Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms



By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.


"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."

Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.

The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.

The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.

Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.

The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material.

Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said.

"That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."

The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.

A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.

The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.

"The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.

The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime.

According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken.

It is not known whether the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.

A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.

The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not persuade Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.

A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.

However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said.

The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.

Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.

The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said.

Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.

The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said.

Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said.

"Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said.

Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.

The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.

Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.

The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.

Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing.

The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.

Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

Softening Us Up for the Kill

David Horowitz

Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004

On Sunday, the New York Times featured a political ad counseling defeatism in Iraq – a counsel that has become commonplace in its pages. The ad was sponsored by an organization called "Church Folks for a Better America," based at Princeton.

The signatories included the same "church folks" – among them William Sloane Coffin Jr., Robert Drinan and Robert Edgar (National Council of Churches) – who counseled defeat in Indochina, aided the torturers of American POWS in North Vietnam and fronted for the Soviet dictatorship's "nuclear freeze" campaign. (If successful, this campaign would have consolidated a Soviet missile advantage and prolonged the Cold War.) Robert Edgar was a leader of the campaign to return Elian Gonzalez to the clutches of Fidel Castro, a sadistic dictator who has made his nation an island prison.


The Church Folks ad is called "A Call to Recover America's Moral Character" and rehashes the many lies the left is currently using to demoralize Americans' resistance to terror and thus to soften us up for the kill. "Supposedly we went to war to eliminate weapons of mass destruction," the ad declaims. “But there were no weapons of mass destruction."


In the current campaign to undermine the war on terror, this is the really Big Lie. It is never backed up with statements from the President because there were no such statements. One can read in vain the State of the Union address given one month before our troops entered Iraq for example.
“Before September 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans – this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that day never comes.”

The President continued: “Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.”

This is why we went to war in the spring of 2003.

We did not go to war to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, but to prevent Saddam from retaining the ability to produce weapons of mass destruction and provide them to his terrorist allies – Abu Nidal, Abu Abas, Abu al-Zarqawi, Yasser Arafat. The joint congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq and passed by majorities in both political parties, Democrats as well as Republicans and John Kerry and John Edwards in particular (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021002-2.html), has 23 "whereas" clauses articulating the rationale for the use of force. Only one of the 23 focuses on weapons of mass destruction – that is on actual stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction rather than the programs to develop them (once the U.N. inspectors were gone).

Twelve of the clauses, however, refer to Saddam's violation of 16 U.N. resolutions – resolutions that constituted the terms of the truce in the 1991 Gulf War, and which most commentators on the war seem to have forgotten.

For those who have indeed forgotten, these are the facts: We have been continuously at war with Saddam Hussein since 1990. The conflict in 1990 was caused by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and was ended by a cease-fire, not a peace. The terms of the truce were embodied in U.N. resolutions 687 and 689. Fourteen subsequent U.N. resolutions were designed to compel Saddam to adhere to the terms of this truce, which he continually violated but which the U.N. and the Clinton administration failed to enforce.

Thus it was Saddam Hussein's violation of these 16 resolutions and a 17th – resolution 1441, a final ultimatum – that caused us to go to war. Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. about laboratories for producing weapons of mass destruction – the only significant White House presentation of such a case – took place after the decision to go to war had been made. The presentation was made to satisfy Tony Blair, who was under attack from his own anti-American appeasers. The equivalent of 4 million American leftists – most from his own party – had recently poured into the streets of London in an attempt to save the Iraqi dictatorship.

Powell's presentation to the U.N. was not the justification for the war. It was a misguided attempt to sway the U.N. Security Council, which couldn't be swayed because France and Russia, two Saddam allies, had vetos on the Council. The justification for the war is contained in the 23 clauses in the congressional authorization and even more specifically in U.N. resolution 1441.

U.N. resolution 1441 called on Saddam Hussein to disarm and to provide an accounting for the disposition of all weapons of mass destruction that the U.N. inspectors had already identified. A deadline of December 7 was given for Iraq to comply with the resolution or face "serious consequences." In his book "Disarming Iraq," chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix declares that this resolution was diplomatic language for a war ultimatum and that Saddam failed to meet the terms of the ultimatum. That was why we went to war.

We went to war because we could not maintain 200,000 troops in the desert indefinitely while Saddam played games with the U.N. inspectors. We went to war because 17 defied U.N. resolutions had made the word of the U.N. and the United States meaningless – an extremely dangerous situation in itself.

Here is how Bill Clinton justified the use of force to remove Saddam in 1998, when he expelled the U.N. inspectors: “If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council, and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program.”

Unfortunately, in 1998 Bill Clinton was preoccupied with an intern named Monica Lewinsky and was unable to respond to this threat except by firing 450 futile missiles into Iraq, more than the first President Bush had used in the entire Gulf War.

We went to war against Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003 because to withdraw the 200,000 troops without a war and without Saddam's capitulation to the U.N. demands would have been a catastrophic defeat for the forces of freedom and peace. It would have meant with absolute certainty that Saddam would reactivate the weapons programs he had launched and spent more than $40 billion to implement before the United States obstructed them. Saddam was in the process of negotiating an off-the-shelf purchase of nuclear weapons from North Korea, in fact, when the United States entered Iraq to remove him.

The leaders of the Democratic Party have betrayed the war they signed onto and in the process have misled the American people about the nature of the war and of the post-war struggle. That is, they have misled the American people about the war on terror. In doing so they have gravely damaged our efforts to fight this war, sapped our will to resist, and softened us up for the kill.

William Sloane Coffin, Robert Drinan and the other "folks" in the church of anti-American defeatism, needed no such misleading to come to their conclusions. But they have certainly capitalized on it to mislead others:

"Supposedly we went to war to sever the connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. But there were no connections to sever." This is two lies to make one argument. The Administration did not justify the war in terms of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida. Here is the only reference to al Qaida out of 23 clauses justifying the war in the congressional authorization for the use of force, which was supported by a majority of Democrats and Republicans:

"Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq."

Perhaps the "folks" at the chuch of defeatism know something that we don't – for example, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not in Iraq or that the al Qaida faction “Ansar al-Islam” did not have a base in Iraq or that Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of perpetrators of the World Trade Center attack of 1993, did not escape to find refuge in Iraq.

But until they provide evidence to convince the rest of us, we will continue to take statements like this as confirmation of what we already knew – that the left doesn't care about the facts of the war, or about defending America against its Islamic enemies – because for the left America is guilty before the facts. It is guilty in its very nature as the Great Satan himself.

"Supposedly we went to war to remove a brutal regime. but we allowed torture cells to exist, including sexual humiliation – and shamelessly photgraphed the results."

This lie comes from the New York Times – Ted Kennedy school of American betrayal – morally equating us with Saddam Hussein in an effort to undermine the war on terror in Iraq. We did not "allow torture cells to exist" at Abu Ghraib. As all the world knows, as soon as we discovered the humiliation games played by some low-level prison guards, we prosecuted them. Abu Ghraib was a minor incident blown up to major significance by forces in this country that are conducting psychological warfare operations against our efforts to prosecute the war on terror in Iraq, and that are thus doing the work of Al-Jazeera and al Qaida for them.

The only purpose for putting such incidents front and center to the American public at a time when America has liberated 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq is to sap our will to continue the battle and soften us up for the kill.

Conducting psychological warfare for the enemy is exaclty what William Sloane Coffin, Robert Drinan, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Howard Dean did during the Vietnam War. They slandered our troops as “war criminals” in the case of John Kerry, and went to Hanoi and covered for the torturers of our POWs in the case of William Sloane Coffin.

All of them worked to get America to cut and run, and eventually they succeeded. The result was the slaughter of two and a half million peasants in Indochina by the Communists whom this "anti-war" left helped to win. If we cut and run this time – as Terry McAuliffe and the Church Folks advocate – this time there will be a bloodbath in Iraq that will spill into the streets of Washington and New York.

"Supposedly we went to war to establish democracy. But in truth we have still done little to grant 'full sovereignty' to Iraq, and much to keep the country under our control."

First, the Iraqi people have more sovereignty now than they did under Saddam Hussein or the regimes in Iraq of the last 5,000 years.

Second, we have already shown our good intentions in Afghanistan by holding the first real elections there since the beginning of time. Anyone who does not believe that America is guilty before the fact understands this.

There is only one alternative to American authority in Iraq and that is the authority of Moqtador al-Sadr and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Since America is the only authority in the world with the ability and the will to oppose them, to call for “full sovereignty” now is to invite the rule of the beheaders and the torturers.

The Church Folks want us out ("a clear timetable to end the occupation, not perptuate it by other means") and suggest that this can be achieved by replacing American forces with “a truly international peacekeeping force to be established by the United Nations.”

This solution reveals the true nihilism of the Church Folks and of all the attacks on George Bush and present American policy from the “multilateral” point of view.

The U.N. has done nothing positive in its entire history in regard to peace or peacekeeping that the United States has not done for it. When the United States (under Bill Clinton) was absent from the massacres in Rwanda, the U.N. could not raise 5,000 troops to save the lives of a million Tutsis.

The U.N. is a moral cesspool. Its Human Rights Commission is run by Libya. Ten days before 9/11 its Human Rights commissioner, Mary Robinson, hosted a hatefest in South Africa whose agenda was drawn up in Iran and whose targets of opportunity were the world's most humane and tolerant democracies – the United States, Britain and Israel.

In Iraq, the U.N. secretariat has colluded in the theft of $10 billion earmarked to feed Iraqi children. Instead, the U.N. officials fed the dictator in Baghdad, the French and Russian and British political figures he needed to bribe, and, of course, themselves. The U.N. fled Iraq the first time a bomb blew up in its face.

The call for the U.N. to preside over the Iraqi future without the United States to provide it with moral judgment and military means is simply a call to return Iraq to the control of the Islamic predators who have already raped Iraq and want to destroy us.

By destroying the tradition of bipartisanship in war, by betraying a war policy they signed onto, and by conducting a scorched-earth campaign against their own commander in chief, the Democratic Party has open the public square to a political zoo of America-hating radicals.

Personified in such figures as Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore, their agenda is exactly the same as it was during the Cold War and the war in Vietnam: to demoralize our troops, to sap the will of our citizenry, to weaken our ability to stay the course and resist, and to soften us up for the kill.

Top 11 reasons we are safer after Dubya allowed 380 tons of high explosives to be looted in Iraq.

1. High volume will drive down prices for the explosives buy-back program.

2. CSI Iraq will determine the precise type and amount of explosive used in every suicide-bombing and when all 380 tons have been used up, we'll strike back with impunity.

3. By making terrorism easy over there, we'll make terrorists too lazy to attack us here.

4. Giving away weapons is how the Bush family makes friends.

5. It's not like there was any nuclear material at the site, it's just the stuff you use to detonate nuclear material.

6. The explosives have legitimate civilian uses. They may have been taken by entrepreneurial miners.

7. No one will be safe from C4 until everyone has C4.

8. Many would-be terrorists will meet their end improvising devices to employ their too easily acquired explosives.

9. 14.67 tons of HMX, 155.68 tons of RDX and 6.39 tons of PETN explosives were not lost. They were liberated from the tyrannical clutches of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

10. Readily available explosives make insurgents less likely to form relationships with terrorist sponsors outside Iraq.

11. Scandal could put Kerry over the top.

If Kerry where in charge they would still be in Sadams control. Just imagine we have been blowing up 100 tons a day since the start of the war and someone is worried about 380 tons. Well not exactly it turns out it was more like 3 tons. But hey who cares when you are just trying to get elected. n

Yeah, good thing it's not under Saddam's "control" which was locked in a bunker, inventoried, and sealed by the IAEA. Much better to have it looted off and in the hands of Zarkawi. You're just brilliant, Bubbleboy.

Thought maybe this might help those that are still living in a bubble and not aware of the real world.

"Now, video shot in Iraq by a Minneapolis news team provides further proof that the administration's theory is bogus. After the invasion - on April 18, 2003 - the Minneapolis ABC news crew was stationed just south of the Al Qaqaa facility. That day, they drove 2 to 3 miles north with the 101st Airborne Division. There, "members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS news crew bunker after bunker of material labeled 'explosives.'" Some of the boxes were marked "Al Qaqaa." One soldier told the crew: "we can stick [detonation cords] in those and make some good bombs."

Thats daming evidence I say daming alright. Kerry and the doom and gloom libs will run with anything. I'll see your channel 4 report and raise you sattelite phots of the Russians moving it. Boittom line is that it's a war zone and Shiat happens. But then again Kerry says he supports the troops and all he has been doing here is condemning the ground comanders for 3 days with what he knows not to be a complete set of facts. Remember Abu Grhaib was called the worst atrocity in the hisorty of the US by that very genius last summer.

Okay, Bubbleboy, post your photos. I'm sure they'll conclusively prove that the Russians moved the material. :rolleyes: Unless of course .... you're .... lying.

Or phots of daming whatever.
What a coug.

GH,

You nor Kerry can prove anything more than I can prove on this matter. The only truth here is that your whore is being irresponsible if not treasonous.

Another Kerry gem

"I believe this is the worst economy since the great depression. "

You libs are the reason the invent Prosac all doom and gloom and if it's not gloomy enough you will make up lies to make it worse.

Oh, you were lying. Again, how utterly GOP of you.

No I made a statement based off news reports the same as Kerry did. I can only establish that it was "reported" which is all Kerry could ethically do but he chose to use it as fact. Yet his minions, like you, report them as fact citing news reports. How CBS of you.

The point that all of you 'enlightened liberals' are failing ( or refusing ) to see is that history often repeats itself.

Hanoi John Kerry took an unsubstantiated story and used it to FALSELY point the blame at the United States and the members of the United States military in an effort to advance his OWN political interests.

Hmmm.....I'm surprised he didn't call the American soldiers who he says DIDN'T secure Al Qaqaa, "WAR CRIMINALS, "RAPISTS" and "BABY KILLERS"......stay tuned.
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All you touch and all you see is all that you'll ever be.......--Rogers/Gilmore
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Here's two paragraphs from the story KK posted that were left out for some reason.
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"We have some witnesses," Mr. Sharaa said outside his office at the ministry. "They say that the materials," he added, were "in this site after April 9."

The witnesses were people working at Al Qaqaa, Mr. Sharaa said. Still, he said, the evidence is not yet definitive, and "we don't say it's impossible" that the material was somehow taken out of Al Qaqaa before the American forces came through the area. The first American forces arrived at Al Qaqaa on April 3.

KK, There are sattelite photos that show 18 wheelers parked outside. there are news photos of other similar bunkers with munitions marked Al Qaqqa. So the story has yet to fully un fold. And just like the Abu Grahib story libs are most likely making a mountain out of a mole hill.
You know why KK? The telling fact is that the majority of support for Kerry is comming from women. So he targets emotional messages. What does that say about men that support Kerry?

The King - I sense some desperation in your last post. Interesting, to say the least.

Eddie, I posted 4 facts which ones are you disputing?

KK,

I never said anything about weakness I asked a question. I said Kerry delivers his messages around emotional themes that appeal to women. It is no logical fallacy that the avg. Woman react to emotional messages to a much stronger degree than men. I then asked what does that say about men reacting to an emotioanl message? It is also well documented that you can ascribe male to female tendencies along a scale . Woman that are somewhat male patterned in thier thinking all the way to very female in their patterns. Same for men. My suggestion was that women are supporting Kerry based on emotional issues. This is well documents. Then why are the men supporting the same guy in much smaller numbers? Any weakness implied is strictly non gender specific it's just a fact of liberalism. Cool site by the way.


Check this read out but adjust you thinking to the more male mode "October 27, 2004, 3:36 p.m.

Bomb-gate

The scandal the Times ought to be investigating.

The United Nations is already embroiled in the largest economic scam in world history: the multibillion dollar Oil-for-Food scandal. Now there is reason to ask whether a senior U.N., official also has attempted to influence an American election by spreading misleading information. To understand why this scenario is plausible, let's connect some dots.

The headline of the New York Times front-page story on Monday read: "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished from Site in Iraq." According to the Times, powerful HMX and RDX explosives — used to "make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons" — were stolen from Al Qaqaa, an Iraqi installation that "was supposed to be under American military control."

The source for this politically explosive charge? The Times quoted unnamed White House and Pentagon officials acknowledging that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year. But named White House and Pentagon officials have said the opposite. And a senior government official told me flatly: "The stuff in Iraq was missing as of April 10, 2003 — the day after Baghdad fell."

The Times also quoted experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) saying they assumed Saddam Hussein had moved the explosives — before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

But, those experts speculated, perhaps the explosives were only moved to nearby fields where, the Times suggests, they would be "ripe for looting."

But how? The Times neglects the fairly obvious fact that looters could not have stuffed 380 tons of explosives into shopping bags. To transport that much material would have required about 38 large trucks — 10 tons per truck. Before the U.S. invasion, such truck convoys moved about Iraq freely. Once the U.S. was in occupation, that kind of effort could hardly have gone unnoticed.

On Tuesday, the Times ran another page one headline: "Iraq Explosives Become Issue In Campaign." Yes, that's true — thanks to the Times.

As for the holes in Monday's story, the Times tried to fill them this morning with a page A17 story: "Commander Says Brigade Didn't Inspect Explosives Site," quoting Col. Joseph Anderson of the 101st Airborne Division, saying that when his troops arrived at Al Qaqaa, they didn't look for the HMX and RDX. But what does that imply? That tons of HMX and RDX were still there? Or that the explosives were no longer there? The Times doesn't know and doesn't appear to care.

What's more, the Belmont Club argues today, persuasively I think, that the Times "interviewed the wrong unit commander" because it was the Third Infantry Division that first searched Al Qaqaa "with the intent of discovering dangerous materials," almost a week before the 101st arrived.

If the 3ID had found tons of HMX and RMX, we'd have heard about it. On April 5, the Washington Post reported on their discoveries at "Al QaQa," including "vials of white powder, packed three to a box," and stocks of "atropine and pralidoxime, also known as 2-PAM chloride, which can be used to treat exposure to nerve agents...."

If the 3ID got so close and personal that they were counting the vials in boxes, how likely is it that they would have missed 380 tons of HMX and RMX?

At this point, Times editors ought to be asking who got their story rolling and to what end?

Here's one theory: It was Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why would he do that? "The U.S. is trying to deny ElBaradei a second term," a high U.S. government official told me. "We have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program."

ElBaradei also opposed the liberation of Iraq. And he would like nothing better than to see President Bush be defeated next week.

If all this is true it would amount to a major scandal: It would mean that a senior U.N. official may be changing the outcome of an American election by spreading false information. And major U.S. media outlets are allowing themselves to be manipulated in pursuit of that goal.

The Times and other news organizations also have ignored this pertinent question: Why did Saddam Hussein have the kinds of explosives favored by terrorists — and why was he permitted to keep them? Such explosives, according to the Times, also "are used in standard nuclear weapons design," and were acquired by Saddam when he "embarked on a crash effort to build an atomic bomb in the late 1980s."

Writing in The Corner, former federal terrorism prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy pointed out that U.N. Security Council Resolution 687, which imposed the terms of 1991 Gulf War ceasefire, required Iraq to "unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of . . . [a]ll ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres and related major parts, and repair and production facilities[.]"

Yet the IAEA made no attempt to force Saddam to comply with his obligations to destroy these "related major parts" of its ballistic missiles.

In addition, McCarthy noted, Iraq was required "not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material or any subsystems or components[,]" and, to the extent it had such items, present them for "urgent on-site inspection and the destruction, removal or rendering harmless as appropriate of all items specified above."

It shouldn't require a rocket scientist to understand that a detonator is a key component of a nuclear bomb. But according to the Times, Saddam persuaded ElBaradei that he wanted to hold on to the explosives in case they were needed "for eventual use in mining and civilian construction" — and ElBaradai agreed.

It gets worse: The U.N. weapons inspectors led by Rolf Ekéus asked the IAEA to dispose of these explosives back in 1995. The IAEA did not do so — and between 1998, when Saddam forced the U.N. inspectors out of Iraq, and late 2002 when U.S. pressure caused him to allow inspectors to return, 35 tons of HMX went missing. Saddam claimed he used it in Iraq's cement industry. Evidently, ElBaradei saw no reason to doubt Saddam who — as noted — was working hand-in-globe with the U.N. on the Food for Oil program, an enterprise which, we now know, stole billions of dollars from the Iraqi people.

So when all the dots are connected what we see revealed is Bomb-gate — a controversy that should be about foreign interests that may be improperly influencing the U.S. media to affect the outcome of an American election.

But that story will be written after the elections. For now, the question is who voters will believe.

If they are persuaded that the dangerous weapons went missing because of Bush's incompetence, he is likely to lose (and ElBaradei will be breaking out the cigars and bongos this time next week). On the other hand, if voters come to believe that this is another instance of Kerry shooting from the hip, basing charges on flawed information, saying anything in order to win, they will almost certainly abandon him.

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

Hey, Elvis, great conspiracy piece. By the way, you come across those photos yet that substantiate your claims of Russian involvement?


Didn't think so.

Read what I said squeaky and quit being emotional you are proving the stereotype

Here you go ladies ,


U.S. Team Took 200 Tons of Iraqi Explosives
Friday, October 29, 2004

PHOTOS VIDEO


Click image to enlarge
STORIES BACKGROUND LINKS
•U.S. Military Releases Al-Qaqaa Image•Bush, Kerry Hit Each Other on Iraq Ammo•Search Showed No Explosives at Iraqi Base Before War's End•380 Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq•Group Claims It Has al-Qaqaa Explosives•Fast Facts: Explosives Missing•Reporter's Notebook: Weapons Galore•Reporter's Notebook: Embedded at Al-Qaqaa
WASHINGTON — A U.S. Army officer came forward Friday and said a team from the 3rd Infantry Division took about 200 tons of explosives from the Al-Qaqaa (search) munitions base soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell last year.

Major Austin Pearson appeared at a Pentagon news conference to say it was his mission to go the facility and clear explosives from the base. He said he did not discover that the International Atomic Energy Agency (search) had reported 377 tons of explosives were missing until Tuesday night and he said he promptly contacted military officials.

The announcement, made at a Pentagon news conference, is the latest twist in the mystery over what happened to the explosives. The IAEA reported the disappearance to the United Nations on Monday and suggested they had fallen into the hands of looters while U.S. military officials suspected the dangerous material was taken before Saddam was ousted from power on April 9, 2003.

The officer's story comes as new videotape has surfaced that supports the contention that tons of the explosives were still at the base following Saddam's fall on April 9, 2003. U.S. officials had said they suspected the explosives were taken before U.S.-led forces took Baghdad.

Videotape shot by a Minnesota television crew traveling with U.S. troops in Iraq when they first opened the bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa (search) 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 (search).


The video, taken by a reporter and cameraman employed by KSTP, an ABC affiliate in St. Paul, on April 18, 2003, was broadcast nationally Thursday on the ABC national network.

"The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al-Qaqaa," David A. Kay (search), the 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 Pentagon also released a photograph of Al-Qaqaa taken just before the war, showing several bunkers, one with two tractor-trailers parked next to it. The picture was shot by a satellite on March 17, 2003.

Senior Defense officials said their photo shows that the Al-Qaqaa facility "was not hermetically sealed" after international weapons inspectors had paid their last visits to the facility earlier in the month.

Officials are analyzing the image and others for clues into when the nearly 380 tons of explosives were taken. The munitions included HMX (search) and RDX (search), key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in bomb attacks.

But what officials will say is that the image shows the Iraqis were moving something at the site before the first U.S.-launched bombs fell.

Meanwhile, an IAEA report obtained by FOX News said the inspectors noted that despite the fact that the Al-Qaqaa bunkers were locked, ventilation shafts remained open and provided easy access to the explosives.

The IAEA can definitively say only that the documented ammunition was at the facility in January; in March, an agency spokesman conceded, inspectors only looked at the locked bunker doors.

The question of what happened to the explosives has become a major issue in the closing days of the 2004 presidential campaign.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry says the missing explosives — powerful enough to demolish a building, bring down a jetliner or even trigger 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 bunker with the trucks parked next to it in the Pentagon's satellite image is not one known to have contained any of the missing explosives, and Defense spokesman Larry Di Rita said the image only shows that there was some Iraqi activity at the base on March 17.

Di Rita acknowledged that the image says nothing about what happened to the explosives.

Rumsfeld, in one radio interview, also cast doubt on the suggestion by one of his subordinates that Russian soldiers assisted Iraqis in removing the munitions.

The Washington Times on Thursday quoted John A. Shaw (search), the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, who said he believed Russian special-forces personnel, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material from the Al-Qaqaa facility.

Shaw said he believed the munitions were moved to Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 invasion.

Senior Defense officials urged caution over the Washington Times article because they could not verify its allegations as true.

"I have no information on that at all, and cannot validate that even slightly," Rumsfeld said.

The article prompted an angry denial from Moscow.

At the core of the issue is whether the explosives were moved before or after U.S. forces reached that part of the country in early April. No one has been able to provide conclusive evidence either way, although Iraqi officials blamed the munitions' disappearance on poor U.S. security after Baghdad fell.

The Pentagon has said it is 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.

FOX News' Bret Baier, Ian McCaleb and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

2 fairly easy questions for the Bushies to answer.

Baghdad fell on April 9th. Sometime between April 9th and April 18th the 101st Airborne visited this site. According to the Major that the Pentagon sent out this morning, he went to Al Kaka (sp.) in late April and removed 250 tons of explosive and destroyed them. He saw no IEAE tags on the weaponry he destroyed. Dean Staley (he was embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division)has video tape from April 18th that shows the IEAE tags in place and no one guarding this ammo dump. So, my 2 questions:

1. What happened to the IEAE tagged munitions between April 18th and April 30th?

2. Why was no one guarding this ammo dump?

Awaiting the answers....