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The chances that enemy forces moved 377 tons of heavy ordnance out of the Al Qaqaa arms facility after U.S. forces arrived in the area are nearly impossible, said Army Col. David Perkins, who commanded the American troops who took the area during major combat operations in Iraq in 2003. Perkins commanded 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division. A unit under his command, the 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry, entered the depot on April 3, 2003, and defeated the enemy forces there in a two-day battle. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency had tagged the explosives at the site and...

[snip] Let’s let the nervous reporters at NBC off the hook.... As it happens, the 3rd Infantry Division arrived at al Qa Qaa a week earlier on Friday April 3rd, 2003. Published Reports from the Associated Press and CBS verify this news and leave no doubt that they took a long look around the sprawling facility. In fact according to the AP, Col. John Peabody made reporters aware that the 3rd ID had “found thousands of 2-by-5-inch boxes, each containing three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.”...

Dear [E-mail recipients name], It's October, but it's no surprise. Remember last week, when I highlighted a quote by Newsweek editor Evan Thomas that the media's desire to see John Kerry elected may be worth five-to-twenty million votes, and urged you to be on the look-out for evidence of that desire in articles and news programs? Well, yesterday the front page of New York Times featured a flawed article asserting, "The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives — used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and...

NEW YORK - An NBC News reporter embedded with a U.S. army unit that seized an Iraqi installation three weeks into the war said Tuesday that she saw no signs that the Americans searched for the powerful explosives that are now missing from the site. Reporter Lai Ling Jew, who was embedded with the Army's 101st Airborne, Second Brigade, said her news team stayed at the Al-Qaqaa base for about 24 hours. "There wasn't a search," she told MSNBC, an NBC cable news channel. "The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a...

This is a post by NR writer Cliff May on their "Corner" blog at NRO:~~~~~~~~~~BOMB-GATE [Cliff May] Sent to me by a source in the government: “The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The US is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness...