Posted on 10/29/2004 2:03:51 AM PDT by ambrose
Posted on Fri, Oct. 29, 2004
TV Video May Show Missing Explosives
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Videotape shot by a Minnesota television crew traveling with U.S. troops in Iraq when they first opened the bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa munitions base nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein shows what appeared to be high explosives still in barrels and bearing the markings of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The video taken by KSTP of St. Paul on April 18, 2003, could reinforce suggestions that tons of explosives missing from a munitions installation in Iraq were looted after the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. The video was broadcast nationally Thursday on ABC.
"The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al-Qaqaa," David A. Kay, a former American official who directed the hunt in Iraq for unconventional weapons and visited the site, told The New York Times. "The damning thing is the seals. The Iraqis didn't use seals on anything. So I'm absolutely sure that's an IAEA seal."
The question of what happened to the tons of explosives has become a major issue in the closing days of the presidential campaign.
Democrat John Kerry says the missing explosives - powerful enough to demolish a building, bring down a jetliner or set off a nuclear weapon - are another example of the Bush administration's poor planning and incompetence in handling the war in Iraq. President Bush says the explosives were possibly removed by Saddam's forces before the invasion.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld entered the debate Thursday, suggesting the 377 tons of explosives were taken away before U.S. forces arrived, saying any large effort to loot the material afterward would have been detected.
"We would have seen anything like that," he said in one of two radio interviews he gave at the Pentagon. "The idea it was suddenly looted and moved out, all of these tons of equipment, I think is at least debatable."
The Pentagon also declassified and released a single image, taken by reconnaissance aircraft or satellite just days before the war, showing two trucks outside one of the dozens of storage bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa munitions base.
The particular bunker is not one known to have contained any of the missing explosives, and Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita said the image only shows that there was some Iraqi activity at the base when it was taken, on March 17. Di Rita said the image says nothing about what happened to the explosives.
Rumsfeld, in one radio interview, also cast doubt on the suggestion of one of his subordinates that Russian forces assisted the Iraqis in removing them.
John Shaw, the deputy U.S. undersecretary of defense for international technology security, suggested to The Washington Times in an interview that the Russians may have been involved, prompting an angry denial from Moscow.
Rumsfeld said, "I have no information on that at all, and cannot validate that even slightly."
But at issue is whether the weapons were moved before or after U.S. forces occupied that region of the country in early April. No one has been able to provide conclusive evidence either way, although Iraqi officials blamed it on poor U.S. security after Baghdad fell.
The Pentagon has said it's looking into the matter, and officials note that 400,000 tons of recovered Iraqi munitions have either been destroyed or are slated to be destroyed.
Wow, am I seeing things or is the AP actually leaving open the possibility that the video DOESN'T show the "missing" explosives.
Interesting.
This is how we end the election, on this stupid "he said, she said" ridiculous and ultimately pointless story?
I am sick to death of it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1261052/posts
See this post. Watch the video for yourself. The video doesn't prove anything at all.
This late there are not many undecided voters left. I doubt this sways many one way or the other. If 300 whatever tons of explosives in a country that had hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions is decisive against Bush, that voter was headed for Kerry anyway.
I think the whole election boils down to voter turnout and how much voter fraud there is.
The video is a plus for kerry.
Why? The TV news will show 2 seconds of it, and tell you what THEY think it is.
They won't tell you that 1.1 D classification under the UN applies to 72 substances/explosives/objects, some as common as gunpowder and detcord. Not just RDX.
From 380 Tons to 3 Tons and now a tape of a few barrels
First Kerry and the NYT says 380 tons then the IAEA says three tons last time they checked, now a video of a few bunkers with seals and one with a few barrels. This is only proving how desperate the Democrats are! Yes some Iraqi weapons were looted and yes very few Vietnam soldiers did bad things but it was not the rule it was the exception. John Kerry was wrong in 1971 when he said it was the majority of soldiers committing atrocities. He is wrong now when he said it was huge amounts of explosives, a grave mistake, 380 tons. Once again he is exaggerating the struggles of war to advance his own political career while he smears our troops. Our military is the greatest in the world! This video proves Bush was right!!! It was not 380 tons it was a few barrels!!!!!!!!!!!!
US forces have secured 400,000 tons of munitions... 3 tons, if true, constitutes .00075% of the total (.01 =1%)
NOTE: The video crew admits
that they didn't go into bunkers with IAEA seals.
A 5 Eyewitness News crew in Iraq ""may have been"" just a door away from material that could be used to detonate nuclear weapons. The evidence is in videotape shot by Reporter Dean Staley and Photographer Joe Caffrey at or near the Al Qaqaa munitions facility
1. KERRY and NYT CLAIMS 380 TONS WERE MISSING
2. IAEA ADMITS ONLY 3 TONS LEFT
3. IAEA ADMITS THE BUNKERS WERE NOT CHECKED, JUST THE FRONT DOOR SEAL, AND THERE WERE SIDE ENTRANCES
4. SATELLITE CAPTURES IMAGE OF TRUCKS MOVING EXPLOSIVES BEFORE WAR
5. VIDEO SHOWS ONE OPEN BUNKER AND A FEW BARRELS AND SOME SEALS ON FRONT DOOR.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Conclusion this was a highly exaggerated, politically motivated story designed to smear our military and hurt President Bush !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anmybody?
IAEA ADMITS ONLY 3 TONS LEFT
Can u source please?
IAEA ADMITS THE BUNKERS WERE NOT CHECKED
This too, please.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=204304
Discrepancy Found in Explosives Amounts
ABC NEWS
But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over three tons of RDX were stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.
The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.
3 tons of RDX.. 194 tons of HMX ( or HDX, the acronyms seem to be interchangeable..)
HMX is: " A 50/50 mix of TNT and RDX...
RDX cannot be used on it's own as an explosive. It is a component in explosives.. ( like C-4, and Centex. (sp?) )
So, even if there WERE 380 tons of RDX "out there" somewhere, it would have to have approximately 380 tons of some sort of "explosives mixer", ( ammonium nitrite "booster"? ) to go with it..
Now you would have to cart around 760 tons of combined RDX and "mix"..
It gets more insanely ridiculous the more you delve into it..
That's not actually correct. RDX is an explosive and will definitely go boom on its own. It is generally mixed with other substances to give it stability. So, no, you wouldn't need an equal amount of some other substance to use the stuff. You'd just have to be extra careful handling it.
Things the video says...
"missing explosives MAY have ties to their team"
"Area they were staying MAY have been close to Al Qaqaa... "
"THEY Determined (NOW) that their team MAY have been located near southern edge of the complex"
If they drove north based on the image, they didn't do so on roads as there were none on the screen that went north from their supposed location. If they drove on roads, it would not have put them there as the road that goes north goes west a long ways first.
They said they have no idea what they were really looking at.
They say bunkers near or on. There is no evidence the bunkers they looked at are part of the missing explosives.
For that matter, there is no evidence that the explosives we saw in the video are the ones that have been reported missing.
They said BE CLEAR, it MAY or MAY NOT be the material in question. How is this evidence? This sounds more like gossip.
It would be more honest, more thoughtful to state that your link shows a breakdown of what you suspect. It is by no means conclusive.
While we're being honest let us also acknowledge that the same sources waving this story about conventional munitions like a banner have thusfar shown zero concern about the location of Hussein's declared WMDs. When the media and the left start investigating that issue with the same ferocity, perhaps I'll grant them a scintilla of credibility. Until that time, I'll treat them with the same disdain they've treated the Administration.
To the left, gossip and evidence are interchangeable.
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