they had set up. That they have gotten caught in their web of lies is a given - but to cede them this point is to allow them to change the argument from one where a damning story that supposedly occurred during the election campaign (when the war was over and troops are trying to secure the peace) is replaced with a damning story that occurred some time in the past in the middle of a time when there was so much activity going on that it is hard to keep the time-line all straight (or so it could be argued). By taking this tact, it makes it a lot easier for the slimes to obfuscate and slither away and makes it less likely that they can be held accountable.
95 posted on 10/27/2004 9:20:10 PM PDT by Asfarastheeastisfromthewest...
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To: ambrose

Reminds me of how the museum was looted in Iraq...


96 posted on 10/27/2004 9:59:32 PM PDT by Ruth A.
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To: MJY1288
These people at the "Old Grey Whore" are a joke

Too bad they didn't "wear grey" 140 years ago; we wouldn't have to be dealing with them now.

97 posted on 10/27/2004 10:41:38 PM PDT by ApplegateRanch (The world needs more horses, and fewer Jackasses!)
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To: ambrose
A report I heard on Glenn Beck's show said the "looting" would have to amount to the equivalent of 100 men working 12 hours a day for 10 days loading 40 very large truck.

Looters's avarice can be amazing, but I doubt they worked like army ants for days in cleaning this place out without detection.

The NYT just wants to keep the story alive with what is left of their reputation until after the election. Then they figure with one of their own at the helm, they will be able to restore things to the level of control over the dumbed down public they once enjoyed.

98 posted on 10/27/2004 10:50:21 PM PDT by intolerancewillNOTbetolerated (I suck at my current job, so PROMOTE me. - Peter-Principle Kerry)
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