Ah, I must have missed that one.Quote:
Originally Posted by vidcc
Hang on a sec, I'll delete my post and make it look like you are cracking up. :rolleyes:
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Ah, I must have missed that one.Quote:
Originally Posted by vidcc
Hang on a sec, I'll delete my post and make it look like you are cracking up. :rolleyes:
Quote:
Originally Posted by lynx
:lol: :lol: :lol:
well knowing hank i got my source from Foxnews
BuzzflashQuote:
MSNBC, 10/26/04 (Transcript):
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. 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. 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 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.
LLJ: Thank you.
Well, that seems different from the story about them not even seeing an Ammo Dump... :unsure:
/me waits for Hank and Manny's come back
40:30
Hanks serve
No cheating ruthie... Its Hanks Serve :P
a few sources Buzzflash
Common Dreams
MSNBC
YOU KNEW!!!! Dammit..couldn't help myself. LOL
RF the all knowing :rolleyes:
And now for Saturdays Lottery Results....
:o. My roving eye wasn't quick enoughQuote:
Originally Posted by Rat Faced
Ruthie try as you may you to prove other wise this story was made up to hurt Bush before the election. Just like in 2000 when the DUI thing came out.
Here is a quote from Cliff May of Nation Review Online:
Quote:
Sent to me by a source in the government: “The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The US is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”
Don't believe it, Hank..Still waiting for more facts. LOL
The Nation Review Online says it's fraud ?... well you could have knocked me over with a feather...hard facts indeed:rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by BigBank_Hank
what it boils down to hank is that whilst accusing us of foaming at the mouth you take any denial of the story as fact and anything against bush as fiction.
Well let me reduce something even further.... i don't care anymore if this story is true or false as the bush campaign is telling outright lies about Kerry so i say tough luck
As to the DUI story..... tell me...was it true or false?
You are right Vid at least the DUI thing actually happened, unlike this and Rathergate.
As much as I like to talk politics I’m sick of this whole election. It seems as though this campaign has been going on for years now. Its time for it all to be over but I fear that stories like this are just the beginning. Next week we’ll have the whole election to dispute because no matter who wins its going to be contested.
No proof that it hasn't happened hank....... just political in fighting so far. The reporter you pointed to has stated that the 101 didn't do a full search and wasn't there to secure.
Buzzflash here is the link to the transcript of your reporter
The only hard evedence you have that the story is a fraud...well the only question is timing..the explosives did go missing....is the fact that they could have been looted before the troops arrived... well i accept this is a possibility...but then you have to accept the possibility that they may not have been looted before...the statement seem to be tallying that the site was not secured... there is a huge amount of unaccounted time in which it could have happenedQuote:
Three-week window
U.S. defense officials said Tuesday that the materials could have vanished during a period of about three weeks, between March 15, 2003, when inspectors for the IAEA confirmed that at least some of the materials were still stored under IAEA seal at Al-Qaqaa, and April 4, when U.S. troops arrived.
On March 15, said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the IAEA, “the seals on the doors on the bunkers were checked at many of the bunkers to see if they were still there and hadn’t been tampered with, and that was the case.”
The war in Iraq began March 20. Army officials told NBC News on condition of anonymity that troops from the Army’s 3rd Infantry did not arrive at Al-Qaqaa until April 4, finding “looters everywhere” carrying what they could out on their backs.
The troops searched bunkers and found conventional weapons but no high explosives, the officials said. Six days later, the 101st Airborne Division arrived. Neither group was specifically searching for HMX or RDX, and the complex is so large — with more than 1,000 buildings — that it is not clear that the troops even saw the bunkers that might have held the explosives.
The Iraq Survey Group discovered that the stockpiles of HMX and RDX were missing on May 27, seven weeks after the last visit by U.S. troops.
Here is just a bit of the latest. The White House better get their story straight. Scott McClellan's head must be spinning...kinda like in the exorcist.
NY TimesQuote:
White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell.
But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the site and had merely stopped there overnight.
The commander, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said he did not learn until this week that the site, Al Qaqaa, was considered sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited it before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.
Colonel Anderson, who is now the chief of staff for the division and who spoke by telephone from Fort Campbell, Ky., said his troops had been driving north toward Baghdad and had paused at Al Qaqaa to make plans for their next push.
"We happened to stumble on it,'' he said. "I didn't know what the place was supposed to be. We did not get involved in any of the bunkers. It was not our mission. It was not our focus. We were just stopping there on our way to Baghdad. The plan was to leave that very same day. The plan was not to go in there and start searching. It looked like all the other ammunition supply points we had seen already."
well hank it seems that the "fraud" has some meat on the bone
This is one of the most bizarre campaigns that I’ve ever seen.
This story is getting better and better though. Here is a quote from a senior advisor in the Kerry campaign:If no one knows the truth then why is Kerry continuing to run with this story?Quote:
'You don't know the truth and I don't know the truth.' He later underscored this point: 'I don't know the truth.'"
It's a story, Hank. A real one, unlike the swift vets BS. Unlike Kerry didn't earn his medals.
Just a guess but...
Coz you all should know the truth? :rolleyes:
because it isn't good for bush. Kerry's job is to make bush look as incompotent as possible...just as bush has to poo poo kerry.Quote:
Originally Posted by BigBank_Hank
you still have to admit hank that the story isn't a fraud as you said... the only thing that is in question is timing.
You’d better not get me going on the switfies. If none of their charges are accurate why doesn’t Kerry come out and say hey these guys aren’t telling the truth? Not a word from the man who was actually there.
I would have thought a book was enough of a word...
Plus the words of the ex swift vets...
Since when does an Air Force Colonel have anything to do with Swifties?
nice try at deflection hank but we are talking about bush.... you came here and called us all idiots (out of character for you) saying we have been taken in by a fraud...well we are waiting for you to make a case to justify it...so far the wieght of evedence is in our favourQuote:
Originally Posted by BigBank_Hank
BTW kerry didn't have to call them liars...he already told his side...just you didn't listen
Army TimesQuote:
One of the first U.S. military units to reach the Al-Qaqaa military installation south of Baghdad after the invasion of Iraq did not have orders to search for the nearly 400 tons of explosives that are missing from the site, the unit spokesman said Tuesday.
The soldiers “secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemical weapons were not present in their area,” Wellman wrote in an e-mail message to The Associated Press. “Bombs were found but not chemical weapons in that immediate area.
“Orders were not given from higher to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions, as they (high-explosive weapons) were everywhere in Iraq,” he wrote.
The 101st Airborne was apparently at least the second military unit to arrive at Al-Qaqaa after the U.S. led invasion began. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told The Washington Post that the 3rd Infantry Division reached the site around April 3, fought with Iraq forces and occupied the site. They left after two days, headed to Baghdad, he told the newspaper for Wednesday’s editions.
Associated Press Correspondent Chris Tomlinson, who was embedded with the 3rd Infantry but didn’t go to Al-Qaqaa, described the search of Iraqi military facilities south of Baghdad as brief, cursory missions to seek out hostile troops, not to inventory or secure weapons stockpiles. One task force, he said, searched four Iraqi military bases in a single day, meeting no resistance and finding only abandoned buildings, some containing weapons and ammunition.
There is more to the article.
This was an ill-prepared for war at best, as well as illegal.
There are, no matter what the spin put on purely for the US election, some pretty indisputable facts.
The most salient of these is that the insurgents (and the latest US Army estimates put these at about 20,000 fighters) have no shortage of arms and explosives. These clearly are coming from somewhere. This problem of stolen munitions is not new and is generally accepted by most sources as an endemic problem in Iraq. There are stock piles everywhere and not enough troops to defend them - almost as if Saddam had always intended for this kind of guerilla action. ;)
I believe Bremmer and Sanchez have both said the big mistake in the war was not going in with enough troops to ensure law and order prevailed after Saddam was toppled. On top of this there was a considerable drive to find WMD not conventional weapons. This particular buck stops with Rumsfeld not Bush. However, it is a moot point as to how many actual troops would have been required - probably more than was available.
Firstly I didn’t bring up the swifties Ruthie did.Quote:
Originally Posted by vidcc
Secondly I did call you all idiots, which I shouldn’t have. I don’t like to use personal attacks and I was really mad at the time of posting that and I still am, but that doesn’t excuse me.
Lastly the article that I posted yesterday from Newsmax.com is the proof that these claims are false. Now that this thing has been ousted 60 Minutes cancelled their report that they were going to air on Sunday, and the original reporters of the story The New York Times made this a front page story and its now all the way on page 10. CBS decided not to run the show because they thought the story wouldn’t hold. Wouldn’t hold?
You tell me if a major news media outlet won’t air a story because they are scared that it “won’t hold” that the story is creditable.
Biggles,Quote:
Originally Posted by Biggles
Why ignore conventional stockpiles and attempt to find weapons (WMD) that you know don't exist?
Quote:
Originally Posted by hobbes
Maintain the illusion perhaps?
That is a good question, Hobbes. I have also wondered, if these explosives could have been moved, what else could have been moved?
There is no proof yet that the story is false hank...there is lots of spin on it.... The republicans playing it down saying it could have gone missing before the army got there and the democrats saying it could have gone missing after the army got there...both have a possibility of being correct. The site wasn't fully searched or secured after the army arrived, the Army are saying this.
Now i have accepted the possibility that it may have gone missing before...why can't you accept that it may have gone missing after?.....after all you made the point of quoting someone that said knowbody knows the truth.
Why would 60 mins. need to run the show anymore.? the cat's out of the bag and most media stations are reporting fresh stuff as it happens.
Again hank i have to state that only the timing of the removal is being disbuted...not the removal
So one would simply bypass the legitimate threat to create an illusion that they were looking for something. Would fit nicely, except that the military was constantly detonating conventional weapons caches as they were uncovered on the march toward Baghdad. Why ignore this one?Quote:
Originally Posted by DanB
Conspiracy is so much more fun than reality. You don't have to prove anything, just suggest it as a possibility.
Right now, the board is asking us to prove that those weapons didn't exist. When we proved to them that the WMD didn't exist, they got all pissed. I'm at a loss as to how to please some people.
Not my question to answer but I do believe that bush thought, as the rest of the world thought at the time, that saddam had WMD. That's why conventional weapons were ignored.Quote:
Originally Posted by hobbes
But we now know this was incorrect and was based on bad intelligence.
I wonder though as we actually knew about this particular site and it's contents why it wasn't destroyed by air attack on the first couple of days. If it was because they thought it contained bio or nuclear weapons why was there so little effort to search and secure it as priority before moving into Bagdad?
Edit:This wasn't WMD it was explosives that could be used for certain WMD but is also for civil engineeringQuote:
Originally Posted by hobbes
I asked the question because I have been getting the feeling that several forum members do not accept Biggles assumption that Bush ever thought SAddam had WMD.Quote:
Originally Posted by vidcc
Too me, this point totally changes everything.
Were he to have believed that WMD were there and acted to circumvent the inefficiency of the UN, that portends much less ominously than going in fully knowing that no weapons were there.
I was just interested in knowing what people thought about Biggles assumption.
In an earlier post, it was stated that those weapons (the conventional stockpile this thread is about) never existed. The rebuttal was, prove they didn't exist.Quote:
Edit:
This wasn't WMD it was explosives that could be used for certain WMD but is also for civil engineering
I just found this amusing because everyone got so pissed off when we proved that WMD didn't exist by invading Iraq, but now they want us to prove that these conventional weapons didn't exist. That is irony.
I don't know or care about this stockpile, there are caches of weapons all over Iraq, this is just one. It was the irony which amused me.
I see.....
Well if i wanted to make a conspiracy theory out of it i would suggest bush knew the truth but isn't as dumb as we have been making out and kept it to himself...... if you want to pull a stunt on such world scale proportions the fewer people in on it the better :rolleyes:
just a theory :lol:
Quote:
Originally Posted by vidcc
Funny you should say that Vidcc.
Today at lunch I stated that I had misunderestimated my appetite. I then went on to say "Fool me once appetite, shame on me, no you.... You won't fool me again, is what I mean".
I postulated that this buffoonery was a facade to mask his genious as the puppetmaster in a global conspiracy. But to me he is hamming up the act a bit.
There's the possibility that he rushed to war and thought he might get lucky.Quote:
Originally Posted by hobbes
There was an enormous effort to find WMD. It was, after all, the raison d'etre for the war. To not look might have seemed - well odd :blink:
Saddam did have WMD and used them against the Iranians.
I did not at the time believe the intelligence reports showed Saddam was an imminent threat and considered the spin placed on his dangerousness somewhat overplayed. I was, however, mildly surprised that the UN had so successfully removed his WMD capability. (A Brownie point to the UN?)
The obfustication that Saddam pursued from about 98 onwards was perhaps not so much to fool us but rather his regional enemies who he would like to have think he was still a power to be reckoned with. Oh what tangled webs we weave!
Iraq is awash with weapons - almost all his neighbours disliked him and Iraq had a large army. Securing all the conventional weapons will be a major task. If this particular piece of looting took place (and boy did they loot) then it is a shame as the UN did have seals on the place and reported its contents. The explosives missing are perfect for car bombs and as there are car bombs daily it would suggest that the insurgents have all the explosives they need. If the story is a fraud then one must assume they looted their explosives from another site.
Odd perhaps, but why leave this stockpile which was apparently a known entity and which may now be the source of car bombs, when detonating so many others?Quote:
Originally Posted by Biggles
It would seem to me that blowing up conventional stockpiles would in no way impede an apparent search for WMD. In fact, knowing that they would never be found, I would go to all the real threats first. I would blow them up quite demonstratively to show the public just what a threat Saddam was. "Look at all this stuff people. You know we're on the trail."
I think the conspiracy theorists need to become a little more creative, I've pretty much trumped their little diversion scenario in 1 cup of coffee. :lol: