I love the way the IAEA and the UN are convinced their scotch tape and stickers are unbreakable and inviolable.
Posted on 10/27/2004, 10:09:13 PM by Blackrain4xmas
Missing plastic explosives from Iraq...here's an interesting campaign nugget that characterizes the positions of both Presidential candidates at the same time; specifically, the type of plastic explosives and the unique history of that type.
Sen Kerry argues that the explosives must have been taken by looters-despite any proof of this-and that it might well be in the hands of terrorists. Pres Bush says we just don't know what happened to the explosives as they were there before the invasion, and not there after; ie, it could have been looters, or it could have been Saddam who moved the explosives.
It's important to note that the loss of the explosives was noticed by the IAEA-the UN's nuclear watchdog agency. They had earlier put a lock on the shed where the explosives were, and while that lock was apparently secure enough to keep the entire Iraqi military at bay, the crafty looters found a way to break the padlock. This is an interesting point as it begs the questions:
Why didn't the IAEA take the explosives out of the country if they were such bad things
If the explosives were declared to have once been part of a nuclear program, then why ddi they suddenly change to "dual use" in description by the IAEA
Since it takes about 1 ton of these explosives to make a nuclear bomb, and there were 380 tons waiting for sanctions to be lifted, then didn't their existence prove the idea that Saddam was just waiting to make 380 new nuclear bombs?
Were the explosives really safe, harmless, benign, and/or non-threatening in Saddam's grasp?
Isn't it ironic that this same type of explosive was used by Saddam's one-time ally, Libya, in the terrorist strike that brought down Pan Am 103?
Did the RDX explosives that were built into the pickup truck that Saddam used to try and assassinate Pres Bush Sr come from this same batch of "dual use" nuclear bomb trigger matl?
Is it just more irony that before Operation Desert Storm, Iraqi agents were caught trying to conduct terrorist attacks with the same type of "dual use" plastic explosive?
If the Duelfer report and countless other investigations into Iraq's WMD concluded that there were no stockpiles of WMD-just programs, and if it's too late to act once those programs HAVE created stockpiles (one wouldn't invade Iran for example AFTER they tested a nuke and showed that they do have them), then could it be that these 380 tons of unique plastic explosives-surrounded by hundreds of thousands of tons of other high explosives-might very well be the smoking gun to the Iraq War that Sen Kerry campaigns so strongly against? Were these explosives at the military ammunition storage point really "dual use" because they could have been used for nuclear bombs and strip mining, or was their second use not really strip mining...but terrorist acts committed by Saddam and now his Baath Party holdouts?
Bear in mind that Saddam often claimed that Iraq would be America's new "Vietnam" and that he handed out copies of Black Hawk Down as training videos. Now, his Baath Party loyalists are using military explosives, in terrorist attacks, guerrilla attacks, in the models of....Vietnam and Somalia.
Were the explosives taken by looters or Saddams loyalists to fight a guerrilla war before US troops got there?
Were the explosives for future nukes, strip mining, and/or terrorist attacks...and had inspections really protected the US with their padlocks?
I love the way the IAEA and the UN are convinced their scotch tape and stickers are unbreakable and inviolable.
Yikes!...we can't remove this stuff, it's got a IAEA sticker on it......wooooooo!
Questions: Are 380 tons of these explosives considered "weapons of mass destruction" or not? If so, is this enough reason in of itself to justify taking out Saddam? This should be answered independently of what happened to the explosives which is a secondary issue.
The "missing weapons" story is a strong closer for Bush and could very easily be the Republican October Surprise. Here's what the President and his political people are missing:
1) The UN should have destroyed these weapons: they were proscribed under the cease-fire agreement.
2) The UN allowed Saddam to "remove" large quantities of these weapons, while they were still on the ground in Iraq.
3) The UN does not even know what quantity of weapons remained at the site.
5) The UN did not "secure" the weapons, they labeled them.
6) The UN did not report its concerns to the US until months after the US invasion.
7) The US has destroyed 400,000 tons of weapons since it arrived in Iraq. The UN cannot even account for what happened to 1/10 of one percent of that amount.
George Bush wants American GI's to secure American Security. John Kerry wanted to continue to let the UN "work."
Who do you want to be President of the United States?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.