Explosives stolen in Iraq

To be fair to the Coalition, the sheer scale of the looting took everyone by surprise. There was never any intention of blowing up all the military equipment as it was supposed to go to the new Iraqi Army.

20/20 Hindsight is a wonderful thing but there were people at the time suggesting that keeping the existing army intact might not be a bad idea.

There is every probability that if this stuff was stolen it was stolen early rather than late. What is noteworthy is the apparent ease with which insurgents move explosives around the country.

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Originally Posted by hobbes

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?

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:

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You have trumped nothing.

I don't subscribe to these 'theories' either but as I've said, Bush could have hoped to get lucky. Even I figured he would have found something.

I just thought this iminent threat bullshit was...well...bullshit. :dry:

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Originally Posted by Biggles

There is every probability that if this stuff was stolen it was stolen early rather than late. What is noteworthy is the apparent ease with which insurgents move explosives around the country.

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And that your avatar is a plane, but I am spamming. So I will STFU.

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Originally Posted by hobbes

And that your avatar is a plane, but I am spamming. So I will STFU.

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:shifty:

On the other hand, why stop when you are having fun.

There is a lot of talk that these weapons could have been moved after we got there and failed to secure it. No one however seems to question how in the hell you move nearly 400 tons of explosives without anyone noticing. It would have taken 40 semi trucks to move that much material to another location.

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Originally Posted by BigBank_Hank

There is a lot of talk that these weapons could have been moved after we got there and failed to secure it. No one however seems to question how in the hell you move nearly 400 tons of explosives without anyone noticing. It would have taken 40 semi trucks to move that much material to another location.

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Very logical ;)

I think alot of folks just don't put alot past the whole administration so if something is done ass backwards, such as not securing weapons stockpiles, then you go, " :lol: I'm not surprised".

I mean you have to admit, Bush sent our troops to Iraq with no post-war plan.

Who'd have thunk it? :blink:

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Originally Posted by BigBank_Hank

There is a lot of talk that these weapons could have been moved after we got there and failed to secure it. No one however seems to question how in the hell you move nearly 400 tons of explosives without anyone noticing. It would have taken 40 semi trucks to move that much material to another location.

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who said it all went in one go ? there is at least a seven week window during which it could have gone and there was widespead looting occuring constantly.

Also the missing stuff is not weapons, it was explosives.

BTW. i would put it as half that amount of semi trucks...even less if you remove axleweight restrictions as i'm sure they wouldn't be worried about gross vehicle weight:shifty: ... but then what makes you think large trucks were used? if i was them i would be using ordianry pick ups or cars...honest it wouldn't take long with enough of them.

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Originally Posted by vidcc

and there was widespead looting occuring constantly

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...except the oilfields.

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Originally Posted by Rat Faced

...except the oilfields.

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huh?

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Arms experts say the missing explosives - monitored by the UN nuclear watchdog until the March 2003 invasion - could potentially be used to make a detonator for a nuclear bomb or other explosive device.

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From the BBC.

Since Iraq has no nuclear weapons, why would the BBC make such an inane statement. Are they to conjure one from prayer.

It seems that WMD are potentially present or definitely absent based on the agenda of the aspiring author.

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to make a detonator for

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I agree... A Detonator is not a Nuclear Weapon.

That is just plain scaremongering :dry:

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Originally Posted by hobbes

From the BBC.

Since Iraq has no nuclear weapons, why would the BBC make such an inane statement. Are they to conjure one from prayer.

It seems that WMD are potentially present or definitely absent based on the agenda of the aspiring author.

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well they have many uses...i think the WMD link is being put to make the missing explosives seem "more dangerous" by giving a worse case scenario.
That said it could be taken out of the country to a place where it could be used in WMD....ironically the very thing we were supposed to have stopped.
I would say they would be more likely used for car bombs etc. The opposing side is very adaptable and evolves constantly in their tactics.

Much of the arguement about the mismanagement was that a country once contained has been turned into a ticking out of control bomb with a lit fuse

Explosives can be made from everyday items found in supermarkets if one has the knowledge. so if 200 lbs of fertilizer is stolen i guess a theory would be put that it was to make a bomb.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136761,00.html


something jumped up at me whilst reading this story...

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"A political candidate who jumps to conclusion without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief," the president said in a speech in Lititz, Pa.

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a kind of ironic quote from bush seeing as he didn't actually have the "facts" before going into Iraq :rolleyes:

Here's another little peice to this puzzle... the credibility of which I leave to the reader.....

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Mohammed al-Sharaa, who heads the science ministry's site monitoring department and worked with UN weapons inspectors under Saddam, said "it is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime's fall."


He said he and other officials had been ordered a month earlier to insure that "not even a shred of paper left the sites." "The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall and I spoke to them about it and they even issued certified statements to this effect which the US-led coalition was aware of."

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TurkishPress.com

Just a side not scroff, but I think Bush has infilterated your signature and screwed up the address to your web site in a painly obvious attempt to thwart you.

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Originally Posted by Comic_Peddler

Just a side not scroff, but I think Bush has infilterated your signature and screwed up the address to your web site in a painly obvious attempt to thwart you.

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Zounds! Those evil republican gremlins have struck again! :01:

Fixing it now:unsure: Thanks for the heads up...

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BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 27 - Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday.

The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and later heaving unwanted items off the trucks.

Two witnesses were employees of Al Qaqaa - one a chemical engineer and the other a mechanic - and the third was a former employee, a chemist, who had come back to retrieve his records, determined to keep them out of American hands. The mechanic, Ahmed Saleh Mezher, said employees asked the Americans to protect the site but were told this was not the soldiers' responsibility.

The accounts do not directly address the question of when 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives vanished from the site sometime after early March, the last time international inspectors checked the seals on the bunkers where the material was stored. It is possible that Iraqi forces removed some explosives before the invasion.

But the accounts make clear that what set off much if not all of the looting was the arrival and swift departure of American troops, who did not secure the site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it.

"The looting started after the collapse of the regime," said Wathiq al-Dulaimi, a regional security chief, who was based nearby in Latifiya. But once it had begun, he said, the booty streamed toward Baghdad.

Earlier this month, on Oct. 10, the directorate of national monitoring at the Ministry of Science and Technology notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives, which are used in demolition and missiles and are the raw material for plastic explosives, were missing. The agency has monitored the explosives because they can also be used as the initiator of an atomic bomb.

Agency officials examined the explosives in January 2003 and noted in early March that their seals were still in place. On April 3, the Third Infantry Division arrived with the first American troops.

Chris Anderson, a photographer for U.S. News and World Report who was with the division's Second Brigade, recalled that the area was jammed with American armor on April 3 and 4, which he believed made the removal of the explosives unlikely. "It would be quite improbable for this amount of weapons to be looted at that time because of the traffic jam of armor," he said.

The brigade blew up numerous caches of arms throughout the area, he said. Mr. Anderson said he did not enter the munitions compound.

The Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division arrived outside the site on April 10, under the command of Col. Joseph Anderson. The brigade had been ordered to move quickly to Baghdad because of civil disorder there after Mr. Hussein's government fell on April 9.

They gathered at Al Qaqaa, about 30 miles south, simply as a matter of convenience, Colonel Anderson said in an interview this week. He said that when he arrived at the site - unaware of its significance - he saw no signs of looting, but was not paying close attention.

Because he thought the brigade would be moving on to Baghdad within hours, Al Qaqaa was of no importance to his mission, he said, and he was unaware of the explosives that international inspectors said were hidden inside.

Pentagon officials said Wednesday that analysts were examining surveillance photographs of the munitions site. But they expressed doubts that the photographs, which showed vehicles at the location on several occasions early in the conflict, before American troops moved through the area, would be able to indicate conclusively when the explosives were removed.

Col. David Perkins, who commanded the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, called it "very highly improbable" that 380 tons of explosives could have been trucked out of Al Qaqaa in the weeks after American troops arrived.

Moving that much material, said Colonel Perkins, who spoke Wednesday to news agencies and cable television, "would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks."

He conceded that some looting of the site had taken place. But a chemical engineer who worked at Al Qaqaa and identified himself only as Khalid said that once troops left the base itself, people streamed in to steal computers and anything else of value from the offices. They also took munitions like artillery shells, he said.

Mr. Mezher, the mechanic, said it took the looters about two weeks to disassemble heavy machinery at the site and carry that off after the smaller items were gone.

James Glanz reported from Baghdad for this article and Jim Dwyer from New York. Ali Adeeb contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Khalid W. Hussein and Zainab Obeid fromAl Qaqaa..

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NY Times

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Originally Posted by vidcc

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136761,00.html


something jumped up at me whilst reading this story...

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"A political candidate who jumps to conclusion without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief," the president said in a speech in Lititz, Pa.

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a kind of ironic quote from bush seeing as he didn't actually have the "facts" before going into Iraq :rolleyes:

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:lol: I heard that last night when BBC News24 was airing ABC


btw who does ABC favour? :unsure:

Good question. Right wingers go on about the "liberal" media here, as far as our news stations. Personally, I totally disagree. I find them fairly conservative. Some of them are up to asking questions they should ask, however they fail to challenge the misleading statements which continue the deceptions,instead of calling them on it.
I like Ted Kopell for the most part..he is ABC, and does a show called Nightline, after the regular news.

BigBank_Hank, ive got a question, if this was made up to hurt bush, why not wait till a day before the election and then drop the bomb? wouldnt that do way more damage to bushes voters?

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Originally Posted by Storm

BigBank_Hank, ive got a question, if this was made up to hurt bush, why not wait till a day before the election and then drop the bomb? wouldnt that do way more damage to bushes voters?

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It was planned to air this coming sunday...But it got out before.

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Originally Posted by hobbes

From the BBC.

Since Iraq has no nuclear weapons, why would the BBC make such an inane statement. Are they to conjure one from prayer.

It seems that WMD are potentially present or definitely absent based on the agenda of the aspiring author.

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The explosives were part of Saddam's defunct nuclear programme which is why the UN nuclear watch dog was involved with this particular batch of explosives. Of course one would need all the other bits to make a nuclear bomb so consequently the statement is somewhat redundant apart from the last few words. The explosives will blow a car up beautifully.

However, there were lots of munitions dumps in Iraq and it is almost impossible to verify which one the insurgents looted their explosives from. Indeed there are so many different insurgent groups there is unlikely to be one source of supply. Many of the explosives may have been looted by ordinary criminals and are being sold on the black market - a boom industry in Iraq by all accounts.

Now there are tapes of when the 101 division got to the site...it plainly shows the seal on the door, and barrels of the explosive materials...it was NOT looted previously. Done deal. Just watched the tape on CNN

Is that the best you can do?

You still can’t explain how they were able to move that much material with no one noticing.

You also can’t explain the satellite photos that the DOD just released of large semi transporting materials from the site.

So yes done deal.


Edit: Just to add tomorrow General Tommy Franks is going to put an end to all of this. Joe Lockhart (Kerry spokesmen) came out today and basically called the General that ran two successful wars that he was a liar. General Franks didn’t take to kindly to that.

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Originally Posted by BigBank_Hank

Is that the best you can do?

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don't need to do better, but since you don't do your own research, perhaps I will do a bit of cut and paste. ROFL :smoke:

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You still can’t explain how they were able to move that much material with no one noticing.

You also can’t explain the satellite photos that the DOD just released of large semi transporting materials from the site.

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"Senior Defense officials adamantly refused to speculate as to what is happening at the bunker highlighted in the photo, saying it's anyone's guess. " :unsure:

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Edit: Just to add tomorrow General Tommy Franks is going to put an end to all of this. Joe Lockhart (Kerry spokesmen) came out today and basically called the General that ran two successful wars that he was a liar. General Franks didn’t take to kindly to that.

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poor baby :cry1:

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Originally Posted by ruthie

Edit: Just to add tomorrow General Tommy Franks is going to put an end to all of this. Joe Lockhart (Kerry spokesmen) came out today and basically called the General that ran two successful wars that he was a liar. General Franks didn’t take to kindly to that.


poor baby :cry1:

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what a crybaby :dry: suck it up mr. general guy.

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Originally Posted by ruthie

don't need to do better, but since you don't do your own research, perhaps I will do a bit of cut and paste. ROFL :smoke:

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You do need to do better because there are still a whole lot of holes in this story.

The tape also doesn’t mention the 3rd I.D. who got there before the 101st and did battle with the Iraqis at the site. The commander noted that some looting had taken place. Plus the removal of these explosives would have had to take place on a road log jammed with traffic and with jets flying overhead. I think that someone from the 3rd I.D. or someone overhead might have noticed a convoy of trucks moving around. Just a thought.

hank...the tape showed the seals still in place, and barrels of explosive materials. Were they all in the same bunker? Don't know. Meanwhile, as usual, the administration cops to NOTHING. Bush and Cheney try to say Kerry denigrates the troops by talking about the missing explosives...but guess what? It's been the darlings of the Republicans blaming the troops...

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In falsely accusing Senator John Kerry of denigrating American troops, it is in fact conservatives themselves -- including one of Bush-Cheney '04's most vocal campaigners -- who are suggesting that soldiers on the ground are responsible for explosives going missing in Iraq. On FOX News Channel, both Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and conservative radio host Laura Ingraham claimed that it was the soldiers -- not President George W. Bush -- who decided not to search for the explosives. And on NBC's Today, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, an active Bush campaigner, placed the "actual responsibility" squarely on the troops.

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The tape does change things and does pose difficulties with regards this stuff being moved prior to the war.

One only has to look at the way the Iraqis looted almost every building just after the fall of Saddam to see how they could have moved this stuff. It did not have to go out in one lot or in neat bundles. The explosives are marketable, it simply could have experienced the same plague of locusts effect that everything else suffered from.

Some might have gone on trucks, some on handcarts, some simply by rolling the barrels. Nor would the explosives have had to go far. It would have simply melted into the cellars of the nearest towns and villages.

Moving 380 tonnes of explosives a distance under normal regulations would be a pain in the butt - simply grabbing a barrel and moving it a couple of miles in the hope of selling it later is a different matter. Especially if hundreds of other people have the same idea.

They stripped hospitals, schools and museums in hours doing this - removing not only portable goods but fixed assets like the plant and machinery, copper cables - everything of value!

The "convoy of trucks" theory is irrelevent really and is more of a red herring than a logistical possibility. David Kay the former weapons inspector said to think of "ants" in the way they move things. He also said that one truck in a picture is meaningless...as did Powell. This site is huge...as big as manhatten by all accounts

During WW2 how did POWs move all that earth from the escape tunnels under the noses of their captors?...... Perhaps it's this way of thinking that is being used to try to dismiss this story that is why we are in trouble. If they can't see how an adaptable enemy could do such a thing how could they possibly beat them?

I do agree that any failings in Iraq are being blamed on the troops by this administration and then they try to blame Kerry for blaming the troops...but kerry is very clear on where he lays the blame, and it's with Bush.

The end is near.

There is a Pentagon briefing within the hour with a soldier from the 3rd I.D. that his company removed 200 plus tons of explosives from the site.

The smell of victory is sweet.

Do you mean after they broke the UN seal? LOL

ruthies correct..

Unless he states they were the ones with the UN Seal, then the statement is meaningless.. There will be have been loads that have gone... the importance is the fact that these were sealed by the UN.

If they were... then the 3rd ID shouldnt have touched them. The Americans had no authority to remove them...especially without informing the UN of their new location beforehand.

would this be the same pentagon that said the seals where there...then said they wern't...then said they saw no explosives...... now you are saying they are going to tell us they removed explosives ?

The same pentagon that said there were searches then that there wasn't as the troops were just "on route"

Flip floppers !!!!!!!!!!

I am amazed that people here still buy the line(s) of shit coming out of the administration.

Please guys...

You shouldnt shatter peoples trust in dreams. Remember when you were Hank and Manny's age huh?

At this rate, you'll spill the beans about Santa and the Tooth Fairy... dont upset them :(

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Originally Posted by Rat Faced

Please guys...

You shouldnt shatter peoples trust in dreams. Remember when you were Hank and Manny's age huh?

At this rate, you'll spill the beans about Santa and the Tooth Fairy... dont upset them :(

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let's keep the insults out of it rat or i shall have to close this thread....



:lol: :lol:

Are you saying I've been scammed about Santa and the tooth fairy?

Rat I’ve always treated you with respect and I have always respectfully disagreed with you views and for you a moderator on this board to come out and say something like this is completely uncalled for.

It’s nice to know that you think because of my age that I am too stupid to comprehend current events.

Not at all Hank, believe me i aint trying to get at you for your age, despite the joke... my appolgise if you took it serious ;)

I wish i still had the optimism that you show.

Its just time to face the facts of life:

People need to eat.

People need to drink.

People need to excrete.

Politicians need to Lie.

Its not only the politicians of the opposition... its all of them.