"Explosive" Breaking News . . .

[christa]

http://www.drudgereport.com/nbcw.htm

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX MON OCT 25 2004 22:45:05 ET XXXXX

NBCNEWS: HUGE CACHE OF EXPLOSIVES VANISHED FROM SITE IN IRAQ -- AT LEAST 18 MONTHS AGO -- BEFORE TROOPS ARRIVED

The NYTIMES urgently reported on Monday how the Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives are now missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

Jumping on the TIMES exclusive, Dem presidential candidate John Kerry blasted the Bush administration for its failure to "guard those stockpiles."

"This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration," Kerry said.

In an election week rush:

**ABCNEWS Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 4 Times
**CBSNEWS Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 7 Times
**MSNBC Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 37 Times
**CNN Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 50 Times

But tonight, NBCNEWS reported, once: The 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were already missing back in April 10, 2003 -- when U.S. troops arrived at the installation south of Baghdad!

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

It is not clear why the NYTIMES failed to report the cache had been missing for 18 months -- and was reportedly missing before troops even arrived.

"The U.S. Army was at the sight one day after the liberation and the weapons were already gone," a top Republican blasted from Washington late Monday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers.

Developing...

-----------------------------------------------------------
Filed By Matt Drudge
Reports are moved when circumstances warrant
http://www.drudgereport.com for updates
(c)DRUDGE REPORT 2004
Not for reproduction without permission of the author

[Lady's Human]

The only reason that the story was even reported on was to hit the President in the polls. The story was widely reported immediately after the invasion, and was then picked up again after the Iraqi Govt. sent a letter to the UN on the 10th of October. Makes you wonder about why they held off on the story until almost 2 weeks later.............

[christa]

We'll see this in the morning . . . probably be the story of the day . . . the truth, hmm, what a concept . . . I have a feeling it's going to come back to bite them!

[Prairie Purrs]

MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933/)

According to the report linked above, a Pentagon official (as opposed to some "top Republican") stated as follows:


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, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. The site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In other words, this cache of explosives did not vanish before the troops arrived. The International Atomic Energy Agency had secured these explosives before the war. They were still there when U.S. forces arrived. The U.S. forces didn't bother to secure them, and so they were stolen.

And why is this a big deal? Because we're talking about 360 TONS of explosives, one POUND of which is enough to blow an airliner out of the sky. We're talking about explosives that are very likely being used right now to kill and maim our soldiers.

But these are conventional weapons, not WMDs, so this administration wasn't interested in them. Just another example of the shortsighted arrogance that has been characteristic of Bush & Co.

[lizzielou742]

Excuse me, we really don't need Drudge on Pet Talk.

You clearly meant to type in freerepublic.com into your browser.

[guster girl]

Originally posted by lizzielou742
Excuse me, we really don't need Drudge on Pet Talk.

You clearly meant to type in freerepublic.com into your browser.

I'm not trying to be funny here, but, I was reading this thread, and, don't know what you mean. Will you explain in here or pm me? thanks!

[lizzielou742]

Sure, I'll explain it right now.

What I am saying is that Christa is reading stories from Internet news sources, coming in here and spewing conservative pro-Bush talking points from right-wing blogs like freerepublic.com. I could just as easily come in here and post something completely contradictory to what she just posted from a left-wing blog. But I'm not going to do that, because I think it's unnecessary and makes PTers uncomfortable. It's just something that should be left out there in the blogosphere for people to fight about. Don't bring the fight here.

[guster girl]

Gotcha. Thank you.

[Cincy'sMom]

I have not spoken up in the political threads, and I'd probablly do better to not do so now, but for once I am not going to.

I have not read every post in every thread. I admit that. But over and over again, it seems anything pro-Bush is instantly flamed. I dont see that happening the same way with the pro-Kerry posts. And I'mnot even saying that this has happned in this thread, just in political threads in general) Sure, there have been some, but it seems Bush supporters are attacked much more vehemntly. Maybe I have missed some, and maybe I am speaking out of turn, but it seems like things could be debated a little more respectfully. Just my opinion.

[K9soul]

Originally posted by Cincy'sMom
it seems like things could be debated a little more respectfully. Just my opinion.

I agree. Though I have seen both sides attacked, it seems more on this board support Kerry and so I have seen it more often towards Bush supporters. We can have separate views and still be civil with each other I think :)

[lizzielou742]

I still say leave the Drudge Report to the wingnuts.

Are we going to do this all the way into next week? 'Cause it could get really ugly.

[guster girl]

things can definitely be discussed more respectfully. i see nothing wrong with debates, as long as they're done with a little tact, and, in the dog house. :)

[guster girl]

Originally posted by lizzielou742
I still say leave the Drudge Report to the wingnuts.

Are we going to do this all the way into next week? 'Cause it could get really ugly.

It already did, haven't you seen the other threads? Scary. But, yeah, I imagine it will go past next week, and, I'm alright with it, like I said, as long as people can just be freakin' nice. You can make a point without being rude about it. That's just my opinion.

[aly]

I think the Bush supporters are just as vocal as the Kerry supporters. The problem is that since there are more Kerry supporters, it sometimes seems like the Bushers are being attacked. Trust me, Bush supporters get their fair share of digs in too :o

Our local news was talking about how Bush and Kerry campaign signs keep coming up missing or vandalized. I think it is sick that people are resorting to that stuff. I really can't wait for it all to be over!

[guster girl]

My friend, Alison, has a sticker on her car that says "anyone but bush" and she was always getting nasty stickers on her car, and, someone even kicked her bumper in. :(

[Pam]

Lizzielou the last I checked you were swamping the Dog House with pro-Kerry links. Why is Christa not allowed the same privilege. You say things could get nasty. I have news for you - they already have and much of the mud slinging has come from you. If you can't take it, don't dish it out.

[lizzielou742]

I don't think Matt Drudge is reliable, that's all I'm saying. Sheesh, people, calm down before your heads asplode.

Here is a real link to the story:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html

And here are the problems with the story:

A Pentagon "official who monitors developments in Iraq" and who wished to remain anonymous told the AP quote: "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."

Pentagon Spokesman Larry Di Rita's claim is that the first US troops that visited al Qa Qaa found that the explosives had already been stolen or looted or otherwise secreted away. (He has, in fact, already said this.) This would mean that the administration, or at least the US government, has known about this situation for 18 months.

The problem is that the White House spent the all of yesterday claiming that they knew nothing about this until October 15th, 2004. Scott McClellan said this repeatedly. Quote: "Now (after October 15th), the Pentagon, upon learning of this, directed the multinational forces and the Iraqi survey group to look into this matter, and that's what they are currently doing." So he says that the Pentagon only just learned about this. But Di Rita says that the US government has known about it for 18 months.

So which is the real story? They've known about it since just after the war and hid it from the American public? Or they just found out about it ten days ago and now they're on the case?

Equally disgusting is the attempt to shift the blame to the Iraqi government, and downplay the importance of this event. And of course, Bush himself ignored the situation yesterday and gave his crew 24 hours to come up with a way to spin this to make the President not look as bad. But this is truly damning stuff. As a result of our invasion of Iraq, 380 metric tons of RDX and HMX are now missing. That is a HUGE anount of explosives that can be used against our troops. US and coalition soldiers are being killed in Iraq at an alarming rate, and now we're seeing an attempt to spin and/or cover up the reason why. When the post-invasion looting was at its height, Donald Rumsfeld dismissed it saying "freedom is messy." Well now we know the consequences of the looting. Insurgents now have their hands on deadly weapons. And right-wingers are trying to spin this like it wasn't their fault. God forbid the administration admits their mistake. It makes me sick.

[lizzielou742]

Originally posted by Pam
Lizzielou the last I checked you were swamping the Dog House with pro-Kerry links.

Swamping? Really? That's interesting. In fact I've hardly been posting as much in the past few weeks as normal. Funny how you call real news sites "pro-Kerry links" - does this mean are you defending Matt Drudge? Because that would be laughable.

[RICHARD]

Originally posted by lizzielou742


Are we going to do this all the way into next week? 'Cause it could get really ugly.

That's why I avoid mirrors at all costs.

And since we are leaving drudge to the "wingnuts" I call for leaving freerepublic to the screwballs......



It is baseball season after all..................:confused:

[Logan]

Heard this on Fox and Friends, earlier this morning, and now I'm reading it again, through the daily commentary of a local Talk Radio host, Ralph Bristol.

NBC, CNN FOB (Friends of Bush)



Two unlikely informants have thrown a lifeline to President George W. Bush on a story that had (and still has) the potential to explode his chances for re-election. The New York Times ran a front-page story Monday that was quickly repeated by most of the other major media and adopted as the message of the day by the John Kerry campaign. It accused the Bush administration of letting some 380 tons (760-thousand pounds) of explosives disappear from an Iraq weapons depot after the invasion.



As the story circulated through the national news media with little or no resistance, NBC News finally dissented, and CNN picked up the NBC version of the story.



NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, one day after the fall of Baghdad, its crew was embedded with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division when troops first arrived at the Al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad. According to NBC, while the troops found large stockpiles of conventional explosives, they did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that reportedly went missing. Conclusion: the 380 tons of HMX and RDX went missing before the invasion.



The New York Times report was based on information it received from the International Atomic Energy Agency. In a letter to the IAEA dated October 10, Iraq's director of planning, Mohammed Abbas, said the material disappeared sometime after Saddam's regime fell in April 2003, which he attributed to "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."



Thanks to the imbedded NBC reporters, we know that Mr. Abbas was wrong. If any looting of this particular government installation occurred, it happened before the fall of the Saddam regime. More likely, Saddam allowed the explosives to be moved out of Iraq before the invasion.



The Pentagon said the Al Qaqaa facility was one of 500 sites to be searched and secured. U.S. officials say it was visited dozens of times by U.S. troops in the months following the invasion, and -- after searching 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings -- they never came upon the stockpile.



Prior to the Iraq war, the high-grade explosives at Al Qaqaa had been under the control of IAEA inspectors because the material could be used as a component in a nuclear weapon, IAEA and other U.N. inspectors left the country before the fighting began on March 19.



State Department spokesman Adam Ereli says coalition forces have cleared 10,033 weapons caches and destroyed 243,000 tons of munitions. He says another 162,898 tons of munitions are at secure locations and awaiting destruction. While 380 tons of explosives can cause a great deal of damage, it amounts to less than one-tenth of one percent of the more than 400-thousand tons of munitions that have been destroyed and/or secured.



It is unclear whether John Kerry was aware of the truth of the matter before he hit the campaign trail Monday and said, "this is one of the great blunders of Iraq and one of the great blunders of this administration."



Neither you nor I would know the truth if not for the honesty of NBC and its imbedded reporters and the news judgment of CNN, which has seen fit to join NBC in setting the record straight.



You may believe that this reporting on the part of NBC and CNN are aberrations that fell through the cracks of the mainstream media's usually reliable liberal filter. Perhaps. I think it is the marketplace at work in an industry whose practitioners are reliably liberal, but unable to resist the call of competition and enlightened self-interest. They will correct each other when it's in their best interest to do so - and it is always in their best interest to do so.



Whether or not the rest of the media (which won't get the same credit as NBC) will correct the record remains to be seen.

[lizzielou742]

Friends of Bush? Wait, are you still there? I can hardly see through all this spin.

*sigh*

This morning MSNBC interviewed one of the producers from their news crew that visited al Qaqaa as embeds with the 101st Airborne, Second brigade on April 10th, 2003.

This is the 'search' that the White House and CNN are talking about:

Amy Robach: And it's still unclear exactly when those explosives disappeared. Here to help shed some light on that question is Lai Ling. She was part of an NBC news crew that traveled to that facility with the 101st Airborne Division back in April of 2003. Lai Ling, can you set the stage for us? What was the situation like when you went into the area?

Lai Ling Jew: When we went into the area, we were actually leaving Karbala and we were initially heading to Baghdad with the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. The situation in Baghdad, the Third Infantry Division had taken over Baghdad and so they were trying to carve up the area that the 101st Airborne Division would be in charge of. Um, as a result, they had trouble figuring out who was going to take up what piece of Baghdad. They sent us over to this area in Iskanderia. We didn't know it as the Qaqaa facility at that point but when they did bring us over there we stayed there for quite a while. Almost, we stayed overnight, almost 24 hours. And we walked around, we saw the bunkers that had been bombed, and that exposed all of the ordinances that just lied dormant on the desert.

AR: Was there a search at all underway or was, did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?

LLJ: No. There wasn't a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was – at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.

AR: And there was no talk of securing the area after you left. There was no discussion of that?

LLJ: Not for the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. They were -- once they were in Baghdad, it was all about Baghdad, you know, and then they ended up moving north to Mosul. Once we left the area, that was the last that the brigade had anything to do with the area.

AR: Well, Lai Ling Jew, thank you so much for shedding some light into that situation. We appreciate it.

----------


Contrary to the Drudge/CNN story, this wasn't the first time troops visited al Qaqaa. That came a week earlier when explosives were found in a quick check of the facility.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030405-chem-readiness01.htm

That would be April 4, 2003. This visit was not from a complete search of the facility, which has anywhere from 87 to 1,110 buildings, depending on which report you read and how you define a building.

This is a relatively brief window of time we're talking about when this stuff could have been moved - actually, from March 8th (when the IAEA last checked it) until April 4th (when the first US troops arrived).

This is enough time to move the stuff - but it would be a a huge operation, quite visible to anyone. Moving this material would have taken a fleet of about forty big trucks each moving about ten tons of explosives, according to the NYT article. (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25bomb.html?ei=5094&en=fd35fdf4b6d46d61&hp=&ex=1098763200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=)

And this was at a time -- the week before and then during the war -- when Iraq's skies were full of American aerial and satellite reconnaissance. Remember "Shock and Awe?" So does the Bush administration want us to believe that we would not have noticed all this stuff being hauled away from a well-known munitions site? I think our troops are better than that.

From the LA Times today: Given the size of the missing cache, it would have been difficult to relocate undetected before the invasion, when U.S. spy satellites were monitoring activity at sites suspected of concealing nuclear and biological weapons. "You don't just move this stuff in the middle of the night," said a former U.S. intelligence official who worked in Baghdad.

My point here is not to say that this could not possibly have happened. What I am trying to show is that the administration clearly has no idea what happened to this stuff. If you look at the multiple contradictions in the different stories administration officials told reporters over the course of Monday, it's hard not to get the sense that they're caught without a good explanation and they're just trying to cover their - um - butts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/politics/campaign/26campaign.html?ei=5094&en=9041c394e6b0d150&hp=&ex=1098763200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=

[Samantha Puppy]

al Quqaa. hehe *biting tongue*

Anyway, I'm not looking to join the debate because no one's going to change my mind and I'm not looking to change anyone else's, but if this ammunition disappeared under Hans Blix's nose doesn't that mean that the same thing could've happened to WMDs?

I'm not saying there were WMDs. I'm not a member of the government privvy to such information, but common sense says that if all this stuff could go missing, it very well means that the same *could* be possible for other things to go missing as well.

Something to think about for both sides.

[momoffuzzyfaces]

Isn't it amazing that this OLD NEWS was recycled just in time to sway voters? :rolleyes: