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UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- U.N. nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei on Friday dismissed as "total junk" accusations that he timed the release of an Iraqi report on the disappearance of 377 tons of high explosives to make it an issue in the U.S. presidential election.The missing explosives have become a flashpoint in the final week of the campaign, with Democratic nominee John Kerry accusing President Bush of "incredible incompetence" for not securing the dangerous material and saying the blunder should cost the commander in chief his job.A number of political commentators and editorial writers have questioned the timing of the report,...

Report: Russia Took Iraqi Arms Combined Reports A high-ranking U.S. defense official said Russian forces "almost certainly" smuggled a cache of high explosives out of Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion in March 2003, The Washington Times reported Thursday. Defense Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Sedov dismissed the allegations as "absurd" and "ridiculous." The Washington Times, basing its report on an interview with John Shaw, the deputy U.S. undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said Russian special forces had probably helped spirit out the hundreds of tons of high explosives that went missing from the al-Qaqaa base. Two weeks ago, Iraqi...

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Army officer came forward Friday to say a team from his 3rd Infantry Division took about 250 tons of munitions and other material from the Al-Qaqaa (search) arms-storage facility soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April 2003. Explosives were part of the load taken by the team, but Major Austin Pearson was unable to say what percentage they accounted for. The material was then destroyed, he said. The Pentagon believes the disclosure helps explain what happened to 377 tons of high explosives that the International Atomic Energy Agency said disappeared after the U.S.-led invasion.

Russian special forces "almost certainly" removed the explosives missing from a military base south of Baghdad before the March 2003 U.S. invasion and sent them to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran, The Washington Times daily said Thursday quoting a U.S. official. "The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units ... Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis," deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security John Shaw told the daily in an interview. The official said he believes the Russian...

(CNSNews.com) - Three weeks after the CIA's top weapons inspector told Congress that the Bush administration had been "almost all wrong" about the weapons threat posed by Saddam Hussein, there is yet another reason to conclude Saddam was up to no good, according to a biological weapons expert who spoke with CNSNews.com . Peter Leitner, professor at George Mason University's National Center for Bio-Defense, is pointing to the 380 tons of explosive materials that disappeared from a facility outside Baghdad as the reason to challenge the assertions made by the CIA weapons inspection team headed by Charles Duelfer. In his...

In a noontime press conference today at the Pentagon, Pentagon spokesman Larry Dirita and Army Maj. Austin Pearson, an ammunition management officer who was at the Iraqi ammunition depot Al Qaqaa in spring, 2003 with the Army 3rd Infantry Division, cast doubt on the New York Times/CBS News report alleging that 377 tons of Iraqi munitions had disappeared from the site, after it had come under American control in April, 2003. Maj. Austin estimated that his unit removed 200-250 tons of munitions, and Mr. Dirita emphasized that reports that 141 tons of RDX explosives were at the facility under IAEA...

The Pentagon Press Conference was, in our opinion, a bit of a mixed bag, as we state below, but on the whole a net "plus". The Not So Good On the substantive issue of whether or not the US destroyed the HMX and RDX at Al Kaka (we don't want to spell it right) it cleared up absolutely nothing. From a fact perspective the Major simply said we destroyed 250 tons of explosives, but could not say whether or not the HMX or the RDX were a part of that 250 Tons. He also said he did not see any...

Pentagon says U-S military likely destroyed some ammunition from al-Qaqaa Updated: 10-29-2004 12:13:38 PM PENTAGON (AP) - Pentagon officials say the U-S military destroyed "the types of ammunition" T-V reports suggest were looted from an Iraqi military site. A military officer who led a unit charged with disposing of dangerous ammunition says he took material from the al-Qaqaa (al-KAH'-kah) site. At a news conference, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the material taken by the disposal team included "a lot of plastic explosives." Di Rita says the facts of the missing explosives are still unclear. But, he says "the types...

WASHINGTON — A U.S. soldier is coming forward Friday to say a team from the 3rd Infantry Division took about 200 tons of explosives from an Iraqi military facility soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell last year. The soldier will appear before reporters at noon, EDT. The briefing will be shown on the FOX News Channel. The announcement is the latest twist in the mystery over what happened to 377 tons of explosives that the International Atomic Energy Agency said had disappeared. The soldier's story comes as new videotape has surfaced that supports the contention that tons of the explosives...

Bush has gone up 5 points in the last hour. Now at 56.4%

PHOTOS CONFIRM - LARGE TRUCKS AT AL QAQAA: It is the worst of all possibilities for John Kerry. While he is busy blaming the troops for the missing weapons that were never there on their watch. While he is accusing them of being incompetent when it came to securing weapons of mass destruction. While he spit in their face the way he did to the Prisoners of War after he returned from Vietnam. The Pentagon is now providing addtional evidence that further deconstructs the now debunked New York Times story of the missing weapns. This photo as released late yesterday...

A report by ABC's 5 EyeWitness News, KSTP has images of the Al Qa Qaa site showing bunkers containing drums of explosive. KSTP says the images were taken on April 18, 2003 while a news unit was touring the area with members of the 101st Airborne. View the images by following the link. Using GPS technology and talking with members of the 101st Airborne Division, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has determined the crew embedded with the troops may have been on the southern edge of the Al Qaqaa installation, where the ammunition disappeared. The news crew was based just south of...

I'm convinced that the "missing explosives" story not only is a dud for Dems, but that it backfires on many levels. It is simply too complicated for John and Joan Q. Public to follow. Imagine the following conversation: Dem shill: "Bush lost the weapons in Iraq." Voter: "There were weapons in Iraq?" Shill: "Yeah, and Bush didn't guard them." Voter: "You mean WMDs?" Shill: "No, no. Not WMDs. There were no WMDs in Iraq. Explosives." Voter: "I thought WMDs were explosives, among other things." Shill: "They are but these aren't. I mean, these are not WMDs. These were weapons. Explosives."...

<p>Brit Baer on Fox News just announced. Coming up in 1 hour.</p>

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...

I was getting my car serviced this morning, and CNN was on in the waiting area. They ran a report with the Minnesota reporter and his videotape. They stated that you could see a U.S. soldier cutting an IAEA seal off one of the barrels. They said the IAEA said that they only sealed/tagged the HMX and RHX. CNN concluded that this was definitive proof that the explosives in question were there on April 13, when the 101st was there. I had not heard this link of IAEA tag = HMX/RHX I thought they tagged other things, too. Can anyone...

The Death of the Democratic Party October 29, 2004 by Barbara J. Stock The Democrat Party of my father is dead. It started to die with Lyndon Johnson and the “Great Society.” Jimmy Carter crippled it, but it could have been saved. Bill Clinton put a stake in its heart and John Kerry has let his party bleed to death. There is no hope now. The Democrat Party is almost devoid of morals, honesty or integrity. Its members have thrown it all away in their rush for power and in their headlong plunge towards socialism. The liberals don’t even try...

The Bush administration, moving to buttress its claim that Saddam Hussein's government and not looters may have removed nearly 400 tons of explosives from a sprawling Iraqi weapons dump, released a satellite picture purporting to show prewar "loading activity" outside one of the bunkers where materials may have been stored. The Pentagon said the photograph, dated March 17, 2003, and posted last night on the Pentagon's Website, shows a portion of the 56-bunker al-Qaqaa munitions complex, which has been identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a storage site for a powdered explosive called HMX. The picture shows six...

I had a recent e-mail exchange with Mr. Gwozdecky, spokesperson and director for IAEA's Division of Public Information. I wrote the following; "More recently the IAEA has raised understandable concerns about an amount of explosives reported missing from the Al Qaqaa complex by the interim Iraqi authorities. The exact quantities and composition of the missing explosives is not clear from media reports. Are you in a position to give more detail on the quantities of explosives such as HMX and RDX reported missing? Is it known from which inventories the missing amounts are deduced and over which time period the...

US releases pre-war photo of Iraqi weapons By Jim Mannion Washington - On Thursday the Pentagon released an aerial photograph of the Iraqi facility where hundreds of tons of powerful explosives have gone missing, showing two trucks parked by a bunker just before the American-led invasion. The issue of the missing weapons has taken the forefront of the American presidential race. The bunker was at Al Qaqaa Explosives Storage facility where the high explosives were kept under seals placed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but United States Defence Department spokesperson Lawrence DiRita said US officials did not know what...