HMX explosives left unsecured by troops

[khirkhib]

You guys are just spinning

The HMX was there.
Than Sadam moved it before we got there.
No Russia moved it to Syria
The HMX wasn't there when the troops get there
But the HMX was there.
US troops opened some of the seals.
intelligence knew about it they didn't tell their military counterparts or conversly the military counterparts didn't do anything.
There were 500 other sites like this.
Bush was told to go in with overwhelming force.  Why to secure the weapons and the bases.
Bush's team decided to go in with less forces than needed.

The terrorists are more terrorists today then there were 4 years ago.

The terrorists are better armed today than they were 4 years ago.

And I blame the president.  And had this happend during a democratic presidency I would have blamed the president too.  can't you detach yourself from your party for a second and see how ed up this is.

[khirkhib]

Wow if Bush only had the integriaty and the intelectual honesty that you do JJ when he told America that Sadam had weapons of mass distruction.  We would have never gone to war.

[khirkhib]

jfern i think he wants specifics. 
Names of the people that moved the explosives.
The license places on the cars.
when they clocked in clocked out etc.

The group portrait after they finished loading the last truck full.

We didn't have our head in the game and we lost the explosives.  PERIOD.  Whoops

[khirkhib]

The Known al Qa Qaa Timeline:


January 2003 -- Al Qa Qaa is "fully inventoried" by IAEA.[1]

March 15, 2003 -- The IAEA confirms the now-missing explosives are accounted for and sealed in place. The Bush Administration subsequently warns UN/IAEA Inspectors to leave country before the invasion begins.[2]

Between March 15 and 19, 2003 -- UN/IAEA Inspectors leave.[2]

March 19, 2003 -- Invasion begins. IAEA warns US of need to secure the al Qa Qaa site.[2,3]

'Immediately after invasion' -- The AP reports: "At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity."[1]

April 3, 2003 -- Col. Dave Perkins and 3ID battle Iraqis at the al Qa Qaa site but do not search for weapons or explosives. Perkins states area roads were broken up and routes jammed with US convoys, making it improbable that large amounts of material were being transferred all at once (ie, via truck) without being seen.[3]

April 9, 2003 -- Baghdad falls.[2]

April 10, 2003 -- 101st Airborne, under the command of Col. Joseph Anderson, spends 24 hours at al Qa Qaa as a pit stop on its way to Baghdad but does not inspect the cache; they were not ordered to inspect the area.[2,4] (According to the AP and Reuters, troops were not assigned to inspect for weapons or explosives. That is why none were observed -- the troops were not searching for known [or what should have been known] material -- not because the explosives weren't there on the sprawling complex.[2,3])

April 10, 2003 -- Embedded reporter Dana Lewis, with NBC at the time and traveling with the 101st, tapes footage showing explosives material still under IAEA lock and seal throughout the complex.[5]

April 18, 2003 -- Video footage from an embedded reporter shows barrels of explosives still under locked IAEA seals.[6]

May 3, 2003 -- UN requests that Coalition inspectors be sent to the site.[2]

May 8 & 11, 2003 -- Coalition Forces' site survey teams conduct site visits at al Qa Qaa; extent/thoroughness unknown.[2]

May 27, 2003 -- Coalition Forces' site survey teams apparently conduct a search specifically for high-grade explosives at al Qa Qaa and find broken seals with some looters on site. AP reports: "It's not clear whether they did a further accounting of the materials themselves."[2]

October 10, 2004 -- UN inspectors (IAEA) are asked by Iraqi Government authorities to inspect the site after alerting them to the disappearance at al Qa Qaa.[2]

October 15, 2004 and later -- After confirmation, the IAEA later reports to the US and UN that the 380 tons of HMX and RDX that had been stored at al Qa Qaa are now gone.[1]

==
References:

[1] 380 tons of explosives missing in Iraq, By ASSOCIATED PRESS. Oct. 25, 2004 17:45  | Updated Oct. 25, 2004 17:49. Referenced via Jerusalem Post.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1098677410357

[2] What Happened to Missing Iraq Explosives, By CHRISTOPHER CHESTER, Associated Press. Wed Oct 27, 4:47 PM ET. Referenced via Yahoo News.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041027/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_weapons_q_a_1

[3] First U.S. Unit at Iraq Site Did Not Hunt Explosives, By Will Dunham  (Reuters). Wed Oct 27, 6:42 PM ET.  Referenced via Yahoo News.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20041027/ts_nm/iraq_explos ives_pentagon_dc

[4] 4 Iraqis Tell of Looting at Munitions Site in '03, By James Glanz and Jim Dwyer, New York Times. October 28, 2004. Referenced via New York Times website.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28bomb.html?oref=login&oref=login& ;pagewanted=print&position

[5] Fox News Channel. Brit Hume interview of Dana Lewis. Broadcast October 26, 2004 18:22:25. Accessed via ShadowTV.com (with transcript).
http://www.shadowtv.com/redirect/notification.jsp?vid=06e78d4352e4f47c0c1a0bf147c30ce2

[6] KSTP-tv, Minneapolis-St. Paul channel 5 ABC affiliate. Embedded reporter's footage of al Qa Qaa depicting explosives containers still under IAEA lock and seal. Footage taped April 18, 2003. Referenced via KSTP-tv website.
http://www.kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1

[khirkhib]

Yeah JJ, What's the question he isn't answering again. 
Exactly how it got stolen?
You've had more faith in assumptions than bush has made and all the sudden your a critical thinker.  Whatever.

[khirkhib]

No I can't read.  It has been my curse my whole life but thankfully I have my grandma here as my personal stenographer to write up all my posts. 

And I just think that you are being as intelecutal disigenous as you accuse Kerry of being when you post the White House's apparant stumblings as a fact.  Just think about all of the different arguements the White House put out over the last 48 hours. Everything from Russia moved it.  To Sadam did.  It wasn't there when we got there.  We destroyed it.  And you defending each arguement.  Obviously somebody is wrong here and there is no more reason to believe this last excuse than there was the first one.

[khirkhib]

How many trucks does it take when you are allowed to loot for monthes.

Reporter saw insurgents loot Qaqaa arms depot
By Katrin Bennhold International Herald Tribune
Saturday, October 30, 2004
 
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 from what used to be the biggest explosive factory in the Middle East in the expectation that coalition forces would move quickly to seal it off, Daniel was told.

Abu Abdullah and his men showed her the arsenal of rocket launchers, grenades and explosives hidden near their small farm houses, she said.

But much to the insurgents' surprise, Qaqaa was not sealed off by U.S. soldiers, leading many groups to stop hoarding and instead going for regular refills of explosive materials, according to Abu Abdullah.

Daniel said she saw how poorly guarded the munitions complex was. During the drive there last November, she recalled seeing few patrols and "far away" from the site. The truck was stopped only once, for about three minutes, Daniel said, by a U.S. soldier in a tank.

Daniel said those who went to Qaqaa to stock up on munitions appeared ready to use them to attack the occupying forces. On Nov. 22, a few days after her visit at Qaqaa, Abu Abdallah's group fired a surface-to-air missile at a DHL cargo-plane. The men gave her a video tape of themselves launching the attack in which she says she clearly recognized Abu Abdallah.

Daniel said she decided to write about her experience at Qaqaa after the disappearance of the HMX explosive became a key dispute in the U.S. presidential election campaign.

[khirkhib]

I don't think it is the military's fault. I have a very miliary family and I think we have the best trained troops, strongest military in the world I think the fault goes to the civilian counterparts who did not go with the pentago suggestion of sending in overwhelming force to capture and secure all targets after the invasion.    Guilliani is the one who blamed the troops for not doing there job.

Second point.  The military documents everything (you wouldn't guess that from the condition of Bush's military records but they do).  One guys saying I might have destroyed some of the ammo that you are talking about though it wasn't really in the same area and didn't have the seals just doesn't convince me.  I wish it could but it doesn't.

[khirkhib]

I don't think you understand that we did not bring in enough troops into the countrey to secure the peace and the weapons.

[khirkhib]

Hey we had all the time in the world to prepare.  The pentagon had advised Bush to go in with more troops.  Bush chose not to and he is therefore responsible fore the consiquences namely all of the important military depots were not secured in a timely manner.

[khirkhib]

You don't know if they couldn't have done it.  You don't know that insurgents couldn't have taken the material.  You are defending a reality that needs event to have fallen with-in very specific parameters.  You are treating the unknown as definitive events and you are buying the company line in everything that they say.   

You think that the US military couldn't have secured all known military depots in 2 months and I think that our troop were quite capable of that had they recieved the leadership.  You are the person doubting the military's abiliities.  Bush misinterpreted how the Iraqi would respond to the invasion (against the advice of history, experts and his own father) and I think this is one of many reasons that we did to get a more competant leader.