I spent three hours last night trying to think of an acceptable excuse from the Bush administration about this, and I came up with nothing. Try to come up with an excuse for this and tell me how you do:
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 detonate nuclear weapons – are missing from one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations.
The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man’s land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
You didn’t misread that. That is 380 tons. Let’s put this in persepctive. THis wasn’t just a big mound of c-4 sitting in the middle of the desert. For each pound of explosive, you can probably at least double the weight when you factor in crating. The logistics alone of carting off this amount of explosives is so daunting as to make it inexcusable.
Put it this way. This is akin to over the past two years, someone systematically dismantled every house on your block and carried it away, and when the NY Times asked you what happened, your response is: “Gee, I am not sure what happened.”
PS- I don’t care if we are looking into this and the explosives may be with appropriate authorities. Every niht that I was in the field as a soldier, my platoon sergeant and butterbar conducted a sensitive items check, and each person made sure that he has his weapon, protective mask, an/pvs-7’s, and other items. Every night. Business stopped if one boresight device or one set of night vision goggles was missing. In peacetime, if someone lost a weapon, the base closed.
We can’t check nightly on 380 frigging tons of explosives? Jeebus.
*** Update ***
I got the vapors because I actually believed the assholes at the NY Times. I don’t believe the Times story anymore, so read the rest of this post with that in mind.
*** Update #2 ***
Commenters have left some links that lead me to believe my initial reaction was correct.
I will have to check on this later, but my reaction now is that I was right the first go around. Regardless of what happened, not being able to provide a coherent response RIGHT NOW to the question “Where are the 380 tons of explosives?” seems to me to be inexcusable.
Ron
There was another similar incident that involved one of the other coalition officers. Several things occured, some stated elsewhere, some stated here. Security for these areas was the CIA’s responsibility and so was delegating coalition troops to guard these stockpiles. We overtook Iraq so quickly and effectively that, as stated elsewhere, we were(US troops) destroying caches in schools, mosques, etc. This “diversion” probably took our eye off the ball completely and the CIA is the reason.
Is this serious. Sure. But why should the Bush administration have the answer? It’s just now coming to light
Ron
Update:
Dan Senor, fmr coalition spokesman, just said on Fox that this is something the IAEA is looking into and said we are waiting for their results. They could have left with Iraq’s WMD’s.
Speculation?
Al Maviva
I’m wondering if this is another “looting of the Iraqi national museum” story – where it turns out later that much of the material was looted by the prior regime on the way out, taking it with them to wherever (Syria? Sudan?) as a source of revenue, and in this case an operational stock.
jhaley
Ha dip^%$&^$ most bombs are made from old mortars and shells. This is not a new story, just the specifics are new, weeks prior to the war it was probably moved to Syria. We had intelligance this was happening and Isreal wanted to bomb the convoys on the Syrian border….This was part of Sadams master plan to fight a insurgancy long enough for the left in american would force the US to pull out (see advice from France)he would step back in power and declair a great victory. Do your research before putting foot in mouth….
Jim B
Read today’s Kerry Spot on National Review: evidently the explosives were gone before we ever got there.
This is the inherent danger of believing anything in the NYT: odds are, if it puts the president in a bad light, it’s probably a lie…
Tom Maguire
John, I am doing my best.
My gist – the stuff may have been moved before the war started, and it was one of many high explosive dumps in Iraq.
As to the broader question of why securing ammo dumps was so difficult, I don’t know. But my impression is that Saddam did hide stuff in planning for an insurgency.
Geek, Esq.
The theory that the stuff was moved out of the bunkers seems plausible.
BUT, compare and contrast that with:
“The White House said President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing.”
Is it really possible that Condi Rice didn’t know that these things were missing, and that the Bush administration made NO attempt to figure out what happened to them, if they were already gone?
This is the best spin I can put on this for the Bush administration:
1. The stuff was gone by the time US troops got there.
2. The White House is lying about when they found out, and in fact they knew these explosives were gone shortly after they took over Iraq.
3. This was really embarrassing and potentially a political liability, so they engaged in a big time coverup–not allowing the IAEA back into Iraq to verify their whereabouts and preventing (as long as possible) any report to the IAEA dealing with these explosives. However, the dam burst at exactly the worst time.
That’s the best case scenario–the one most flattering to the Bush administration. There are three possibilities:
1. The one detailed above;
2. The weapons were already gone, but the Bush administration was so utterly incompetent that it never occurred to them to secure the explosives and determine their status.
3. At least some of the weapons were still on site, and they disappeared because the Bush administration was asleep at the switch.
The big question, other than when the weapons disappeared, is what did the Bush administration (and that includes the CPA) know, when did they know it, and why didn’t they know it sooner?
Terry
Maybe it would be well if everyone stopped and and took a deep breath for a second. Review Kerry’s long voting record (his hyper-reticence to use American forces (or even proxies) overseas whether Desert Storm, Bosnia, Central America and so on–save the uber-safe Kosovo vote and disingenuous Iraq position). Think of how his Vietnam stance reveals much about his worldview. Think of wrong war wrong place wrong time. Ask yourself, will he see Iraq through given such rhetoric? Given his voting record over the decades?
But most importantly, doesn’t this NYT story have the awful smell of overblown hackery, just the sort one would expect from an organ of the DNC and Kerry campaign in the last week of a campaign?
S.W. Anderson
There is no excuse.
I’ll say it one more time: Bad thinking leads to bad policies that yield bad results. That’s the story of George W. Bush and his disastrous four years in power. I hope and pray that in a few days it can serve as his administration’s epitaph.
Geek, Esq.
So, the explanation is just to pretend it never happened.
There’s a reason why Kerry’s supporters are known as the “reality-based community.”
From MSNBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6326367
“At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said U.S.-led coalition troops had searched Al Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.”
That’s two sources for ya, JC. Time for another glass of the RNC Kool-Aid?
John Cole
Are you trying to persuade me or piss me off, Geek. All you are really doing is convincing me of what I already know- that whenever I agree with the Democrats, they are so god damned obnoxious I want to vote against them anyway just to spite them.
Jimmie
Here’s how I read the story. The IAEA had this facility all marked and sealed. US forces come into Iraq, see the facility and see that it has no IAEA seals. They mark it as a moderate concern and go on to the ones that rate higher, such as the ones the IAEA and UNSCOM were worried about. They numbered in the hundreds as I recall. The IAEA itself assumes that the Iraqis cleaned out the facility and left the stuff lying around outside the facility under light camouflage. We saw no such thing when we got there which seems unusual to me. You’d think you’d notice a few large mounds of high explosive lying around the desert, wouldn’t you?
So when they got there, they did’nt see the massive stockpiles they might have been told were there, either inside or outside, saw no IAEA-sealed items, and moved on to more important locations.
I’m struck now that we’re told that all these explosives are going to end up in the hands of terrorists who, as we’ve been faithfully told, did not exist in Iraq under Hussein. So now I’m expecting we’ll be told that they were in sprinters’ crouches at the Iraqi border just waiting to rush into the country to grab the WMDs that didn’t exist the very second we went in. Or something. I don’t know. It’s a little tough to understand.
Arty
Has anybody checked to see if Sandy Berger has been at the Al Qaqaa explosive storage area?
Geek, Esq.
I was just trying to figure out the thought process.
You went from reasonably trying to explain the story, to just rejecting it because it was bad for your guy.
What factual claims in the Times story are you calling a lie? If there’s a rational reason to disbelieve part of this extremely disturbing story, I’d love to hear it. It would help me sleep at night.
Geek, Esq.
Jimmie:
The White House is claiming that Condi Rice didn’t find out about this until September 2004. And that she found out only because of the efforts of the IAEA.
Does that strike you as credible? How on earth could something like this avoid her desk for that long?
Jimmie
Geek,
Do you have any idea what amount of explosives we’ve estimated were in Iraq before we went in?
The number, when last I saw, was about 2,000,000 tons. I wonder how how many facilities there were storing that: a thousand? Two?
And that’s something that one person is supposed to track. All by herself. Because it crossed her desk.
I expect a lot of my elected officials. Being superhuman isn’t one of them.
Geek, Esq.
These explosives were stuff that the IAEA repeatedly warned the admin about. These are not ordinary explosives–not only are they dual use, but they are much more dangerous than normal explosives. They are much more stable, more easily used, and create an explosion with much greater force and velocity.
If the IAEA was concerned about these explosives and this site in general, why wasn’t Condi Rice? Why didn’t anyone in the administration have this place on a checklist of places whose status needed to be confirmed?
ron
“…..the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.”. really. why am I supposed to believe mr. anonymous as quoted in the ny times?
Bryan C
If the IAEA was actaully that concerned about this site, why wasn’t the stockpile marked?
This seems like a non-story to me. In one storage facility out of thousands in Iraq some explosives are apparently missing. They mostly likely were removed prior to the invasion before the US was in a position to do anything about it. How is that our fault, exactly? It happens, and I guarantee I’d say that regardless of who was President.
SDN
Jimmie,
“ElBaradei told the United Nations in February 2003 that Iraq had declared that “HMX previously under IAEA seal had been transferred for use in the production of industrial explosives, primarily to cement plants as a booster for explosives used in quarrying.””
We know that involved 35 tons, because that’s what IAEA admits to. Anyone want to bet it’s more? Second, we have destroyed 110,000 tons and inventoried another 150,000 tons. Again, that doesn’t represent finding a huge ammo dump and putting guards on it, that’s what we’ve inventoried. 380 tons out of 260,000? Look up the accounting term “materiality” and you will see why this story isn’t much.
And, BTW, getting rid of explosives isn’t like you see in the movies, where Rambo shoots a bazooka into the ammo dump. That’s because, when he does that, it doesn’t ALL blow up. Instead, the surrounding terrain for MILES has a rain of unexploded ordnance. Some blows up on impact. Some gets buried in the ground. And a lot of it is just lying there waiting to be picked up.
Wars aren’t neat and tidy.
Chuck Simmins
Just one of the ammo dumps in Iraq is 26 square miles! This 350 tons is less than ten truck loads. a pittance in the amount of explosives that Iraq is covered with.
Sav
John, according to this Seattle P-I report from June, Iraq had 600,000 tons of munitions and explosives.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/177738_weapons14.asp
At the time, the Army Corp of Engineers claimed that 248,000 tons were either locked up or destroyed. If 350 or 380 tons of the original 600,000 is all that is missing, that’s pretty amazing.
Aaron
The explosives are dual use.
What does that mean?
It means terrorists could get them from civilain sources if they really needed them.
See WTC first bombing.
Sure, we’d like to prevent this stuff from getting into the bad guy’s hands, but so far, it looks like when US troops arrived, there were no explosives…already moved by Saddam and Co.
Mark L
John:
My comment: Please review your initial reaction to the Valerie Plame story. Contrast what you heard at that time with what the story turned out to be.
Remember what your reaction to the initial reports that “yellowcake in Niger is a hoax.”
Explain to me why you think this will turn out any differently. We do not have all the facts yet. We do not know if the IAEA is doing butt-covering. We do not know who told what when. We do know that at least one embed said that the seals were gone when we arrived. We do not know — not really — whether the Pentagon was getting warning about this cache of explosive or whether they are confusing it with reports of other caches.
About all we know is that this is a story that came out of the Weekly World News of the mainstream media — The New York Times. We know that every other anti-Bush media is echoing the story because it comes from the nation’s “paper of record.” We know that this paper has done hit pieces on Bush before. We know that it is eight days before an election they want Kerry to win.
I am to believe this story, why?
Dr. Weevil
I first heard of this on the evening news — whatever channel my dad was watching while I was web-surfing. One line struck me so forcefully that I jotted it down: “More bad news from Iraq that played right into the hands of the Kerry campaign”. I got a strong impression that ‘playing into their hands’ was exactly what the network had in mind.
I spent the rest of the segment wondering what percentage of Saddam’s arsenal 325 tons amounted to. They never said, and a casual listener would have gotten the impression that it was a quarter or half of his arsenal. I had to go to Just One Minute to find that 325 tons is less than 1/10th of 1% of the total. It’s still a huge amount of explosives, and this particular stuff may be 2-3 times more worrisome than average, but that still amounts to far less than 1% of the total worry.
Sav
NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski reported tonight that the 380 tons of missing munitions were gone no later than April 10, 2003.
-NBC News: Miklaszewski:
Toren
I’ve spent six hours chasing the damn story all over the net and I’ve arrived at two conclusions:
1. This is such a contradictory mess at this point I’m simply throwing the “48 hour” rule on it. Maybe it’ll make some sense then.
2. Since the explosives are not there now, by the WMD rules established by the liberals, they never were there and did not/do not represent a threat, so who cares anyway?
(For the humor impaired, #2 is a joke. Sort of.)
However, if this turns out to be true, it’s a black eye for the Bush administration for sure. But in the larger scheme of a war, not all that big of a deal. How much explosive material would the terrorists have now if Saddam had continued to supply them? How much explosives and armaments did they get for the 11 years the UN dicked around with sanctions and harshly-worded edicts?
This is just more of the usual liberal demand for perfection in all but themselves. Thank god they weren’t around for WW2.
stickler
I’m sorry but Toren’s comment is just too screamingly idiotic to let pass.
“This is just more of the usual liberal demand for perfection in all but themselves. Thank god they weren’t around for WW2.”
Ever heard of FDR? Harry Truman? Liberals won World War II.
Conservatives supported America First and opposed the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, and Lend-Lease. Pick up a freaking history book sometime — you might learn something.
Toren
stickler, you are a flaming dipshit.
Democrats were around for WW2.
“Liberals” used in the modern scornful sense of a bunch of tree-hugging pussies, were not (at least in any large numbers).
Crawl back to the DU and swim in the sewage with your own kind.