Iraqi Officials: Explosives May Have Vanished Before Invasion

Newsmax ^ | 10/29/04 9:13 am | Staff

[Perdogg]

Officials with the Iraqi agency cited by the New York Times earlier this week as the source for its claim that 380 tons of high explosives went missing from the Al Qaqaa weapons depot after the U.S. liberation said Friday that the report might be wrong.

"How, where, when [the explosives were] taken, all these questions, we don't have answers," Dr. Rashad M. Omar, Iraq's Minister of Science and Technology, told the New York Times.

Mohamed al-Sharaa, who heads up the national monitoring directorate at the ministry, backed Dr. Omar's account, telling the Times: "We don't say it's impossible" that the material was somehow taken out of Al Qaqaa before the American forces came through the area. Their accounts contradict a document from the Ministry of Science and Technology cited by the Times on Monday, that said hundreds of tons of HMX and RDX explosives were "in this site after April 9 [2003]" - six days after U.S. forces had reached Al Qaqaa.

Yesterday, ABC News broadcast video from its Minneapolis-St Paul affiliate, KSTP-TV, that it said was filmed on April 18, 2003 by reporters embedded with the 101st Airborne Division.

The station claimed they found "bunker after bunker" filled with the now missing explosives.

Oddly, the crates visible in photos posted to KSTP's web site were labeled in English, with no Iraqi markings apparent. The station did not say how many of Al Qaqaa's 32 bunkers it filmed. KSTP did not attempt to quantify the amount of explosives its reporters examined.

Pfc. Ken Dixon, who was with the 101st when it arrived at Al Qaqaa on April 10, 2003, offered a conflicting account, telling the Fox News Channel on Wednesday that the 2 or 3 bunkers he searched were for the most part empty.

Satellite photos released by the Pentagon Thursday show heavy truck activity outside the al Qaqaa bunkers in the days before the U.S. invaded

[grobdriver]

Excellent.
Keep the $hit stirred up.

[midwyf]

You don't suppose ABC has sort of "edited" a new tape do you? Naw, the MSM would never do anything like that.

[Texas4ever]

Again here we go. I thought there were no weapons.

could it be that we were actually saving ourselves from being blown away by these terrorist.

Take the fight there and not on American soil.
Where have i heard this before?

101st Airborne ROCKS

Our soldiers fighting the fight in Iraq so we wont have to.

And again Kerry putting down the Heroes.


SIGN THE DD180 Or you could never command the brave 101ST.

[gov_bean_ counter]

The team that actually filmed were not even sure they were at Al Kaka.

[PLK]

ABC News broadcast video from its Minneapolis-St Paul affiliate, KSTP-TV, that it said was filmed on April 18, 2003

What is known about this affiliate and its reporters? Everyone seems to be accepting this video as evidence without question. Is it authentic? How can the date be verified? etc.

[WildTurkey]

Everyone seems to be accepting this video as evidence without question. Is it authentic?

It doesn't matter whether the video is real or not. What matters is that we believe in the story.

[JustTheTruth]

There was a posting yesterday indicating that the reporter who supposedly did the filming wasn't even sure if it was at the same location . . . And, the 101st go their on the 10th of April, not on the 18th as was reported in this particular questionable story.

[Stateline]

Explosives may have vanished before invasion....DUH??..we gave them weeks and weeks to move anything they wanted to to wherever they wanted to....

[Hatteras]

As my 13 year old daughter would say, "Duuuuuuuuuhhhhhh!"

IF there were 380 tons of high explosives (dare we say, WMDs) it would take 40 or 50 large trucks to move this stuff. After the war began, the streets were controlled by the U.S. Military, how were they going to get through all that?

My bet is that the Russians smuggled them out to Syria a few weeks before the invasion.

[SearchMaster]

Here is a graff from an article by Reuters, it's title is 'Report: Video Shows Explosives Went Missing After War'
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&e=19&u=/nm/iraq_explosives_abc_dc
Take it as you wish.


"I talked to a former inspector who's a colleague of mine. He confirms that, indeed, these pictures look just like what he remembers seeing inside those bunkers," David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq told the network.

ABC said the barrels seen in the video were found inside locked bunkers that had been sealed by inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency just before the war began.

"The seal's critical. The fact that there's a photo of what looks like an IAEA seal means that what's behind those doors is HMX," Albright said.

[BillyCrockett]

That's it then...

[cyncooper]

I don't think they edited the tape. I think it simply is a different site.

As noted above and in the timeline all week, the 101st was at Al Qaqaa, the site in question as regards the Bush hit piece, on April 10. The ABC video was shot April 18.

[cyncooper]

Brett Baier, Pentagon correspondent on Fox News, was told it would take 38 semi trucks...

[texjan]

Someone needs to find the soldiers in the video.

[cyncooper]

Exactly. So far there is no military comment verifying the video is what the media is trying to purport.

It's almost getting to the point where the libs/media are blaming Bush for the fact that Iraq was strewn with explosives from end to end in the first place.

[wildbill]

In the scenes that I saw, our soldiers were in a bunker with boxes stacked about waist high.

This powdered explosive is light weight--380 tons would take up an enormous amount of space. There is no way that there was anywhere close to 380 TONS shown on that video.

Has anyone pointed this out?

[WildTurkey]

Has anyone pointed this out?

On the internet. But I just saw the Republican guy get eaten alive by a Clinton dummy.

[RightWhale]

Everyone seems to be accepting this video as evidence without question

Movies have high modality. However, we know that everything in a movie can be faked and witnesses can be mistaken. We also know that the press can deliberately fake news reports. So, should we judge anything about this except that the timing is suspicious?

[igoramus987]

Brett Baier, Pentagon correspondent on Fox News, was told it would take 38 semi trucks...

from Power Line

How Many Drums of Explosives Were There?

We're getting a lot of input from military personnel and others on the Al Qaqaa story. We're sifting through it, asking for more information, and will be posting updates throughout the day. In the meantime, Dafydd ab Hugh does some calculating and concludes that the famous KSTP photos are meaningless:

The amount of high explosive that the IAEA claimed to be missing is:

156 tons RDX (141.5 metric tons) - density 1.82 g/cc 215 tons HMX (195.0 metric tons) - density 1.91 g/cc 6.4 tons PETN (5.8 metric tons) - density 1.76 g/cc

This works out to about 173 million cubic centimeters, which is slightly more than 39,000 (dryweight) gallons. Assuming it was packed as tight as tight could be into 55-gallon drums, that would work out to about 714 drums.

...Did you see over seven hundred 55-gallon drums in any of those pictures, taken on April 18th, 2003 and displayed on the KSTP Website? In the shots I saw, I counted somewhat less than seventy... or less than one tenth the amount that should have been there. And even that assumes that every, last drum in that photo contains RDX, HMX, or PETN, while none contain conventional explosives, lyme, cauliflower, or vacuum-cleaner dust.

This is meaningless. Even if what they saw was high explosive, it's clearly only a remnant of what should have been there. The rest, one can only presume, was removed before the invasion -- which means removed on orders of Saddam Hussein.

UPDATE: Another reader emails:

As a retired Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) officer I have some problems with the Channel 5 story. It appears to me that they are in a bunker filled with blasting agents (slower detonation rates for moving rock, see link below on detonation rates) . First we see boosters, (they would commonly be inserted into a bag of ANFO(ammonium nitrate fuel oil) or nitro starch for blasting. Then we see what is described as dynamite but is more likely TNT or wrapped nitro starch (see GI story below) and lastly those big cardboard barrels which appear to be a white powder. Note the number beside the 1.1D placard on the barrel, it says 239. Now 239 may very well be the U. N. number system for ammunition and explosives (see first link below). The U. S. does not utilize the U. N. system nor does the former USSR or its satellites. When I was in Bosnia we put the Bosnians on the UN system to get some organization established for safety purposes. Please note the first site below from Australia and we can see they are most probably on the UN system: (239 NITROSTARCH, dry or wetted with less than 20% water, by mass). Common sense to me would be that HMX, one of the most powerful and expensive explosives WOULD NOT BE PACKAGED IN CARDBOARD BARRELS! Furthermore one of the barrels is already open as we see. The two "experts" certainly did not add ANYTHING to this story.