Posted on 10/26/2004 5:33:42 PM PDT by mister_jones
Al-Qaqaa Spokesman Says No Weapons Search
KIMBERLY HEFLING
Associated Press
EVANSVILLE, Ind. - The first U.S. military unit to reach the Al-Qaqaa military installation after the invasion of Iraq did not have orders to search for the nearly 400 tons of explosives that Iraqi officials say were stolen from the site sometime following the fall of Baghdad, the unit spokesman said Tuesday.
When the troops from the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade arrived at the Al-Qaqaa base a day or so after Baghdad's fall 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 in their area," Wellman wrote in an e-mail message. "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," he wrote.
His remarks appeared to confirm the observations of an NBC reporter embedded with the army unit who said Tuesday that she saw no signs that the Americans searched for the powerful explosives during their 24 hours at the facility en route to Baghdad, 30 miles to the north.
The disappearance, which the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Monday to the U.N. Security Council, 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 is no need for U.N. experts to return.
The missing explosives have become a major issue in the final week of the presidential campaign, with Vice President Dick Cheney questioning on Tuesday whether the explosives were at the facility when U.S. troops arrived, and the Kerry campaign calling the disappearance the latest in a "tragic series of blunders" by the Bush administration.
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.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Monday that coalition forces were present in the vicinity of the site both during and after major combat operations, which ended on May 1, 2003. He said they searched the facility but found none of the explosives in question.
"The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility," Whitman said.
It was unclear whether the search to which Whitman was referring was conducted by a military unit other than the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade.
Wellman, the army unit's spokesman, said the facility was in the 101st's sector at that time but that he does not know if any troops were left at the grounds of the facility once the combat troops from the 2nd Brigade left.
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.
The explosives had been housed in storage bunkers at the facility. U.N. nuclear inspectors placed a fresh seal over the bunkers in January 2003. The inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time in March 2003 and reported that the seals were not broken - therefore, the weapons were still there at the time. The team then pulled out of the country in advance of the invasion later that month.
Cheney raised the possibility the explosives disappeared before U.S. soldiers could secure the site in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.
"It is not at all clear that those explosives were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived in the area of Baghdad," Cheney said Tuesday.
But - if Iraqi officials are correct in telling the U.N. nuclear agency that the theft occurred sometime after coalition troops took control of Baghdad on April 9, 2003 - the disappearance would then have had to have happened sometime in the 24 hours before U.S. troops arrived at Al-Qaqaa the following day.
NBC News reporter Lai Ling Jew, who accompanied the 101st, said the unit seized Al-Qaqaa on April 10 and remained there for 24 hours before heading on to Baghdad.
Wellman said the 101st troops flew by helicopters into the Al-Qaqaa facility on the way to Baghdad sometime between April 10-13, adding that he would have to check further to confirm the exact date.
He confirmed that the troops from the 2nd Brigade spent one night at the facility when an assault into Baghdad was delayed, and then continued the assault into the capital the following day.
"We still had Iraqi troops in Baghdad we were trying to combat," Wellman said. "Our mission was securing Baghdad at that point."
Lai Ling told MSNBC, an NBC cable news channel, that "there wasn't a search."
"The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad," she said Tuesday. "As far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away."
She said there was no talk among the 101st of securing the area after they left. The roads were cut off "so it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there," she said.
Both HMX and RDX are key components in plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex, which are so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just a pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Iraq told the nuclear agency on Oct. 10 that the explosives had vanished from the former military installation as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security."
Elements of the 101st helped conquer parts of Baghdad during major combat operations. The entire division based at nearby Fort Campbell, Ky., later settled in northern Iraq.
Really? It seems that it would be hard to overlook a stash of 300 tons of explosives at that depot during a 24 hour stay? What were they doing, having a MRE party? The MSM and the Kerry campaign still insist that the troops overlooked 300 tons of weapons BUT, I seriously think that history will write that John Kerry's campaign was destroyed by Al Ca ca, which, IMHO, would be a good way for John F'n to go down. With his nose in the ca ca!
They're fighting to keep this alive just like Rather did! Uneffin'believable!
Impossible, the Iraqis did not have WMD programs, ask Senator Gloom or Senator Doom.
Wait a second. If the IAEA told them the material was there, and they had sealed it, wouldn't they also have told them which building they were in?
Yea! I'm the Al-Qaqaa weapons thing-a-ma-jig spokesman! The weapons were there! Yea! I saw George Bush looking around. He was driving a pickup with that little dog hanging out the window! So Bush knew! Yea! That's the ticket! Bush knew the whole time! He know's where Hoffa is buried and who killed Kennedy! And how the Rose Law Firm billing records suddenly appeared. And Bush knows why Hillary says "you know" over and over! And Bush made that O'Donnell homo on MSNBC freak out the other night! Yea!
Everything that happens bad is the presidents fault! Yea! He turned TereSa into a drunk and made Kerry's face orange! Yea! Seen that zit, postule, canker, herpes thing on John Edward's face? Well Bush put it there in between stuffing twinkies down Edward's wife's face! Right after he made Kerry's kid flash her hooters to the world! And it's Bushes fault those hooters were ugly!
That darn Bush! Yea! all his fault!
mister_jones
Since Oct 27, 2004
The Moby Brigade rides again
No the 101 was not at Qa Qaa on the 4th of April 2003. The 3ID was at that site on the 4th a week before 101 got there. They did indeed search the area and did not find any weapons with an IAEA seal or any of the so called "missing explosives". This story was covered by AP on April 4, 2003.
"If our troops had not gone into Iraq as John Kerry apparently thinks they should not have, that is 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that would be in the hands of Saddam Hussein, who would still be sitting in his palace instead of jail," the vice president told supporters in his first comment on the controversy that erupted Monday.
Cheney, the most senior administration official to comment on the latest development in Iraq, complained that Kerry does not mention the "400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that our troops have captured."
Nearly 400 tons of explosives have disappeared from a former Iraqi military installation. The International Atomic Energy Agency had warned the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq to secure the explosives, fearing they could fall into the wrong hands. The materials are key components of plastic explosives like those insurgents have used in car bomb attacks.
Speaking to a crowd in an area of Florida with several military bases, Cheney also said, "It is not at all clear that those explosives" that were lost "were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived in the area of Baghdad." ...
Cheney also invoked the name of retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to rebut another of Kerry's criticisms — that the Bush administration wasted a chance to catch terrorist leader Osama bin Laden when the United States had al-Qaida fighters surrounded in Tora Bora in Afghanistan.
Franks "stated repeatedly it was not at all certain that bin Laden was in Tora Bora," said Cheney. "He might have been there or in Pakistan or even Kashmir."
"Now John Kerry sitting 6,000 miles away, he is trying to cast doubt on these amazing performances" by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, Cheney said.
Kerry frequently asserts that the administration "outsourced" the job of hunting down bin Laden to Afghan warlords.
"U.S. Special Forces were on the ground, and in charge of the operation around Tora Bora," Cheney said. "They relied on Afghan fighters to help them kill and capture Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in Tora Bora. They knew the landscape."
you are not fooling anyone
What does at nearby Fort Campbell Ky mean?
I think there's plenty of room for this to blowback on Kerry. I think there is a very very bad smell coming from El Baradei on this. The UN should not be in the business of messing with our elections.
But all that being said, I do wonder why they (NYT & 60mins) thought this was a big deal... I mean... we've located and destroyed some 400,000 tons of ordnance so far. This seems like quibbling. It's no secret that all of Iraq is an enormous ammo depot. At the end of the day, we're talking about ordinary explosives, much of which we already know is in the hands of the bad guys, cuz they've been blowing up stuff.
Why is this really even news?
Good, because I wasn't trying to fool anyone. Just posting news. Sheesh.
Not the 101st.
Let's get the facts straight. First, this is a story that is 19 months old and is being repackaged as a new news Story. This did not happen over this past weekend like CBS and the NYT want everyone to believe. Second, the embedded journalist was not a women, it was NBCs Dana Lewis who is a man. Third, The facility was inspected March 9 2003, by the weapons inspectors they found nothing. Fourth, the 101st Airborne arrived on April 9 2003, they searched the facility. Fifth, the Iraqi survey team (by the way which are the American weapon inspectors)found no IAEA tags on anything. They were there on May 27, 2003. Now my question to you is if this so called reporter Leim Jang Jew was embedded with 101st Airborne why doesn't "she" have dates As to when all of this happened ? CBS and the NYT don't have any clear dates either. But boy, Kerry had a commerical the very same day. HMMMMMM sounds very interesting to me. Don't you think? It's an awful lot of coincidences for one day. Hmmmmmmmmmm? If you haven't figured it out let me connect the dots for you. First CBS and the NYT want George W. out of Office, The UN wants him out too. Oh one other thing the UN leaked this bogus story to get even for uncovering the Oil for food program.
Do the math...
380 Tons of material.
1520 Truck Loads
Let's say it takes 2 people 1 hour to load the truck
Let's say it takes them 30 Min to drive to a new location
Let's say it takes 2 people 1 hour to unload the truck
Let's say it takes them 30 to drive back and reload.
6080 Hours of Labor
3040 Hours of Truck Time
It would take 50 teams of two men, totalling 100 men and 50 trucks. 5-12 hour days to complete this task
But it gets better...
This does not include time and effort to refuel said trucks.
These 50 Trucks would have to complete 30+ roundtrips each to complete their mission.
If each round trip was only 30 miles (15 each way).
Each truck would drive 9000 miles!
Each vehicle, fully loaded would get about 10 miles to the gallon (probably less but let's keep the math simple)
Each vehicle would consume 900 gallons of gas, and need to refuel appox. 30 times.
Now here's the big question....
How many gas stations were operational within 15 miles of this weapons depot in April of 2003.
The average truck would have to visit this gas station 6 times a day to refuel. Total refuel stops 300, total gas consumed by looters, in one week, 45,000 gallons.
Let's review
50 trucks
100 men
60 hours of labor each
300 refueling stops
45,000 gallons of gas
450,000 total miles driven
These insurgents did apparently did this not in one week. But within 24 hours of the fall of Baghdad.
ALL OF THE ABOVE COMPLETED IN A WAR ZONE.
Sign some of these good ol' boys for the Craftsman Truck Series. Screw Daytona... let's go racin' in Baghdad.
Here is the point really. Kerry and the NYT tried to couch this story as if combat operations were long since over and that this just happened last week. They tried to couch it as if Bush just up and left the gates open for looters last week. Low and behold, here come the actual facts. This all happened in the middle of the seige of Baghdad and at a time when it is implausible that the enemy could have "looted" these tons and tons of explosives away. At the very least, quite a different tale than what the NYT was trying to spin yesterday.
If you watched Brit Hume tonight, however, it appears even worse for the NYT. They weren't merely spinning. They were outright fabricating. It does not appear that the weapons referenced in their story, i.e. the one's identified by the IAEA, were at the site and that a search was conducted.
Finally, I find it incredible that Kerry has been saying that the President misled the Nation into war and "exaggerrated the threat." Now Kerry complains that Bush failed to secure "highly dangerous weapons that now threaten our security" Well, which is it, were Saddams weapons a threat to us or weren't they.
Backfire on Kerry? Yes, I would say that this is going to backfire on Kerry. FoxNews certainly was firing on all cylinders tonight.
That's good. I hadn't thought of the gas. I did think about what the odds were that a group of Iraqis in the middle of mass chaos would be able to get 36 dump trucks and make a trip through US lines then back again without being spotted. Pure nonsense.
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