Kerry Spot

jim geraghty reporting

ABOUT THAT TELEVISION AFFILIATE VIDEOTAPE FROM AL-QAQAA

I http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerry200410282152.asp

watched the big ABC News report: “Video Suggests Explosives Disappeared After U.S. Took Control.”

And at first glance, it appears to make the case that when the 101st Airborne Division arrived on April 18, 2003, there was still a large supply of explosive materials in the facility.

But there are still a few problems with this story.

Problem one: Take a look at the orange label on the container, in this photo.

It says, “EXPLOSIV EXPLOSIVE 1.1 D 1”. (The same label can be purchased here.)

There are three explosives we are looking for here:

HMX, cyclotetramethylene-tetranitramine, also called Tetrahexamine Tetranitramine

RDX, Cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, and

PETN, Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate


According to this chart from GlobalSecurity.org, the 1.1D classification can be used for the storage and transport of quite a few high powered explosives. Among them are:

Cyclotetramethylene-tetranitramine, wetted or HMX, wetted or Octogen, wetted with not less than 15 percent water, by mass

Cyclotrimethylene-trinitramine, wetted or Cyclonite, wetted or Hexogen, wetted or RDX, wetted with not less than 15 percent water by mass

Pentaerythrite tetranitrate, wetted or Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, wetted, or PETN, wetted with not less than 25 percent water, by mass, or Pentaerythrite tetranitrate, or Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN, desensitized with not less than 15 percent phlegmatizer by mass.


So - this orange 1.1 D is the label we would look for on HMX, RDX, or PETN. But did those explosives in these containers have 15 or 25 percent water or other dilution liquid in them? Or did they look pretty dry in that desert?

And as we look at the rest of that chart, we see that a lot of other explosives that fall in the 1.1 D category.

Specifically there are 79 other substances and types of explosive material and supporting equipment that would get the 1.1 D label, including gunpowder, flexible detonating cord, photo-flash bombs, mines, nitroglycerin, rocket warheads, grenades, fuzes, torpedoes and charges. And few of them require any liquid dilution.

Is what's on this news report video HMX, RDX, or PETN? Possibly, if the material inside is some sort of diluting liquid that we didn't see on the tape, or if the Iraqis were storing these high-grade explosives in an unsafe manner. Or it could be one of the 79 other substances. Or some containers could have the big three, and some could have others.

As usual, it is foolish for folks to jump in and conclude that they know what was in the containers without gathering all of the facts. How many Kerry-backing writers who will cite this video as a smoking gun are familiar with what materials are classified 1.1D?

Problem two: This doesn't quite explain the internal IAEA documents ABC reported that suggested that significant amounts were gone before the invasion began. “Confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over three tons of RDX were stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.” It all suddenly came back before the war? Or is what we're seeing in the video three tons?

Problem three: This doesn't quite explain the Pentagon's satellite photos of large numbers of trucks leaving the facilities before the war.

Problem four: This doesn't quite explain how all this could be taken down a road full of heavily armed U.S. forces, under skies full of coalition warplanes. The Pentagon called the removal of that much material from the facility during or after the war “very highly improbable”:

Col. David Perkins commanded the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, the division that led the charge into Baghdad. Those troops first captured the Iraqi weapons depot from which 377 tons of explosives disappeared.

Two major roads that pass near the Al-Qaqaa installation were filled with U.S. military traffic in the weeks after April 3, 2003, when U.S. troops first reached the area, the colonel said.

Perkins and others in the military acknowledged that some looting at the site had taken place. But he said a large-scale operation to remove the explosives using trucks almost certainly would have been detected.


Problem five: This doesn't quite explain why none of this explosive has to date shown up in any Iraqi insurgent attack.

One last observation. Follow the shifting headline as the story moves from one news agency to another:

ABC News headline: “Video Suggests Explosives Disappeared After U.S. Took Control

Reuters headline: “Report: Video Shows Explosives Went Missing After War”

[Posted 10/28 09:52 PM]

Eddie,

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....


Eddie, I would assume they had other things to do. There where by some estimates a million tons or more in Iraq. I doubt it was the worst or last overlooked item we will hear about in war.

The real issue is Kerry attacking a sitting president about the war, emboldening our enemy and costing soldiers lives, over an inconsequential event that his own advisers tell him may not have happened

The King - Okay Mr. Evade the Question. Let me try another one for you.

How many Iraqi ammo dumps had the IAEA tagged as being high priority prior to commencement of hostilities?

"How many Iraqi ammo dumps had the IAEA tagged as being high priority prior to commencement of hostilities?"

It only makes a difference if you are looking to place blame because things where not done perfectly. Name one war that went perfectly? I remeber bombing a Chinese embassy during the last admin.

9-11 shows us that people do not need explosives to kill many people. 20 People with the will can do just about anything.

I have finally figured it out, why you call yourself theking(of rhetoric).!

SSF,

And we all know what a rocket scientist you are. Thanks for sharing .

Ahhh again dissed by the town fool.Why is it your never out fishing, with all the time you have to post things here, you could be an expert at what this board was really made to do, fish!

As I said on another thread Inspector clueless this forum is about everything else but fishing.

The river is in my back yard. I have a wireless modem as well . I could be fishing right next to you and posting on PP at the same time.

Actually Eddie Bush and Cheney flew Air Force One over there to Al CACA and loaded all that ammo themselves into the jet and sold it to Halliburton for 10 cents on the dollar then flew to the Bunny Ranch in Reno and spent it all on whores. When they ran out of money they had sex with each other. Is that what you were looking for?> Elect John Kerry cause he ain't never gonna do nuthin like dat.

White House of Horrors

by MAUREEN DOWD
The New York Times
October 28, 2004

Dick Cheney peaked too soon. We've still got a few days left until
Halloween.

It was scary enough when we thought the vice president had created his
own reality for spin purposes. But if he actually believes that Iraq
is
"a remarkable success story,'' it's downright spooky. He's already got
his persona for Sunday: he's the mad scientist in the haunted mansion,
fiddling with test tubes to force the world to conform to his twisted
vision.

After 9/11, Mr. Cheney swirled his big black cape and hunkered down in
his undisclosed dungeon, reading books about smallpox and plague and
worst-case terrorist scenarios. His ghoulish imagination ran wild, and
he dragged the untested president and jittery country into his house
of
horrors, painting a gory picture of how Iraq could let fearsome
munitions fall into the hands of evildoers.

He yanked America into war to preclude that chilling bloodbath. But
in a
spine-tingling switch, the administration's misbegotten invasion of
Iraq
has let fearsome munitions fall into the hands of evildoers. It's also
forged the links between Al Qaeda and the Sunni Baathists that Mr.
Cheney and his crazy-eyed Igors at the Pentagon had fantasized about
to
justify their hunger to remake the Middle East.

It's often seen in scary movies: you play God to create something in
your own image, and the monster you make ends up coming after you.

Determined to throw a good scare into the Arab world, the vice
president
ended up scaring up the swarm of jihadist evil spirits he had
conjured,
like the overreaching sorcerer in "Fantasia." The Pentagon bungled the
occupation so badly, it caused the insurgency to grow like the Blob.

Just as Catherine Deneuve had bizarre hallucinations in the horror
classic "Repulsion,'' Mr. Cheney and the neocons were in a deranged
ideological psychosis, obsessing about imaginary weapons while
allowing
enemies to spirit the real ones away.

The officials charged with protecting us set off so many false alarms
that they ignored all the real ones.

President Bush is like one of the blissfully ignorant teenagers in
"Friday the 13th'' movies, spouting slogans like "Freedom is on the
march'' while Freddy Krueger is in the closet, ready to claw his skin
off.

Mr. Bush ignored his own experts' warnings that Osama bin Laden
planned
to attack inside the U.S., that an invasion of Iraq could create a
toxic
partnership between outside terrorists and Baathists and create
sympathy
for them across the Islamic world, that Donald Rumsfeld was planning a
war and occupation without enough troops, that Saddam's aluminum tubes
were not for nuclear purposes, that U.S. troops should safeguard 380
tons of sealed explosives that could bring down planes and buildings,
and that, after the invasion, Iraq could erupt into civil war.

And, of course, the president ignored Colin Powell's Pottery Barn
warning: if you break it, you own it.

Their Iraqi puppet, Ayad Allawi, turned on Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush
this
week, in a scene right out of "Chucky.'' Mr. Allawi accused coalition
forces of "major negligence'' for not protecting the unarmed Iraqi
National Guard trainees who were slaughtered by insurgents wearing
Iraqi
police uniforms. Iraqi recruits are getting killed so fast we can't
even
pretend that we're going to turn the country over to them.

If you really want to be chilled to the bone this Halloween, listen to
what Peter W. Galbraith, a former diplomat who helped advance the case
for an Iraq invasion at the request of Paul Wolfowitz, said in a
column
yesterday in The Boston Globe.

He said he'd told Mr. Wolfowitz about "the catastrophic aftermath of
the
invasion, the unchecked looting of every public institution in
Baghdad,
the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary
Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was
letting this happen.'' He told Mr. Wolfowitz that mobs were looting
Iraqi labs of live H.I.V. and black fever viruses and making off with
barrels of yellowcake.

"Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard
Iraq's nuclear sites,'' he said.

In his column, Mr. Galbraith said weapons looted from the arms site
called Al Qaqaa might have wound up in Iran, which could obviously use
them to pursue nuclear weapons.

In April 2003 in Baghdad, he said, he told a young U.S. lieutenant
stationed across the street that H.I.V. and black fever viruses had
just
been looted. The soldier had been devastated and said, "I hope I'm not
responsible for Armageddon.''