How could we find something that was gone when we got there?
(CNN) -- The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new twist, after a network embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion of Iraq reported that the material had already vanished by the time American troops arrived.
60 MINS PLANNED BUSH MISSING EXPLOSIVES STORY FOR ELECTION EVE
News of missing explosives in Iraq -- first reported in April 2003 -- was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode.
Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of 60 MINUTES, said in a statement that "our plan was to run the story on October 31."
Elizabeth Jensen at the LOS ANGELES TIMES details on Tuesday how CBS NEWS and 60 MINUTES lost the story [which repackaged previously reported information on a large cache of explosives missing in Iraq, first published and broadcast in 2003].
The story instead debuted in the NYT. The paper slugged the story about missing explosives from April 2003 as "exclusive."
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 explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.
It is not clear who exactly shopped an election eve repackaging of the missing explosives story.
and now we find out that 380 TONS of various bombs are missing
380 tons... that is a lot.Â
We know that the 3rd ID arrived there about a week before the 101st relieved them. These two provided the security there. Are you claiming that our boys were to stupid and inept to see or hear the heavy equipment needed to move 380 tons around or the amount of trucks needed to haul it out? Surely you think better of our troops than that.
But of course Saddam was a peaceful man and those 380 tons never even existed.
By David L. Greene, Tom Bowman and Julie Hirschfeld Davis
GREELEY, Colo. - News that a cache of powerful explosives in Iraq was apparently left unguarded by American forces and is missing put President Bush on the defensive yesterday as the race for the White House entered its final week.
Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry charged that Bush had "failed the test of being commander in chief" and called the failure to secure the explosives, which could be used to detonate a nuclear weapon, "one of the great blunders of this administration."
Campaigning in New Hampshire, Kerry said ominously that "terrorists could use this material to kill our troops, our people, blow up airplanes and level buildings."
He added, "The incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk, and put this country at greater risk, than we ought to be."
Last night, the Bush campaign released the details of an NBC News report from April 2003 that suggested the explosives were gone from the former military installation, called Al Qaqaa, by the time U.S. troops arrived.
Bush aides downplayed the significance of the missing explosives and criticized Kerry for focusing on them, calling him a "Monday morning quarterback."
Bush was silent on the issue, making what aides called a strategic decision not to engage in a daily debate with Kerry on developments in Iraq.
Treasure trove
Military analysts had mixed reactions to the significance of the missing explosives.
John Pike, a defense analyst for GlobalSecurity. org, said the explosives, the disappearance of which was first reported in yesterday's New York Times, would prove to be an "unprecedented treasure trove" of bomb-making material.
"I think the evil-doers will put it to good use," he said. "You'd have to be concerned. We'll be hearing about it again."
The missing cache, reported to be about 380 tons of the explosives HMX and RDX, not only offers a large quantity of material but more importantly has useful "fabrication properties" for making bombs, Pike said.
The materials can handily be molded and shaped into bombs, he said, but the explosives are only "slightly more powerful" than TNT and not as explosive as C4 chemical explosives.
While both HMX and RDX can be used in detonating nuclear bombs, there is no indication that whoever took the explosives has materials for building a nuclear weapon. Those materials are more difficult to acquire, Pike said.
Lax security
The theft reflects the lax security at Iraqi weapons depots, which some military officers have long complained have either gone unguarded or have been turned over to Iraqi security forces of questionable competence and allegiance, Pike said.
"They have been so poorly guarded it's difficult to imagine," he said. "Just a badly conceived program for securing this stuff."
The U.S. command in Baghdad in August 2003 set aside Army artillery brigades, about 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers dubbed Task Force Bullet, to collect and destroy ordnance.
An Army officer with experience in Iraq said the program last year was destroying about 105 tons per day, and officers estimated it would take years to destroy it all.
"More (U.S.) troops would have helped," the officer said. But what problem should have been tackled first? he asked. The weapons depots? Or the growing insurgency? Or the porous borders with Syria and Iran that are sources of foreign fighters and arms?
Amount 'in context'
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said the president was informed of the missing stockpile about 10 days ago, and the Pentagon has called for an investigation.
Moreover, McClellan said, 380 tons of explosives was a small amount, compared with the 243,000 tons of munitions that have been destroyed and 163,000 tons secured since the end of major combat operations.
"Literally, there were munitions caches spread throughout Iraq at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom," said McClellan. "That puts this all in context."
While silent on the missing explosives, Bush did respond directly to another major headline from Iraq yesterday: the killing Sunday of 50 newly trained Iraqi security officers outside the town of Mandali.
He called the attacks "desperate executions" that "show the evil nature of the terrorists we fight."
Poor management
Kerry aides said problems in Iraq give American voters the opportunity to see Bush's shortcomings and question the president's rosy portraits of the war. Joe Lockhart, a senior Kerry adviser, said the campaign would use the missing weapons as an example of what they see as a poorly managed war.
If Bush plans to talk about national security and terrorism for the remainder of the campaign, Lockhart said, "he's going to have to talk about this part of the story, too."
For weeks, Kerry aides had said they wanted to shift the campaign's focus to domestic issues. But Lockhart said yesterday that they were ready to engage in a battle over national security in the race's last week, challenging Bush on what polls show has been his strength.
How voters respond to the strategy of the two sides - Kerry's attempts to hold Bush accountable for missteps and Bush's effort to offer an optimistic picture even if the headlines sometimes contradict it - might shape the choices of undecided voters next Tuesday.
Speech retooled
Yesterday, Bush offered a re-tooled stump speech hammering Kerry on his foreign policy record.
His biggest applause line at rallies here and in Iowa came when he said the senator criticizes him for shifting focus to Iraq and missing a chance to capture Osama bin Laden.
Originally, Bush said, Kerry praised the military for its efforts to capture the terrorist in the mountains of Tora Bora, but has now changed his views.
"At the time, Senator Kerry said about Tora Bora, 'I think we've been smart. I think administration leadership has done well, and we are on the right track.' End quote," Bush told his audiences.
"All I can say is that, 'I am George W. Bush, and I approve of that message.'" vTom Bowman reported from Washington and Julie Hirschfeld Davis from Philadelphia.
You said there were lots of reasons why CBS would air the program less than 48 hours before the polls open. Just give me one reason. But just because they can is not a reason,
"You said there were lots of reasons why CBS would air the program less than 48 hours before the polls open. Just give me one reason. But just because they can is not a reason,"
C-B.S said it wouldn't complete it's investigation over the National Guard fake docs scandal until after the election. Their reasoning? They didn't want to effect the outcome of the election. Yet they have no problem holding a story until 2 days before the election. Why? Good question. There's no way anyone could pick it apart or respond that well to it in a 24 hour period and I think that was their goal. Think it sounds far fetched? Well Mary Mapes coordinated the guard story with the Kerry campaign so I wouldn't put anything past them at this point.
Is it news? Sure, but the NYT also has a responsiblity to report it accurately.
Let's say for argument sake that the stuff was still there when we arrived. 380 tons of that type of h.e would take almost 40 semi's to cart away. Do you think that a convoy of semi's cruising down a road while we were still in fully engaed mode would not attract some notice from the a-10's. F-14's. F-18's Apache's etc.? There's no way that it could be logistically done in that time frame without us noticing.
A little more data for the RDX pot. Whatever the MSNBC embeds saw with the 101st, the 3ID which preceded them saw more. It searched Al Qa Qaa and found suspicious materialÂ
Instapundit  finds this reference in
CBS via the
Captain's Quarters .
April 4, 2003. CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction continues at sites where the U.S. thought chemicals weapons might be hidden. "And although there are no reports of actual weapons being found, there are constant finds of suspicious material," Martin said. "It obviously will take laboratory testing to find out exactly what that powder is." U.S. troops found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad. But a senior U.S. official familiar with initial testing said the materials were believed to be explosives. Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex just south of Baghdad.
... The facility had been identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons site. U.N. inspectors visited the plant at least nine times, including as recently as Feb. 18. The facility is part of a larger complex known as the Latifiyah Explosives and Ammunition Plant al Qa Qaa. The senior U.S. official, based in Washington and speaking on condition of anonymity, said the material was under further study. The site is enormous and U.S. troops are still investigating it for potential weapons of mass destruction, the official said. "Initial reports are that the material is probably just explosives, but we're still going through the place," the official said. Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.
The contemporaneous CBS report, written before anyone knew al Qa Qaa would be a big deal, establishes two important things. The first is that 3ID knew it was looking through an IAEA inspection site. The second was that the site had shown unmistakable signs of tampering before the arrival of US troops. "Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare." Now presumably those thousands of boxes were not all packaged and labeled with chemical warfare instructions under IAEA supervision, so the inescapable conclusion is that a fairly large and organized type of activity had been under way in Al Qa Qaa for some time. It is important to reiterate that these are contemporaneous CBS reports which were filed no with foreknowledge of the political controversy to come.
Michael Totten wonders why "there is no mention of 380 tons of HDX and RDX". Perhaps the reason the RDX isn't mentioned can be found via a link through
Josh Marshall , quoting NBC's Jim Miklaszewski. (Hat tip reader
Trebbers in Comments)
Following up on that story from last night, military officials tell NBC News that on April 10, 2003, when the Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne entered the Al QaQaa weapons facility, south of Baghdad, that those troops were actually on their way to Baghdad, that they were not actively involved in the search for any weapons, including the high explosives, HMX and RDX. The troops did observe stock piles of conventional weapons but no HMX or RDX. And because the Al Qaqaa facility is so huge, it's not clear that those troops from the 101st were actually anywhere near the bunkers that reportedly contained the HMX and RDX. Three months earlier, during an inspection of the Al Qaqaa compound, the International Atomic Energy Agency secured and sealed 350 metric tons of HMX and RDX. Then in March, shortly before the war began, the I.A.E.A. conducted another inspection and found that the HMX stockpile was still intact and still under seal. But inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound.
Here we discover the rather important fact that the UN inspectors hadn't actually seen the RDX in their final inspections. They just assumed it was there because the seals were intact. So let's put it all together. The UN inspectors conduct their final inspection before OIF without actually having seen the RDX. The 3ID reach the site on April 4, 2003, know they are looking at an IAEA site and find thousands of white boxes which they suspect may be chemical weapons. The boxes are labeled with chemical warfare instructions. On April 10, the Second Brigade of 101st Airborne arrives with press embeds. They look around but press on with their main combat mission. From this the NYT comes to the conclusion that the RDX was lost after the US assumed custodyof the site. It is worthwhile to reiterate the NYT's key assertions. In their article of October 25, the
Times said :
The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
It turned out that White House and Pentagon officials had acknowledged no such thing. The next day, the
NYT reported:
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 facility and had merely stopped there for the night on their way to Baghdad. 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, known as Al Qaqaa, was considered highly sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited there shortly before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.
In the light of the unearthed contemporaneous CBS report, the NYT's use of an interview with the Col. Anderson is totally worthless. They interviewed the wrong unit commander. It was a 3ID outfit that searched the place with the intent of discovering dangerous materials nearly six days before. The 101st had no such mission.Moreover, the NYT's innuendo that "the huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years ..." suggests a well-manicured facility that had been run to seed by knuckle-dragging American incompetence after faithful care by the IAEA. It totally ignores the disorderly condition in which 3ID found it, where, if the NYT correspondents had been present, they might have taken home their own boxes "with three vials of white powder, together with documents in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare" -- surely a sign it was untampered with, unless the NYT wishes to assert the contrary and thereby destroy their own case.
No, it's news now. The fact that you don't like it is irrelevant.
It is only "news" now because the NY Times printed it. It is not news, as that term originally meant, on its own merits. It would have been 19 months ago but not today. And simply because the Times and people like you bring it up doesn't make it news.
United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
If these explosives were such a big problem why did the UN let Saddam have them? If they are so dangerous in the hands of terrorists why didn't Saddam's possession of them justify the war? It appears that the left wants it both ways as usual.
If bin Laden is captured between now and Tuesday, it would take a lot of convincing evidence to dissuade me from being dead certain they knew where he was and how long he was going to be there; and they timed the capture for the election.
How could you think anything else?
[Edited 2 times. Most recently by on Oct 27, 2004 at 03:35pm.]
I answered your question about capturing bin laden directly when you asked a couple of days ago. I said straight forward no and no to your two questions. Why can't you answer a simple question?
Was Clinton's missle strike the day Monica testified a political stunt?
Holding off a possible capture until now would do nothing but hurt the Bush campaign. I would hope that they don't think the American people are that gullible. Even if the opportunity did arise between now and then, they would be smart to hold off until after Tuesday.
So the cops go to do a drug raid, the drugs are gone when they get there, it's the cops fault naturally.
[Edited by on Oct 26, 2004 at 06:38am.]
Yes, if they RUN THE WHOLE COUNTRY, indeed it is.
Oh o.k if the stuff is gone when they get there it's their fault. o.k sure.
How could we find something that was gone when we got there?
(CNN) -- The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new twist, after a network embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion of Iraq reported that the material had already vanished by the time American troops arrived.
Â
I was busy yesterday so I only got to read the headline. So, I was under the assumption that they just now disappeared.
And there are people like Rick that defend such actions and those that commit them.
Here you go.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.htmlÂ
fold won't believe it no matter what source you use, Rob.
Too funny. Remember when Fold was calling for MORE troops not so long ago?
From Drudge.
60 MINS PLANNED BUSH MISSING EXPLOSIVES STORY FOR ELECTION EVE
News of missing explosives in Iraq -- first reported in April 2003 -- was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode.
Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of 60 MINUTES, said in a statement that "our plan was to run the story on October 31."
Elizabeth Jensen at the LOS ANGELES TIMES details on Tuesday how CBS NEWS and 60 MINUTES lost the story [which repackaged previously reported information on a large cache of explosives missing in Iraq, first published and broadcast in 2003].
The story instead debuted in the NYT. The paper slugged the story about missing explosives from April 2003 as "exclusive."
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 explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.
It is not clear who exactly shopped an election eve repackaging of the missing explosives story.
Ahhh good old C-B.S
Denial man... WE found it.
WE provide Security for it.
Â
what the hell?? Fold-- I thought the same thing at first!!! then I realized that the press is not giving us the FULL story!!!!!!
Heck we landed on the moon (found it)Â first as well...are we responsible for the security of it??
Better send some troops to the moon.
Â
""....designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode."
That's an assumption, Rob, on Drudge's part. You can detect that, can't you?
"Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of 60 MINUTES, said in a statement that "our plan was to run the story on October 31."'
But it's not now. Do they get credit for not running it, or blame for planning to run it?
I would hope CBS learned a lesson.
JT 10/26/04 8:15pm
It seems not.
and now we find out that 380 TONS of various bombs are missing
380 tons... that is a lot.Â
We know that the 3rd ID arrived there about a week before the 101st relieved them. These two provided the security there. Are you claiming that our boys were to stupid and inept to see or hear the heavy equipment needed to move 380 tons around or the amount of trucks needed to haul it out? Surely you think better of our troops than that.
But of course Saddam was a peaceful man and those 380 tons never even existed.
The Baltimore Sun October 26, 2004
Missing explosives capture spotlight
Bush camp says issue exaggerated by Kerry
In-Depth Coverage
By David L. Greene, Tom Bowman and Julie Hirschfeld Davis
GREELEY, Colo. - News that a cache of powerful explosives in Iraq was apparently left unguarded by American forces and is missing put President Bush on the defensive yesterday as the race for the White House entered its final week.
Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry charged that Bush had "failed the test of being commander in chief" and called the failure to secure the explosives, which could be used to detonate a nuclear weapon, "one of the great blunders of this administration."
Campaigning in New Hampshire, Kerry said ominously that "terrorists could use this material to kill our troops, our people, blow up airplanes and level buildings."
He added, "The incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk, and put this country at greater risk, than we ought to be."
Last night, the Bush campaign released the details of an NBC News report from April 2003 that suggested the explosives were gone from the former military installation, called Al Qaqaa, by the time U.S. troops arrived.
Bush aides downplayed the significance of the missing explosives and criticized Kerry for focusing on them, calling him a "Monday morning quarterback."
Bush was silent on the issue, making what aides called a strategic decision not to engage in a daily debate with Kerry on developments in Iraq.
Treasure trove
Military analysts had mixed reactions to the significance of the missing explosives.
John Pike, a defense analyst for GlobalSecurity. org, said the explosives, the disappearance of which was first reported in yesterday's New York Times, would prove to be an "unprecedented treasure trove" of bomb-making material.
"I think the evil-doers will put it to good use," he said. "You'd have to be concerned. We'll be hearing about it again."
The missing cache, reported to be about 380 tons of the explosives HMX and RDX, not only offers a large quantity of material but more importantly has useful "fabrication properties" for making bombs, Pike said.
The materials can handily be molded and shaped into bombs, he said, but the explosives are only "slightly more powerful" than TNT and not as explosive as C4 chemical explosives.
While both HMX and RDX can be used in detonating nuclear bombs, there is no indication that whoever took the explosives has materials for building a nuclear weapon. Those materials are more difficult to acquire, Pike said.
Lax security
The theft reflects the lax security at Iraqi weapons depots, which some military officers have long complained have either gone unguarded or have been turned over to Iraqi security forces of questionable competence and allegiance, Pike said.
"They have been so poorly guarded it's difficult to imagine," he said. "Just a badly conceived program for securing this stuff."
The U.S. command in Baghdad in August 2003 set aside Army artillery brigades, about 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers dubbed Task Force Bullet, to collect and destroy ordnance.
An Army officer with experience in Iraq said the program last year was destroying about 105 tons per day, and officers estimated it would take years to destroy it all.
"More (U.S.) troops would have helped," the officer said. But what problem should have been tackled first? he asked. The weapons depots? Or the growing insurgency? Or the porous borders with Syria and Iran that are sources of foreign fighters and arms?
Amount 'in context'
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said the president was informed of the missing stockpile about 10 days ago, and the Pentagon has called for an investigation.
Moreover, McClellan said, 380 tons of explosives was a small amount, compared with the 243,000 tons of munitions that have been destroyed and 163,000 tons secured since the end of major combat operations.
"Literally, there were munitions caches spread throughout Iraq at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom," said McClellan. "That puts this all in context."
While silent on the missing explosives, Bush did respond directly to another major headline from Iraq yesterday: the killing Sunday of 50 newly trained Iraqi security officers outside the town of Mandali.
He called the attacks "desperate executions" that "show the evil nature of the terrorists we fight."
Poor management
Kerry aides said problems in Iraq give American voters the opportunity to see Bush's shortcomings and question the president's rosy portraits of the war. Joe Lockhart, a senior Kerry adviser, said the campaign would use the missing weapons as an example of what they see as a poorly managed war.
If Bush plans to talk about national security and terrorism for the remainder of the campaign, Lockhart said, "he's going to have to talk about this part of the story, too."
For weeks, Kerry aides had said they wanted to shift the campaign's focus to domestic issues. But Lockhart said yesterday that they were ready to engage in a battle over national security in the race's last week, challenging Bush on what polls show has been his strength.
How voters respond to the strategy of the two sides - Kerry's attempts to hold Bush accountable for missteps and Bush's effort to offer an optimistic picture even if the headlines sometimes contradict it - might shape the choices of undecided voters next Tuesday.
Speech retooled
Yesterday, Bush offered a re-tooled stump speech hammering Kerry on his foreign policy record.
His biggest applause line at rallies here and in Iowa came when he said the senator criticizes him for shifting focus to Iraq and missing a chance to capture Osama bin Laden.
Originally, Bush said, Kerry praised the military for its efforts to capture the terrorist in the mountains of Tora Bora, but has now changed his views.
"At the time, Senator Kerry said about Tora Bora, 'I think we've been smart. I think administration leadership has done well, and we are on the right track.' End quote," Bush told his audiences.
"All I can say is that, 'I am George W. Bush, and I approve of that message.'" vTom Bowman reported from Washington and Julie Hirschfeld Davis from Philadelphia.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright 2004, The Baltimore Sun Company
"....designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode."
That's an assumption, Rob, on Drudge's part. You can detect that, can't you?
Is there any other logical conclusion to draw from the planned timing of CBS's airing of the story?
Yes, lots more.
You made a claim, fold. Just give one example.
No... YOUmade the claim jerkoff.
You said there were lots of reasons why CBS would air the program less than 48 hours before the polls open. Just give me one reason. But just because they can is not a reason,
"You said there were lots of reasons why CBS would air the program less than 48 hours before the polls open. Just give me one reason. But just because they can is not a reason,"
Because it's news.
Because it's news.
It was news 19 months ago. Try again.
No, it's news now. The fact that you don't like it is irrelevant.
[Edited 2 times. Most recently by on Oct 27, 2004 at 07:39am.]
C-B.S said it wouldn't complete it's investigation over the National Guard fake docs scandal until after the election. Their reasoning? They didn't want to effect the outcome of the election. Yet they have no problem holding a story until 2 days before the election. Why? Good question. There's no way anyone could pick it apart or respond that well to it in a 24 hour period and I think that was their goal. Think it sounds far fetched? Well Mary Mapes coordinated the guard story with the Kerry campaign so I wouldn't put anything past them at this point.
Is it news? Sure, but the NYT also has a responsiblity to report it accurately.
Let's say for argument sake that the stuff was still there when we arrived. 380 tons of that type of h.e would take almost 40 semi's to cart away. Do you think that a convoy of semi's cruising down a road while we were still in fully engaed mode would not attract some notice from the a-10's. F-14's. F-18's Apache's etc.? There's no way that it could be logistically done in that time frame without us noticing.
"Yet they have no problem holding a story until 2 days before the election. Why? "
I don't see it on the Sunday lineup. I thought they canned it.
Their intent was to hold the story until then as the CBS exec said.
But they aren't going to run it!
A little more data for the RDX pot. Whatever the MSNBC embeds saw with the 101st, the 3ID which preceded them saw more. It searched Al Qa Qaa and found suspicious materialÂ
Instapundit
 finds this reference in
CBS
via the
Captain's Quarters
.
The contemporaneous CBS report, written before anyone knew al Qa Qaa would be a big deal, establishes two important things. The first is that 3ID knew it was looking through an IAEA inspection site. The second was that the site had shown unmistakable signs of tampering before the arrival of US troops. "Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare." Now presumably those thousands of boxes were not all packaged and labeled with chemical warfare instructions under IAEA supervision, so the inescapable conclusion is that a fairly large and organized type of activity had been under way in Al Qa Qaa for some time. It is important to reiterate that these are contemporaneous CBS reports which were filed no with foreknowledge of the political controversy to come.
Michael Totten wonders why "there is no mention of 380 tons of HDX and RDX". Perhaps the reason the RDX isn't mentioned can be found via a link through
Josh Marshall
, quoting NBC's Jim Miklaszewski. (Hat tip reader
Trebbers
in Comments)
Here we discover the rather important fact that the UN inspectors hadn't actually seen the RDX in their final inspections. They just assumed it was there because the seals were intact. So let's put it all together. The UN inspectors conduct their final inspection before OIF without actually having seen the RDX. The 3ID reach the site on April 4, 2003, know they are looking at an IAEA site and find thousands of white boxes which they suspect may be chemical weapons. The boxes are labeled with chemical warfare instructions. On April 10, the Second Brigade of 101st Airborne arrives with press embeds. They look around but press on with their main combat mission. From this the NYT comes to the conclusion that the RDX was lost after the US assumed custodyof the site. It is worthwhile to reiterate the NYT's key assertions. In their article of October 25, the
Times said
:
It turned out that White House and Pentagon officials had acknowledged no such thing. The next day, the
NYT
reported:
In the light of the unearthed contemporaneous CBS report, the NYT's use of an interview with the Col. Anderson is totally worthless. They interviewed the wrong unit commander. It was a 3ID outfit that searched the place with the intent of discovering dangerous materials nearly six days before. The 101st had no such mission.Moreover, the NYT's innuendo that "the huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years ..." suggests a well-manicured facility that had been run to seed by knuckle-dragging American incompetence after faithful care by the IAEA. It totally ignores the disorderly condition in which 3ID found it, where, if the NYT correspondents had been present, they might have taken home their own boxes "with three vials of white powder, together with documents in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare" -- surely a sign it was untampered with, unless the NYT wishes to assert the contrary and thereby destroy their own case.
http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/10/rdx-problem-resolves-itself-little.html
No, it's news now. The fact that you don't like it is irrelevant.
It is only "news" now because the NY Times printed it. It is not news, as that term originally meant, on its own merits. It would have been 19 months ago but not today. And simply because the Times and people like you bring it up doesn't make it news.
I don't see it on the Sunday lineup. I thought they canned it.
Buy yourself a newspaper jethro. You can print whatever you like and call it news.
"I don't see it on the Sunday lineup. I thought they canned it.
They did after the Times ran with it. Also according to Dan Rather his buddy Ed Bradley was working with the Times on the story."
That doesn't change the fact that they're not running it.
United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
If these explosives were such a big problem why did the UN let Saddam have them? If they are so dangerous in the hands of terrorists why didn't Saddam's possession of them justify the war? It appears that the left wants it both ways as usual.
Buy yourself a newspaper jethro. You can print whatever you like and call it news.
So do they get blamed for considering the story, or credit for not running it?
Seems to me you're the one who wants it both ways.
So do they get blamed for considering the story, or credit for not running it?
They get blamed for participating in a fraud.
No, it's news now. The fact that you don't like it is irrelevant.
Remember this statement if we get bin laden between now and Tuesday.
If bin Laden is captured between now and Tuesday, it would take a lot of convincing evidence to dissuade me from being dead certain they knew where he was and how long he was going to be there; and they timed the capture for the election.
How could you think anything else?
[Edited 2 times. Most recently by on Oct 27, 2004 at 03:35pm.]
How could you think anything else?
Ah because they have been looking for him? Because they think he is in Pakistan? Just remember....
The fact that you don't like it is irrelevant.
It would go down in history as the most audacious political stunt of all time.
"Ah because they have been looking for him? Because they think he is in Pakistan?"
And they just happen to get him -- after more than three years on -- the weekend before the general election?
Sure.
LOL!
[Edited 3 times. Most recently by on Oct 27, 2004 at 03:30pm.]
Kind of like Clinton sending missles into an asprin factory the day Monica was testifying?
Nothing like it. But Clinton would probably marvel at it.
[Edited 2 times. Most recently by on Oct 27, 2004 at 03:33pm.]
It would go down in history as the most audacious political stunt of all time.
Kind of like Clinton sending missles into an asprin factory the day Monica was testifying?
Clinton would probably marvel at it.
Was Clinton's missle strike the day Monica testified a political stunt?
Seems to me you're the one deflecting and evading.
We're in a new century, now.
[Edited 3 times. Most recently by on Oct 27, 2004 at 03:47pm.]
I answered your question about capturing bin laden directly when you asked a couple of days ago. I said straight forward no and no to your two questions. Why can't you answer a simple question?
Was Clinton's missle strike the day Monica testified a political stunt?
[Edited by on Oct 27, 2004 at 03:42pm.]
I don't know.
Oh PUH-LEASE! You follow politics. You know what was going on then. Now you don't know? Rick you're a nice guy but politically you are a hypocrit.
CBS running a fraudulent story a couple of weeks before the election, that's ok.
The Times running a hit piece on Bush a week before the election, that's ok.
Clinton sending missles the day Monica testifies against him, well gee I don't know.
Bush/Pakistan catching bin laden (if he's there) in the days before the election, well that's a political stunt.
[Edited by on Oct 27, 2004 at 03:56pm.]
I might have some hunches or suspicions, but that's not what you asked me. You asked me if I knew it for a fact, and that I don't know.
I think Laden is Tits up.
But you will know it for a fact it's a political stunt if Bush/Pakistan get Bin laden in the next couple of days?
Holding off a possible capture until now would do nothing but hurt the Bush campaign. I would hope that they don't think the American people are that gullible. Even if the opportunity did arise between now and then, they would be smart to hold off until after Tuesday.
"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." - G.W. Bush, 3/13/02