SwiftVets.com

[ord33]

Under the resolution, werent the IAEA and UN Inspectors supposed to DESTROY the explosives anyway? Of course they were, BUT Saddam said they have "dual uses", so they just tagged them and let them remain. The UN takes the word of a brutal dicatator that the explosives were "dual-use", kinda like John Kerry would give Iran nuclear fuel since they said it has "dual-use". The UN and John Kerry trust the dictators' judgement and honesty, but the US press cant even speak of the US military without interrupting them, and acting rabbid during the press conference....unbelieveable.

[Son of a VET]

[dcornutt]

Geez,
Why doesn't Bush just use what worked for Saddam all these years. Just say..we don't have them..therefore..they dont' exist.

I think you guys are missing the next logical step here by the "now concerned" IAEA. They will want documentation of what was destroyed.

Bush should just say...we blew it all up. Nothing is there now..therefore..we got it all. That seemed to work for Saddam for over decade.

[kman]

[Steve Z]

I haven't found the link yet, but I distinctly remember hearing on Brit Hume's Special Report on Fox last night that the last inventory taken by the IAEA before the war showed less than 377 tons, but 200-some-odd tons. If we can find that report, it might show that the the 3rd ID actually removed ALL the explosives, and Kerry and the New York Times wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

Is there any way to contact Brit Hume and get the number from the IAEA inventory?

The explosives are missing because WE destroyed them, stupid!!!
_________________
The traitor will crater!

[Rdtf]

so caught up in the 'other' story I just discovered this on page 2 of the forum! Man - away from the computer and news for an afternoon and look what all I miss!

[Steve Z]

http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/alqaqaa_documents.pdf

FoxNews has posted the letter to the Security Council and the inventory report of explosives at Al Qa Qaa.

On Page 2, they give the total inventory on 1/14/2003 as:

HMX 194,741 kg
RDX 3,080 kg
PETN 3,500 kg
Total 201,221 kg

At 2.2046 lb/kg and 2000 lb/ton, this comes out to 221.8 short tons.

The letter from Muhammed El Baradei to the Security Council lists

HMX 195 tonnes (1 tonne = 1000 kg)
RDX 141 tonnes
PETN 6 tonnes
Total 342 tonnes = 377.0 short tons.

Question: Why did El Baradei INCREASE the inventory of RDX from 3 to 141 tonnes, and that of PETN from 3.5 to 6 tonnes, relative to what the IAEA inspectors found? Did Saddam's henchmen bring an additional 138 tonnes of RDX and 2.5 tonnes of PETN to Al Qa Qaa prior to the war, and how did the IAEA know about it? Or did El Baradei deliberately exaggerate the amount of explosives "lost"?

If Major Pearson and his men removed 250 short tons of explosives and the IAEA inventory of 221.8 short tons is correct, there was NO HMX, RDX, or PETN left at Al Qa Qaa when Pearson was finished which could fall into the hands of looters.

It is possible that Pearson might have "guesstimated" the 250 tons which might have really been 221.8 tons, because (unlike the IAEA) his men were in a hurry to disarm and secure the site, and push on to Baghdad, so they may not have weighed the explosives carefully. But it's a safe bet that the explosives which fell into enemy hands weighed exactly ZERO.

Except for the mendacious reporting of the New York Times, this is a non-story--the Army did its job, and Bush sent enough troops to deal with these explosives.

UN + NY Times + Kerry = Fuzzy Math!
_________________
The traitor will crater!

[Tobette]

So what. Kerry lies and his followers don't care. They didn't care about Clinton lying and they don't care if Kerry lies. They just want to win and if some lies are what it takes then so be it. Non-moral brainwashed robots. Shameful bunch.

[Rdtf]

a forged memo, a few tons of weapons cache size off, ooops.

[Fphamm]

http://www.nwcn.com/topstories/stories/NW_102904WABalqaqaa_explosivesLJ.4c4495f.html

News video may have captured explosives at Al-Qaqaa

03:08 PM PDT on Friday, October 29, 2004


From KING5.com Staff and Wire Reports



Video
Interview with Dean Staley

Dean Staley's report on KING 5 News

Unedited video of explosives - part 1

Unedited video of explosives - part 2

Unedited video of explosives - part 3

Related stories
Pentagon seeks to account for explosives

Oregon man says he told military of looting

Former U.S. official calls photos of explosive seals 'damning;' Rumsfeld suggests explosives got moved

U.N. warned U.S. about explosives after looting of nuclear complex
SEATTLE – Shortly after the fall of Baghdad, Northwest Cable News anchorman Dean Staley and his photographer traveled with U.S. soldiers to an area said to be the Al-Qaqaa storage area.

Their videotape, shot on April 18, 2003, while they were embedded with the 101st Airborne Division, may be the strongest evidence yet that U.S. troops left behind what appears to be a large weapons cache.

The videotape is the latest development in the controversy over the nearly 400 tons of explosives now missing south of Baghdad, that many claim were moved under the watch of the U.S. military.

Staley isn’t certain whether the explosives he saw while working for the Minneapolis station KSTP-TV are the 377 missing tons of explosives in dispute. But while he was embedded, he did see bunkers filled with boxes and barrels marked “explosives” or holding bomb components.

Did the explosives at Al-Qaqaa, a sprawling area south of Baghdad with dozens bunkers filled with explosives, disappear before or after U.S. soldiers got there?

With the presidential election just days away, the missing Iraq explosives has become a hot button issue. Democrat John Kerry says the missing explosives - powerful enough to demolish a building, bring down a jetliner or set off a nuclear weapon - are another example of the Bush administration’s poor planning and incompetence in handling the war in Iraq.

President Bush says no one knows if the ammunition was taken before or after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, when coalition troops moved in to the area.

Nine days after the fall of Baghdad, Staley and his photographer traveled with soldiers to an area said to be near the Al-Qaqaa storage area.

During that trip, members of the 101st Airborne Division showed Staley and the news crew bunker after bunker of material labeled "explosives." It was all part of a massive military complex, left unguarded during this time.

For the most part, it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get into the bunkers and see the material identified by the 101st as detonation cords.

Some bunkers were protected only by a single padlock, some were unlocked, and at least one had a thin metal wire sealing the door. Weapons experts say that wire was left by weapons inspectors to identify dangerous materials inside.

According to Staley, inside there was crate after crate, box after box of material marked "explosive."

They also found stacks of unmarked bags of powder and barrels marked "explosive" with bags inside. Some of the boxes had the words "Al Qaqaa" printed on them.

Staley said the bunker he and his crew saw was in Al Qaqaa. He said they were not able to identify many of the explosives, but they were clearly elements of larger bombs, and one sergeant recognized dozens of crates of brand-new explosive devices.

What they are sure of is that there were tons of explosives and they were unguarded, and they did see Iraqis in a pickup truck scavenging the area.

He said once the doors to the bunkers were opened, they weren't secured – they were left open when the news crew and the military went back to their base and there was no evidence of troops guarding anything.



KSTP News

Munitions found in one of the bunkers

Photojournalist Joe Caffrey said they weren't quite sure what they were looking at, but they saw so much of it and it didn't appear it was being secured in any way. He said he was several miles away from where military people were staying in their tents.

While it is not known if the explosives were the now-missing munitions, the videotape is now being analyzed by experts.

Officials with the 101st Airborne Division and GPS technology confirm their position on or near the southern edge of the Al Qaqaa installation on April 18, 2003 - nine days after the fall of Baghdad.

Former commander: Army unit destroyed 250 tons of explosives

In response, the Pentagon held a news briefing Friday with the company’s former commander, who said the Army unit removed 250 tons of ammunition from the Al-Qaqaa weapons depot in April 2003 and later destroyed it.

A Pentagon spokesman asserted that some was of the same type as the missing explosives that have become a major issue in the presidential campaign.



KSTP News


But those 250 tons were not located under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency—as the missing high-grade explosives had been—and spokesman Larry Di Rita could not definitely say whether they were part of the missing 377 tons.

Maj. Austin Pearson, speaking at a press conference at the Pentagon on Friday, said his team removed 250 tons of TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords, and white phosporous rounds on April 13, 2003 - 10 days after U.S. forces first reached the Al Qaqaa site.

“I did not see any IAEA seals at any of the locations we went into. I was not looking for that,” Pearson said.

Di Rita sought to point to Pearson’s comments as evidence that some RDX, one of the high-energy explosives, might have been removed from the site. RDX is also known as plastic explosive.

But Di Rita acknowledged: “I can’t say RDX that was on the list of IAEA is what the major pulled out. ... We believe that some of the things they were pulling out of there were RDX.”

Further study was needed, Di Rita said.

Photos of explosive seals 'damning;' Rumsfeld enters debate

“The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al-Qaqaa,” David A. Kay, a former American official who directed the hunt in Iraq for unconventional weapons and visited the site, told The New York Times. “The damning thing is the seals. The Iraqis didn’t use seals on anything. So I’m absolutely sure that’s an IAEA seal.”



KSTP News

A TV news crew shot large stockpiles of unguarded explosives.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld entered the debate Thursday, suggesting the 377 tons of explosives were taken away before U.S. forces arrived, saying any large effort to loot the material afterward would have been detected.

“We would have seen anything like that,” he said in one of two radio interviews he gave at the Pentagon. “The idea it was suddenly looted and moved out, all of these tons of equipment, I think is at least debatable.”

The Pentagon also declassified and released a single image, taken by reconnaissance aircraft or satellite just days before the war, showing two trucks outside one of the dozens of storage bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa munitions base.

The particular bunker is not one known to have contained any of the missing explosives, and Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita said the image only shows that there was some Iraqi activity at the base when it was taken, on March 17. Di Rita said the image says nothing about what happened to the explosives.

Rumsfeld, in one radio interview, also cast doubt on the suggestion of one of his subordinates that Russian forces assisted the Iraqis in removing them.

John Shaw, the deputy U.S. undersecretary of defense for international technology security, suggested to The Washington Times in an interview that the Russians may have been involved, prompting an angry denial from Moscow.

Rumsfeld said, “I have no information on that at all, and cannot validate that even slightly.”

But at issue is whether the weapons were moved before or after U.S. forces occupied that region of the country in early April. No one has been able to provide conclusive evidence either way, although Iraqi officials blamed it on poor U.S. security after Baghdad fell.



The Associated Press contributed to this report



Now I'm starting to get pissed off towards these liberal left media sh##bags. THey need to be sunk and debunked....


Oh and some more anti-military articles


http://www.nwcn.com/statenews/oregon/stories/NW_102904ORNore_militarylootingLJ.50dc5e7.html


Oregon man says he told military of looting
09:44 AM PDT on Friday, October 29, 2004


Associated Press



PORTLAND - Two U.S aid workers say they reported the looting of an Iraqi weapons depot to U.S military officials in October, 2003.

In Friday’s Oregonian, the workers were told that there were NOT enough troops to seal off the facility.

La Grande’s City manager, Wes Hare, says they were outraged. Hare was working in Iraq as part of a rebuilding program.

A colleague, Jerry Kuhaida, told the newspaper from his Tennessee home, that it appears the explosives at the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area had found their way to insurgents targeting U.S. forces.

The men say they informed Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, but were told that the United States lacked the troops to guard the facility.

A Pentagon official, who declined to be identified, said the United States had been forced to leave many ammunition dumps unguarded.


This is all crap..............anything to discredit Bush or the Military.....