Al Qaqaa Facility: Making the World More Dangerous in Iraq

[Jeff Boler]

You continue to harp on the idea of this news being released to target the Bush/Kerry election, and the timing, without responding to the fact, which I pointed out, that this article came about as a result of the IAEA, which wrote to the Iraqi interim government on October 10 2004, and then made the information public.

I'll ask again, and add a few more questions:

-- If the IAEA just released this information, how is it "old news"?
-- Is the IAEA part of this conspiracy theory?

NBC Nightly News Reported That On April 10, 2003, One Day After Baghdad Fell, U.S. Troops Entered Al-Qaqaa And Did Not Find Explosives. NBC’S JIM MIKLASZEWSKI: “April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army’s 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al-Qaqaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing. The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon. In a letter this month, the Iraqi interim government told the International Atomic Energy Agency the high explosives were lost to theft and looting due to lack of security. Critics claim there were simply not enough U.S. troops to guard hundreds of weapons stockpiles, weapons now being used by insurgents and terrorists to wage a guerrilla war in Iraq.” (NBC’s “Nightly News,” 10/25/04)

Do you think the IAEA wants Bush back in power?

-- If the information is correct, and it comes out close to the election, and the US did allow those explosives out, is it then okay for American soldiers and civilians all around the world to be killed using them because those dirty liberals only discussed it right before the election?

You claim i'm bouncing around the issue, but you are the one who is actually doing it. You act like the "news" organizations are reporting this to keep the fine people of the US informed, but there only motivation for this was to keep Bush out of office again. That's it.

The weapons are gone. They were gone before we got there. Have they been used on American soil? No. Have they been used in Iraq? We don't know that. People want to flame Bush for the loss of +1000 lives in Iraq, what they should actually be doing is praise him that only that many people have died. What was the life expectancy of a soldier in Vietnam?

 

[Flatlander]

So if we knew it back then, why is it news now?

A couple of points.

From the NY Times article in the topical post:

The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing.

Secondly, irrespective of the timing, what about the facts presented? Is this not a valid concern?

 

[Jeff Boler]

Secondly, irrespective of the timing, what about the facts presented? Is this not a valid concern?

Of course it is. But since the weapons were not there when we took over the security for them, i'm not sure that we are going to get any answers, nor do I think that the arguement to blame Bush for it is valid.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Of course it is. But since the weapons were not there when we took over the security for them, i'm not sure that we are going to get any answers, nor do I think that the arguement to blame Bush for it is valid.

Were they there prior to the invasion?
If they vanished afterwards it is fair to blame him and his administration.

If they were missing previously, then I would guess that it's the UN's fault for letting them 'vanish'.

 

[Flatlander]

From the same article -

White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

Is this claim in dispute? Does anyone have a source or reference providing a basis for that refutation?

 

[Jeff Boler]

If they were missing previously, then I would guess that it's the UN's fault for letting them 'vanish'.

Or to even be there in the first place. I think people forget the fact that if the UN would have followed it's own rules, the whole IRAQ issue would a moot point. But, there are too many people in the UN that were making profits off of Sadaam's rule of that country.

 

[MisterMike]

I guess it's UN policy to let them keep their explosives, just not use them for weapons.

Funny how we blame the administration 100% but not the looters for the roadside and suicide bombings. So, 3 weeks into the war, we were supposed to secure Iraq? People sure have a gooood impression of our military and how fast they can safely oust a regime. It was tough enough to secure the oil fields and pipelines.

Still a little too much gray area to say for certain it was all stolen after the war began, considering we openly gave Saddam weeks to come clean(prepare for war) before we levelled the place.

Common sense says it was inevitable.

 

[michaeledward]

Do you think the IAEA wants Bush back in power?



You claim i'm bouncing around the issue, but you are the one who is actually doing it. You act like the "news" organizations are reporting this to keep the fine people of the US informed, but there only motivation for this was to keep Bush out of office again. That's it.

The weapons are gone. They were gone before we got there. Have they been used on American soil? No. Have they been used in Iraq? We don't know that. People want to flame Bush for the loss of +1000 lives in Iraq, what they should actually be doing is praise him that only that many people have died. What was the life expectancy of a soldier in Vietnam?

The President and the civilian administrators of the United States Department of Defense should absolutely be blamed for the disaster that is the US Iraq policy.

The stated reason for the United States invasion of Iraq was the existance of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Yet, they did not plan to secure the suspected Weapons of Mass Destruction sites in the country. You are right, this is old news, but it is a common story, because it has happened before:

The failure to protect the very weapons that are going to kill our soldiers and those Iraqis not too terrified to work with us has a direct precedent. Immediately after the invasion—something achieved, by the way, with Bill Clinton’s military; the Bush administration did not have the time to screw it up yet—the Bush administration also left unguarded the very sites they insisted were housing Iraqi WMDS, (which leads one to the argument that either they knew they were lying or they didn’t really care if our troops were attacked. I can’t decide which is worse). This is from The Book on Bush and it’s about the period in the immediate aftermath of the invasion:

Inexplicably, given its own arguments, the Bush administration did not bother to secure (or even inspect) those sites it had publicly identified to be the likely locus of nuclear weapons production. In Karbala, U.S. forces left canisters of radioactive material stored openly at a maintenance site completely unguarded. During the month between the beginning of the invasion and the American decision to undertake an investigation of what was inside it, local villagers plundered its contents, likely poisoning themselves and their families, owing to their unfamiliarity with the effects of radioactive materials or their lack of knowledge of its presence. At another site, near Kut, the U.S. military again did not bother to secure the site for more than a month following the victory, also found a heavily looted nuclear site offering what the Barton Gellman described as “fresh evidence that the war has dispersed the country's most dangerous technologies beyond anyone's knowledge or control.” Over all, fully seven separate sites said to be associated with the Iraqi nuclear program were left unguarded and unprotected by U.S. forces. As a result, it became impossible to identify, with any certainty, what kinds of materials were being produced and what might be missing. One Special Forces soldier who asked Gellman to identify him only as “Tony,” was shocked over what he was being asked to inspect. "I don't believe this," he told his lieutenant on duty. "They let workers in here for the past week!"​

​

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/

And, if you are going to evoke the spirits of Vietnam, a more accurate question might be ... "How many United States soldiers died in the first 18 months of our involvment in Vietnam?"

 

[PeachMonkey]

You claim i'm bouncing around the issue, but you are the one who is actually doing it.

Not at all. The issue is that Iraq had a stockpile of dangerous explosives before the US invaded; now those explosives are missing. We invaded Iraq to make the world safer from their WMDs; those WMDs have not been found, but other weapons they did have are now gone, and potentially in the hands of terrorists.

I didn't bring up the ad hominem attacks about who is reporting the news or when it's being reported. That is "bouncing around the issue".

You act like the "news" organizations are reporting this to keep the fine people of the US informed, but there only motivation for this was to keep Bush out of office again. That's it.

The only motivation? Do you have proof of this?

The weapons are gone. They were gone before we got there. Have they been used on American soil? No.

If they ever are used on American soil, I'm sure you'll feel much better knowing that the issue was brought up by them durned liberal news organizations that hate Bush.

People want to flame Bush for the loss of +1000 lives in Iraq, what they should actually be doing is praise him that only that many people have died.

There you go bouncing around to a completely different topic again.

Given that Iraq had no WMDs and was not a threat to the United States, I find your logic lacking and your point both incorrect and irrelevant.

What was the life expectancy of a soldier in Vietnam?

How is this relevant to the weapons cache in Iraq?

 

[PeachMonkey]

think people forget the fact that if the UN would have followed it's own rules, the whole IRAQ issue would a moot point.

Actually, the United Nations was following its own resolution, and inspecting Iraq to search for the "imminent threat" of weapons of mass destruction. The United States ordered UN inspectors out of the country and invaded. The United States then found out that Iraq's weapon stockpiles were gone.

The only forgetfulness I see here is that of conservatives, who forget the actual facts and events.

 

[PeachMonkey]

I guess it's UN policy to let them keep their explosives, just not use them for weapons.

Given that the explosives were not weapons of mass destruction, I don't see how this is a problem.

Funny how we blame the administration 100% but not the looters for the roadside and suicide bombings.

Can you give me an example of someone who blames the Bush Administration for attacks 100% with no blame whatsoever for the actual insurgents carrying them out? Thanks.

So, 3 weeks into the war, we were supposed to secure Iraq? People sure have a gooood impression of our military and how fast they can safely oust a regime.

I guess if we hadn't invaded the country based on lies, it wouldn't have been an issue.

Still a little too much gray area to say for certain it was all stolen after the war began...

On this, I think, we can agree.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Peach - I agree with part of what Jeff said. The only reason the -mainstream- media does anything is to prop up their masters and undermine their competitions. If they truely gave a lick about keeping us informed of things, they wouldn't be hiding by omision the 3rd partys positions.

This stuff is old news brought back up at a time that will do the most political damage. It is questionable in it's accuracy as well.

Now, lets look at the whole picture here.
Regardless of weither there were or weren't WMD or lots of conventional weapons at these locations, there were several failures of intellegence here (the thinking kind, not the info kind.)

The US basically blitzkrieged Iraq. This allows for rapid advancement. Where the Germans did it better was that in their plan, they secured as they went. The US didn't. This was due to lack of manpower. This lack of manpower, failure to secure military and historical targets of importance point to a major flaw in the US battle plan. The end result is that weapons caches were left unguarded and weapons were stolen. Archeological treasures have been looted as well. The historical items are turning up all over the world now. The weapons are who knows where. But, if ancient Babylonian tablets can turn up in the central US, having evaded customs in multiple nations as well as our own "strengthened" security here.....anyone want to guess just how many Iraqi weapons are now on the streets of the US, not to mention now being used against our troops still in Iraq?

I'll sum it up. It sucks bigtime.

 

[Ronald R. Harbers]

How it sucks bigtime!

 

[PeachMonkey]

Peach - I agree with part of what Jeff said. The only reason the -mainstream- media does anything is to prop up their masters and undermine their competitions.

I don't dispute the mainstream media being around simply to prop up their masters and to make money...

I'm still not 100% convinced that the timing of this is *purely* political. The triggering of this whole controversy came from the IAEA and the Iraqi interim government earlier this month.

The US basically blitzkrieged Iraq. This allows for rapid advancement. Where the Germans did it better was that in their plan, they secured as they went.

Sorry to gank the thread, but this is a common misunderstanding about German blitzkrieg operations in the Second World War, and mobile operations in general.

As proposed by Guderian and Liddell Hart, mobile operations rely on not taking the time to "secure as you go". The whole concept is to knock your opponent off balance with overwhelming force at a location of your choosing, and to continue to drive to objectives before your opponent can recover and reorganize. This will naturally stretch supply lines and extend your flanks... but your forces must be trained and equipped to repel concentric counterattack without blunting the force of your offensive.

Ideally, your armoured schwerpunkt will be followed by mechanised infantry.

The great successes of German mobile warfare came when they recognized this, and failed when they either ignored it, or upset the balance too far. For instance, during the invasion of Russia, the OKW failed to grasp the concepts of mobile warfare and forced the leading formations to turn back from Moscow too early to complete the attrition and destruction of isolated Soviet formations -- in essence, the OKW insisted upon the army "securing as they went". By the time the Panzer forces were freed to continue the advance on Moscow, the weather was turning and it was too late -- the Soviet army had reorganized their defenses, and the initiative had been lost.

The opposite danger exists as well, as evidenced by Rommel in North Africa -- if you advance so quickly that you completely outstrip your ability to remain in supply, you are fodder for even the simplest counterattack. This was not an issue of "securing as they went", but rather simply a complete misunderstanding of the importance of logistics.

The US strategy in Operation Iraqi Freedom exploited the key elements of mobile warfare -- it advanced rapidly, relying on motorized infantry forces in the rear to fend for themselves and protect the supply of the armoured schwerpunkt.

Unfortunately, the US failed to also combine operations by airmobile and other forces to capture and secure key military and civilian installations that would contribute both to future stability and to the professed goal of ending the threat of WMD use and proliferation.

 

[hardheadjarhead]

All you really need are bomb casings, explosives, and chemical/biological agents to create WMD....if Libya had these, you know damn well Iraq did too.

How so? Two countries with different economic sanctions leveled against them. Why must we assume that Iraq has something that Libya has? Libya's economic infrastructure wasn't damaged in a war in 1991.

According to the UN inspectors Iraq had no capacity for tooling up for making chemical weapons. I believe that has been confirmed with post war inspections.

As to Mister Mike's question whether we were to secure Iraq in three weeks, no. Of course not. We could have secured the explosives mentioned in this thread and stockpiled uranium we knew about, however.

In another thread ("Did We Have Justification") it was pointed out that the IAEA had a site loaded with unenriched uranium under guard and sealed prior to the invasion. None of the IAEA seals were broken during the hiatus of the IAEA from Iraq from 1998-2002. Following the invasion the IAEA returned to find the site looted and some of the nuclear material missing. The guards had fled. No US troops secured the site.

Now...combine THAT stuff with the explosives herein mentioned and you have a dirty bomb. A nuclear weapon, but not a fissile bomb.

The US knew about these sites and failed to secure them.

This points out the incompetence of the administration...and frankly, the incompetence of the military commanders on the ground. They had good intelligence on this stuff. They knew where it was. They knew what it was. They didn't secure it.

Regards,


Steve

 

[michaeledward]

I think we all might find David Kay's statement relevent to this discussion. Listen for it in the 'biased media'. Of course, you will all recall that David Kay was George W. Bush's man in Iraq searching for the Weapons of Mass Destruction (i.e. head of the Iraq Survey Group). He left the job before it was completed, but he wasn't very pleased about the fact that there weren't any Weapons of Mass Destruction. See Duelfur Report.

His quote was most enlightening.

He obviously is a member of the 'biased mainstream media'.

I heard the quote on the news while driving home this evening. I can't find a link at the moment, but I'll keep lookin' ... Keep Listening.

 

[TwistofFat]

The US knew about these sites and failed to secure them.

This points out the incompetence of the administration...and frankly, the incompetence of the military commanders on the ground. They had good intelligence on this stuff. They knew where it was. They knew what it was. They didn't secure it.

Regards,


Steve

Steve - I am not sure any of this is definitive proof of incompetence on the military or planners role. We will know only years from now what really happened and with repsect to David Kaye and CBS (and the embeds from NBC for that matter), their word is one version that is disbuted as this juncture.
What they knew and what was happening on the ground is again disbuted. Since the Turkish route had been closed to the US and Al-Qaqaa is south of Baghdad, troups were indeed less than planned.
I also understand Task Force 75 (resp. for finding and disarming) was busy with other sites that amounted to hundreds of thousands of tons of material so while the site with 380 tons (4 truck loads - many that required fork lifts just to move) had been bombed (albeit from the air) several times, it was lower on the priority list.

I am not dismissing the RDX and MDX at all and lament its use on anyone anywhere - period. (I put this by itself so I can avoid the replies to the contrary from some of the others less esteemed folks on the board- I doubt it will be read).

Some of our strong allies (like the Dutch) found and secured stockpiles of 180-500 tons that were identified prior to the invasion (Al Quarnah) ("hey everybody, I'm from Holland. Isn't that weird" - Goldmember...sorry), but from Basra to Baghdad in April was a hot zone in every sense. My understanding is that even with additional troups, Al Quqaa (kaakaa) would have been hard to secure until end of May.

Regards - Glenn.

 

[MisterMike]

Given that the explosives were not weapons of mass destruction, I don't see how this is a problem.

The explosives were not meant for anything BUT weapons. Iraq didn't need them because nobody was going to invade them, well, except us. If you hadn't noticed, they're not exactly using them to blast through rock to make roads.

Can you give me an example of someone who blames the Bush Administration for attacks 100% with no blame whatsoever for the actual insurgents carrying them out? Thanks.

Look up in the thread. Lots of Administration listings, no looters, well except for mine.

I guess if we hadn't invaded the country based on lies, it wouldn't have been an issue.

Yea, the lies thing is a little old. Misinformation, I could see, but I'm just not one of the cool dudes on the other side of the political fence. *yawn*

 

[PeachMonkey]

If you hadn't noticed, they're not exactly using them to blast through rock to make roads.

True, but we didn't go to the UN to get permission to invade over high explosive, grenades, assault rifles, tanks, etc etc.

Look up in the thread. Lots of Administration listings, no looters, well except for mine.

That's because:

1) It's obvious that terrorists and insurgents are the ones committing the acts
2) My nation doesn't sponsor the terrorists and insurgents; my nation was responsible for the invasion of Iraq, and its security during and afterward

The idea that not specifically pointing out the evils of murdering looters and insurgents reduces the validity of criticisms of the administration or the coalition military is really a distracting straw-man.

Yea, the lies thing is a little old. Misinformation, I could see, but I'm just not one of the cool dudes on the other side of the political fence. *yawn*

I find the lies thing a little old, too, since there's plenty of evidence to show that the administration had a jones for Iraq since day one, and that they ignored evidence given to them by the intelligence community that contradicted their position. One can examine that evidence regardless of political affiliation.

But, that's the topic of (many) other threads

 

[michaeledward]

The explosives were not meant for anything BUT weapons. Iraq didn't need them because nobody was going to invade them, well, except us. If you hadn't noticed, they're not exactly using them to blast through rock to make roads.

Actually Mike, the chemicals may very well have been used to 'make roads'. One of the reports I have read on the subject indicated that some 35 tons of the material was dispersed between 1998, when UNSCOM, the United Nations Special Commission left Iraq under protest, and 2002, when UNMOVIC, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, returned to Iraq. The reports given to UNMOVICE was that the chemicals were going to be used by concrete factories to blast stone to build roads.

Now, we can certainly take such an explanation with a measure of skepticism. Perhaps all, some, or possibly even none of the chemicals were used for such a purpose, but then again, Iraq seemed to have been telling the truth when they said the have no Weapons of Mass Destruction, right?