Posted on 10/29/2004 9:42:48 PM PDT by Mike Fieschko
PARIS A French journalist who visited the Qaqaa munitions depot south of Baghdad in November last year said she witnessed Islamic insurgents looting vast supplies of explosives more than six months after the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime.The account of Sara Daniel, which will be published Wednesday in the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, lends further weight to allegations that American occupying forces in Iraq failed to protect hundreds of tons of munitions from extremists plotting attacks against their own troops.
Much of the controversy has centered around the disappearance of about 380 tons of the powerful HMX explosive. The material, which had been monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency before the war and subsequently sealed in bunkers by its inspectors, was reported missing by Iraqi officials earlier this month.
Daniel, who spent nearly two hours at Qaqaa with a group that has since become known as the Islamic Army of Iraq, could not confirm seeing buildings that carried the agency's seal or explosives that were marked to be of the HMX variety. But her report is one of terrorists having easy access to a vast weapons inventory.
"I was utterly stupefied to see that a place like that was pretty much unguarded and that insurgents could help themselves for months on end," Daniel said on Friday. "We were there for a long time and no one disturbed the group while they were loading their truck."
A man who identified himself as Abu Abdallah and led the group Daniel was with, told her that his men and numerous other insurgent groups had rushed to Qaqaa after U.S.-led troops captured Baghdad on April 9 last year. The groups stole truck-loads of material ...
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
French reporter seeing anything during a battle.
Yeah, I'm sure that happened.
> French journalist
Isn't that a contradiction in terms?
No matter. The NYT will run it anyway.
LOL!
That says it all.
I would think that seeing looting from a weapons storage site in November 2003 would have been a big story in November 2003, not in November 2004. I guess good fiction is hard to write.
Puh-lease!
Google her; she is no friend to our military.
I read the first line. That told me all I needed to know.
:-)
French and battle-- those two words don't go together. Now French and surrender they go together.
Uh huh.
OK.
Becki
Hey, now, give the french a break. A french journalist told the truth once. It was by accident, but it happened.
(Actualy, I doubt the french could really tell the truth, even by accident)
I thought we were told the explosives were missing as of May 2003.
Never been shot.
Only been dropped once.
Will they ever stop LYING???
A French journalist???!!!! Well then it must be true! Our soldiers are liars! D*mn rotten liars! Bush's fault!
Why would anyone want to risk looting arms and ammo, when you can buy an AK-47 off the street for $5 in Bagdad.
Ok, can some explain this?
A *female*, western reporter supposedly being allowed to follow an Islamist group around in Iraq on their missions.
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