Al Qaqaa missing explosives Updates

glowdog · #1 (**permalink**) 10-27-2004, 08:22 AM

There is really a stunning display of cognitive dissonance going on here. The right-wingers do not seem to have gotten the fact that their candy-coated, gift-wrapped, gold-star story yesterday has completely dissolved down the drain.

You guys crowed and gloated and chortled self-righteously when the NBC/CNN story about the embedded reporter claiming no weapons were found at Al Qaqaa was released.

Then, as the afternoon passed, the story was thoroughly and credibly taken apart, starting with the interview of the NBC reporter at Al Qaqaa, who clarified that they weren't looking for weapons - it was just an overnight pit-stop. (Question: Why didn't NBC bother to interview their own reporter first?!) Even NBC and CNN have backed off from their orginal release.

And now, the morning after, I see a lot less bluster around here. It's a bit quieter on this issue. Still, the hardcore right-wingers are still lobbing insults and "ha-ha-we-told-you-so's".

Wake up, wingnuts! You got punk'd.

Now there is a lot we still don't know about this issue. Lots of questions to be answered. (Even though important figures like Bush and Bremer have yet to address this.)

But the "explosives were already gone when we got there for the first time on April 10th" spin is DEAD.

Tuesday, October 27, 2004
MISSING EXPLOSIVES
No Check of Bunker, Unit Commander Says
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/po...rint&position=

Quote:

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."

[snip]

President Bush's aides told reporters that because the soldiers had found no trace of the missing explosives on April 10, they could have been removed before the invasion. They based their assertions on a report broadcast by NBC News on Monday night that showed video images of the 101st arriving at Al Qaqaa.

By yesterday afternoon Mr. Bush's aides had moderated their view, saying it was a "mystery" when the explosives disappeared and that Mr. Bush did not want to comment on the matter until the facts were known.

On Sunday, administration officials said that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. taskforce that hunted for unconventional weapons, had been ordered to look into the disappearance of the explosives. On Tuesday night, CBS News reported that Charles A. Duelfer, the head of the taskforce, denied receiving such an order.

At the Pentagon, a senior official, who asked not to be identified, acknowledged that the timing of the disappearance remained uncertain. "The bottom line is that there is still a lot that is not known," the official said.

The official suggested that the material could have vanished while Mr. Hussein was still in power, sometime between mid-March, when the international inspectors left, and April 3, when members of the Army's Third Infantry Division fought with Iraqis inside Al Qaqaa. At the time, it was reported that those soldiers found a white powder that was tentatively identified as explosives. The site was left unguarded, the official said.

The 101st Airborne Division arrived April 10 and left the next day. The next recorded visit by Americans came on May 27, when Task Force 75 inspected Al Qaqaa, but did not find the large quantities of explosives that had been seen in mid-March by the international inspectors. By then, Al Qaqaa had plainly been looted.

Colonel Anderson said he did not see any obvious signs of damage when he arrived on April 10, but that his focus was strictly on finding a secure place to collect his troops, who were driving and flying north from Karbala.

"There was no sign of looting here," Colonel Anderson said. "Looting was going on in Baghdad, and we were rushing on to Baghdad. We were marshaling in."

[snip]

catzmeow · #2 (**permalink**) 10-27-2004, 08:33 AM

April 4, 2003

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,83252,00.html

According to U.N. weapons inspectors, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the Iraqis filled warheads and artillery shells with explosives at the site and manufactured bomb casings there. The activities, for conventional weaponry, were allowed under U.N. resolutions. But the resolutions, passed after the 1991 Gulf War, ban Iraq from possessing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them.

Peabody told an Associated Press reporter that troops at al Qa Qaa also discovered atropine, used to counter the effects of nerve agents, and 2-PAM chloride, which is used in combination with atropine in case of chemical attack.

The presence of atropine, and the discovery of gas masks and chemical suits earlier in the war, could indicate Iraq was preparing to use chemical weapons.

For years, the al Qa Qaa site has raised the suspicions of weapons inspectors who believed the facilities could be converted for the production of missiles and chemical and nuclear weapons. It was visited repeatedly during the 1990s and during the last cycle of inspections -- between Nov. 27 and March 17 -- when U.N. experts went to the complex more than 10 times.

According to a British dossier on Iraq published last September, parts of al Qa Qaa's chemical complex, destroyed in 1991, were repaired and are now operational, including a production plant for the chemical weapon phosgene.

Nuclear inspectors believe an area of the complex was involved in designing an atomic bomb before Iraq's nuclear program was destroyed by U.N. teams after the 1991 Gulf War. The facility also made lenses and other components that can be used to trigger nuclear explosions.

In March 1990, customs officers at Heathrow Airport in London seized a case of capacitors -- components for triggers in nuclear weapons -- bound for al Qa Qaa that were especially designed for detonating nuclear warheads.

Inspectors had installed cameras and sensors around the complex after the Gulf War but the Iraqis dismantled the equipment when inspectors left in 1998. The U.N. inspectors who returned in November had planned to install new monitoring equipment but ran out of time.

Much is riding on the disarmament process.

The United States believes Iraq has chemical and biological weapons and a reviving nuclear weapons program.

But the Bush administration was unable to convince much of the world in the run-up to the war.

Countries including France and Russia blocked the United States from winning U.N. support for the war partly because they saw no proof that Iraq possessed such weapons. The chief weapons inspectors reported several times that they had found nothing to support the administration's claims.

So far, invading U.S. forces have not found chemical or biological weapons. Officials and former weapons inspectors have said discoveries were likely to be made closer to Baghdad. Several large facilities, such as al Qa Qaa, are within 50 miles of the capital.

"We believe that this regime does possess weapons of mass destruction, we remain convinced of that," U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said Friday. He said some weapons may have been pulled into the Baghdad area, "either delivery systems, or, potentially, storage systems."

But a discovery far from the Iraqi capital was made Friday when troops in the western desert came across what they believe is a training center for nuclear, chemical and biological warfare, Brooks said.

One bottle found at the site was labeled "tabun" -- a nerve agent that the U.S. government says may have been used during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. There was no way to immediately confirm whether the substance was indeed tabun and soldiers found only a small amount, indicating the site was meant for training, not storing or deploying chemical weapons, Brooks said.

"In that particular site, we believe that was the only sample," he said. "That's why we believe it was a training site. Our conclusion is that this was not a (weapons of mass destruction) site ... it proved to be far less than that."

Photos of the site showed shelves of brown bottles with yellow labels. Brooks said troops did not understand some of the labels and were collecting the bottles for examination.

Iraq declared to U.N. inspectors the overall production of 3,859 tons of chemical weapons agents. According to Iraq's declarations, mustard, tabun and sarin were produced in large quantities. Iraq also admitted production of 3.9 tons of the deadly nerve agent VX.

Subsequently, inspectors destroyed 116 tons of tabun and more than 1,000 tons of ingredients for brewing up the nerve gas.

Iraq has repeatedly claimed that it destroyed its unconventional weapons programs after 1991. The claim was voiced again on April 1 by Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. Referring to the gas masks and other chemical gear found by advancing coalition troops, he suggested U.S. forces were planning to plant evidence to implicate Iraq.

"Let me say one more time that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction," he said. "The aggressors may themselves intend to bring those materials to plant them here and say those are weapons of mass destruction."
[/url]

barney-fife · #3 (**permalink**) 10-27-2004, 09:11 AM

glowdog no doubt still believes the CBS National Guard documents were not bogus. Of course NBC is now retracting and re-inventing their original report. You think they wish to be accused by their comrades at CBS, ABC and DNC of dropping the ball?

I warned demo's to avoid the same sort of painful contortions they put themselves through just four short weeks ago, trying to defend CBS and the Rathergate lies. But it appears my warnings were not heeded.

glowdog · #4 (**permalink**) 10-27-2004, 10:17 AM

catzmeow,
As I pointed out yesterday, you don't seem to bother to read very closely - either the articles posted by others OR your own articles.

FYI - I posted this article yesterday, to point out that American troops did go to Al Qaqaa prior to April 10th AND to make clear how significant a site Al Qaqaa was, and that we knew it.

What point are you trying to make here? It might be a bit more clear if you went beyond the ole cut'n'paste'n'run routine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by catzmeow";p=&quot

April 4, 2003

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,83252,00.html

Section in RED is the portion that catzmeow chopped off. Why? - I don't know, as she did not post any comments with this cut'n'paste.

Allies Find Signs of Iraq's Chemical Preparedness
Associated Press
Friday, April 04, 2003

As the military advances closer to Baghdad, signs of Iraqi chemical preparedness are multiplying, although there is still no conclusive evidence Saddam Hussein's regime possesses weapons of mass destruction.

On Friday, troops at a training facility in the western Iraqi desert came across a bottle labeled "tabun" -- a nerve gas and chemical weapon Iraq is banned from possessing.

Closer to Baghdad, troops at Iraq's largest military industrial complex found nerve agent antidotes, documents describing chemical warfare and a white powder that appeared to be used for explosives.

U.N. weapons inspectors went repeatedly to the vast al Qa Qaa complex -- most recently on March 8 -- but found nothing during spot visits to some of the 1,100 buildings at the site 25 miles south of Baghdad.

Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said troops found thousands of 2-by-5-inch boxes, each containing three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.

Initial reports suggest the powder is an explosive, but tests are still being done, a senior U.S. official said. If confirmed, it would be consistent with what the Iraqis say is the plant's purpose, producing explosives and propellants.

According to U.N. weapons inspectors, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the Iraqis filled warheads and artillery shells with explosives at the site and manufactured bomb casings there. The activities, for conventional weaponry, were allowed under U.N. resolutions. But the resolutions, passed after the 1991 Gulf War, ban Iraq from possessing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them.

Peabody told an Associated Press reporter that troops at al Qa Qaa also discovered atropine, used to counter the effects of nerve agents, and 2-PAM chloride, which is used in combination with atropine in case of chemical attack.

The presence of atropine, and the discovery of gas masks and chemical suits earlier in the war, could indicate Iraq was preparing to use chemical weapons.

For years, the al Qa Qaa site has raised the suspicions of weapons inspectors who believed the facilities could be converted for the production of missiles and chemical and nuclear weapons. It was visited repeatedly during the 1990s and during the last cycle of inspections -- between Nov. 27 and March 17 -- when U.N. experts went to the complex more than 10 times.

According to a British dossier on Iraq published last September, parts of al Qa Qaa's chemical complex, destroyed in 1991, were repaired and are now operational, including a production plant for the chemical weapon phosgene.

Nuclear inspectors believe an area of the complex was involved in designing an atomic bomb before Iraq's nuclear program was destroyed by U.N. teams after the 1991 Gulf War. The facility also made lenses and other components that can be used to trigger nuclear explosions.

In March 1990, customs officers at Heathrow Airport in London seized a case of capacitors -- components for triggers in nuclear weapons -- bound for al Qa Qaa that were especially designed for detonating nuclear warheads.

Inspectors had installed cameras and sensors around the complex after the Gulf War but the Iraqis dismantled the equipment when inspectors left in 1998. The U.N. inspectors who returned in November had planned to install new monitoring equipment but ran out of time.

Much is riding on the disarmament process.

The United States believes Iraq has chemical and biological weapons and a reviving nuclear weapons program.

But the Bush administration was unable to convince much of the world in the run-up to the war.

Countries including France and Russia blocked the United States from winning U.N. support for the war partly because they saw no proof that Iraq possessed such weapons. The chief weapons inspectors reported several times that they had found nothing to support the administration's claims.

So far, invading U.S. forces have not found chemical or biological weapons. Officials and former weapons inspectors have said discoveries were likely to be made closer to Baghdad. Several large facilities, such as al Qa Qaa, are within 50 miles of the capital.

"We believe that this regime does possess weapons of mass destruction, we remain convinced of that," U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said Friday. He said some weapons may have been pulled into the Baghdad area, "either delivery systems, or, potentially, storage systems."

But a discovery far from the Iraqi capital was made Friday when troops in the western desert came across what they believe is a training center for nuclear, chemical and biological warfare, Brooks said.

One bottle found at the site was labeled "tabun" -- a nerve agent that the U.S. government says may have been used during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. There was no way to immediately confirm whether the substance was indeed tabun and soldiers found only a small amount, indicating the site was meant for training, not storing or deploying chemical weapons, Brooks said.

"In that particular site, we believe that was the only sample," he said. "That's why we believe it was a training site. Our conclusion is that this was not a (weapons of mass destruction) site ... it proved to be far less than that."

Photos of the site showed shelves of brown bottles with yellow labels. Brooks said troops did not understand some of the labels and were collecting the bottles for examination.

Iraq declared to U.N. inspectors the overall production of 3,859 tons of chemical weapons agents. According to Iraq's declarations, mustard, tabun and sarin were produced in large quantities. Iraq also admitted production of 3.9 tons of the deadly nerve agent VX.

Subsequently, inspectors destroyed 116 tons of tabun and more than 1,000 tons of ingredients for brewing up the nerve gas.

Iraq has repeatedly claimed that it destroyed its unconventional weapons programs after 1991. The claim was voiced again on April 1 by Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. Referring to the gas masks and other chemical gear found by advancing coalition troops, he suggested U.S. forces were planning to plant evidence to implicate Iraq.

"Let me say one more time that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction," he said. "The aggressors may themselves intend to bring those materials to plant them here and say those are weapons of mass destruction."
[/url]

catzmeow · #5 (**permalink**) 10-27-2004, 10:28 AM

1) that this is an old story, recycled for some reason at this time by IAEA.

2) that IAEA inspectors were on this site in MARCH, not January, contrary to their claims.

3) That the site was investigated by U.S. forces at that time, who found no IAEA materials.

Sorry for the cut. I was trying to cut/paste around a big ad in the middle of the page and inadvertently left out part of the article.

I usually try to check for that sort of thing but was trying to run out the door to lunch.

Catz

barney-fife · #6 (**permalink**) 10-27-2004, 12:44 PM

"U.N. weapons inspectors went repeatedly to the vast al Qa Qaa complex -- most recently on March 8 -- but found nothing during spot visits to some of the 1,100 buildings at the site 25 miles south of Baghdad."

What, they missed 380 cubic metric tons of explosives? Or, perhaps it had already been moved. But that doesn't fit the demo template, so that couldn't be right.

glowdog · #7 (**permalink**) 10-27-2004, 01:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by catzmeow";p=&quot

Gosh, Glowdog, but you have nothing to say about the fact

1) that this is an old story, recycled for some reason at this time by IAEA.

I've had plenty to say about that, if you read back over my postings on this issue.

When I first heard you assert that this is an old story, I asked you to back that up. You never responded.

I've never heard this come up before, and I'm a bit of a news junkie. So if I missed it somehow, please --- once again --- source it and enlighten me.

I also posted a timeline in one of these threads, on Monday I believe, that broke down what has happened as we understand it so far. IIRC, one reason I wrote that post was to refute the "old story" allegation. The correspondence between the Iraqi government and the IAEA, then the communication between the IAEA and the US, and then the submission of the Iraqi/IAEA letter to the Security Council - this all happened in the last month, October 2004. And it started with the IAEA asking the Iraqi government for a grievously overdue accounting of the weapons/facilities that are still under the IAEA's jurisdiction. This accounting is supposed to be done semiannually, and has not been done by either the US or the Iraqis since the invasion occurred over 18 months ago.

The IAEA is trying to do its job. I have seen no evidence they "recycled" something for political reasons. In fact, one posting I made yesterday pointed out a story graf (MSNBC, I think?) that said the IAEA held off on "going public" (turning over the Iraqi letter to the Security Council) in order to give the US/Coalition time to somehow account for the explosives. They only turned over the letter after the story was already made public in the media.

Quote:

Originally Posted by catzmeow";p=&quot

2) that IAEA inspectors were on this site in MARCH, not January, contrary to their claims.

That is not "news". They didn't claim otherwise. You have just misread something somewhere if you were confused on this point.

The IAEA did a thorough inspection in January, 2003. Then, in mid-March, they did a spot check of Al Qaqaa and verifed the the seals.

The fact that the IAEA verified that Al Qaqaa was secure in mid-March 2003 actually helps us narrow the timeframe as to when the explosives went missing, and who is responsible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by catzmeow";p=&quot

3) That the site was investigated by U.S. forces at that time, who found no IAEA materials.

Again, you are not reading very carefully. The above AP(Fox link) article says nothing of the sort. It doesn't mention at all whether the 3rd Infantry unit was doing a full investigation, or if they were looking specifically for IAEA documented materials, or if they found them or not.

According to the NYT article I posted at the top of this thread, and the CBS article you posted in another thread (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in651082.shtml), neither the 3rd Infantry unit (April 3rd) nor the 101st Airborne unit (April 10th) investigated Al Qaqaa in any meaningful way, with regards to IAEA documented materials.

From the CBS link:

Quote:

When troops from the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade arrived at the Al-Qaqaa base a day or so after other coalition troops seized Baghdad on April 9, 2003, there were already looters throughout the facility, Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit, told The Associated Press. [glowdog note - this is contradicted by Col. Joseph Anderson, the commander on the ground who was there]

The soldiers "secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemical weapons were not present," said Wellman, 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."

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 for Baghdad.

AP 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.

And, according to both articles, the site was left unguarded both times.

Al Qaqaa was not meaningfully investigated by a trained task force specifically doing a weapons search until May 27, 2003 - fully 7 weeks later. It had been looted by that point, and the task force found no IAEA seals.

I have seen no mention yet if any US troops were sent to guard the facility between April 10th and May 27th. The implication so far is that it was not guarded.

Even now, it is not guarded. Looters were spotted out there this past Sunday.

barney-fife · #8 (**permalink**) 10-27-2004, 01:13 PM

"Looters" hauled off 380 cubic tons of explosive material?

They must have had real large pockets.

glowdog · #9 (**permalink**) 10-27-2004, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by barney-fife";p=&quot

"U.N. weapons inspectors went repeatedly to the vast al Qa Qaa complex -- most recently on March 8 -- but found nothing during spot visits to some of the 1,100 buildings at the site 25 miles south of Baghdad."

What, they missed 380 cubic metric tons of explosives? Or, perhaps it had already been moved. But that doesn't fit the demo template, so that couldn't be right.

Are you reading-challenged as well, barney-fife?

The context of that quote is that they did not find the sort of things that the 3rd Infantry troops did on April 3rd (namely chemical warfare documents and antidotes, and some sort of explosive powder) during the spot checks they did between January (their last full inspection) and March, 2003. The implication is that the IAEA either missed those items during spot visits or those items were moved to Al Qaqaa after March 8th. See the paragraph before your quote:

Quote:

Closer to Baghdad, troops at Iraq's largest military industrial complex found nerve agent antidotes, documents describing chemical warfare and a white powder that appeared to be used for explosives.

UN weapons inspectors went repeatedly to the vast al Qa Qaa complex, most recently on March 8. But they found nothing during spot visits to some of the 1,100 buildings at the site 40 kilometres south of Baghdad.

The IAEA found "nothing" as in "nothing new, nothing banned or undocumented".

They did verify that all the documented materials in question were still under seal. But we know that from other articles. This article does not even address the explosives in question.

catzmeow · #10 (**permalink**) 10-27-2004, 01:26 PM

First things first...old story.

I've posted no fewer than 2 threads with links to this story from April, 2003.

Look for them.

Catz

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