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LOS ANGELES — Explosives were looted from the Al-Qaqaa (search) ammunitions site in Iraq while outnumbered U.S. soldiers assigned to guard the materials watched helplessly, soldiers told the Los Angeles Times. About a dozen U.S. troops were guarding the sprawling facility in the weeks after the April 2003 fall of Baghdad when Iraqi looters raided the site, the newspaper quoted a group of unidentified soldiers as saying. U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen witnessed the looting and some soldiers sent messages to commanders in Baghdad requesting help, but received no reply, they said.

As Washington officials questioned the reliability of an Iraqi official who reported that 377 tons of explosives went missing after the war, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged yesterday that his agency is in no position to know what exactly happened. IAEA Director Mohammed ElBaradei confirmed in an interview yesterday that the sole source for the story that dominated the news last week was a letter sent to the agency on October 10 from an Iraqi official, Mohammed Abbas. "All we know (is that) the Iraqis reported to us the material is missing," Mr. ElBaradei told The...

Bill Safire’s column today advances the case that UN official Mohamed ElBaradei has attempted to influence an American election by circulating false or misleading information. (Whether he succeeds or not remains to be determined.) Money quote: ElBaradei “has long known about the presence of ‘nuclear trigger’ explosives (evidence of Saddam's nuclear ambitions?) in one of Iraq's thousands of ammo dumps. But, The Wall Street Journal reports that with exquisite political timing, on Oct. 1 ElBaradei sent a ‘reminder’ to a Baathist science minister renewing the U.N. interest in these particular explosives. That produced a dutiful letter from the Iraqi bureaucrat...

That 377 tons of high explosives went missing from an Iraqi munitions facility 30 miles south of Baghdad is a legitimate story. But did it deserve to be the front-page, two-column headline lead in The New York Times? Did it merit being featured on "60 Minutes," 30 hours before Election Day, as CBS News planned? Or were these twin media mastodons colluding as conscious agents of the Kerry campaign?

Photos: Northern weapons removed before U.S. arrival Coordinated effort by Saddam's fedayeen to take munitions before allies secured areas Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's fedayeen removed weapons and ammunition from a storage facility in northern Iraq, similar to the al-Qaqaa facility at the center of current controversy, before the U.S. victory and prior to the arrival of the 101st Airborne Division to secure the area, according to photos obtained by WorldNetDaily from an Army intelligence source. Army sources say the removal operations by Saddam's troops at the northern site were coordinated and likely systemic, and could indicate the southern al-Qaqaa...

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's fedayeen removed weapons and ammunition from a storage facility in northern Iraq, similar to the al-Qaqaa facility at the center of current controversy, before the U.S. victory and prior to the arrival of the 101st Airborne Division to secure the area, according to photos obtained by WorldNetDaily from an Army intelligence source.

Geraldo just interviewed Col. David Hunt and allowed him to allege that the al-QaQaa explosives are now killing our servicemen!*&! Perhaps this segment was pre-recorded, but then FOXNews needs to make an announcement and not broadcast the word "Live" in the corner.

FROM A SOURCE CLOSE TO THE CAMPAIGN [10/28 02:07 PM] Just heard from a source close to the campaign, tuned in to the conversations at the highest levels. According to the Bushies, the last few days have seen a huge burst of momentum in their numbers. They think Bush is ahead by a few points nationally. They expect the next round of tracking polls to show a bit of a bump. The internal polls show a significant lead in Florida (outside margin of error) and Arkansas is out of play, with a Bill Clinton visit or without. As for most...

unspun.info  |  reality - spread it around Seeing Over Kerry, Finding Reality in Iraq Saturday, October 30, 2004  -  Arlen Williams  -  http://www.unspun.info/iraqreality.html In his campaign's final week, John Kerry seemed to base the selling of a would-be Presidency upon his mock certainty that 377 tons of very high explosives were looted from Iraq's Al Qa Qaa complex.  This, despite a collection of inconclusive and conflicting accounts and reconnaissance. But on a broader level, Kerry is just depending upon his renowned ability to spin the public into profound confusion and self-doubt about their heavily invested war effort.  Who better...

Since new CIA Director Porter Goss blocked the October Surprise agency left-wingers had prepared against Bush (discussed in "Porter At The Pass" last week), they desperately rigged another one, working with Mohammed ElBaradei at the U.N. What nobody is focusing on in Al Qaqaagate is that the CIA is behind it. The anti-Bush lefties are now known as the "Rogue Weasels" at Langley, and they are frantic to do whatever they can to elect Kerry. They cooked up this entire phony "tons of missing explosives" scandal, sweet-talked the head of the U.N.'s nuclear inspection agency, ElBaradei, to carry their water...

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon reported yesterday that U.S. Army soldiers removed about 250 tons of material from the Al-Qaqaa munitions complex in April 2003. It marked the first time defense officials have credited U.S. forces with carting away a large amount of explosives from the Iraqi site for destruction. But the Army major who commanded the operation told reporters he could not say whether any of the munitions were part of the 377 tons at the center of a political firestorm this week between the campaigns of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry. The officer, Maj. Austin Pearson, said some...

That there are two sides to every story is not something that would automatically occur to the man who reads only one newspaper. If you've followed the Al-Qaqaa news only in the New York Times, where it broke, you might believe that the United States committed an unspeakable blunder in failing to guard the 380 tons of high explosives it knew Saddam harbored in the Al-Qaqaa weapons complex. The Times' Oct. 25 scoop and its Oct. 27 and Oct. 29 follow-ups give that impression. But if you've consumed the Washington Post alongside the Times, your certainty about an American miscue...

Since new CIA Director Porter Goss blocked the October Surprise agency left-wingers had prepared against Bush (discussed in “Porter At The Pass” last week), they desperately rigged another one, working with Mohammad ElBaradei at the UN. What nobody is focusing on in Al Qaqaagate is that the CIA is behind it. The anti-Bush lefties are now known as the “Rogue Weasels” at Langley, and they are frantic to do whatever they can to elect Kerry. They cooked up this entire phony “tons of missing explosives” scandal, sweet-talked the head of the UN’s nuclear inspection agency, ElBaradei, to carry their water...

PARIS A French journalist who visited the Qaqaa munitions depot south of Baghdad in November last year said she witnessed Islamic insurgents looting vast supplies of explosives more than six months after the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime. The account of Sara Daniel, which will be published Wednesday in the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, lends further weight to allegations that American occupying forces in Iraq failed to protect hundreds of tons of munitions from extremists plotting attacks against their own troops. Much of the controversy has centered around the disappearance of about 380 tons of the powerful HMX explosive....

October 30, 2004EXPLOSIVESFacts and Questions About Lost MunitionsBy WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER he report that hundreds of tons of high explosives are missing from the Qaqaa munitions facility in Iraq has loomed over the last week of the presidential campaign, and led to a blur of charges and countercharges about what actually happened, and why the news came out so close to Election Day.Senator John Kerry has seized on the news, first reported by The New York Times and CBS' "60 Minutes," to reinforce his argument that the Bush administration bungled the postwar occupation of Iraq. President...

Did we miss something here? Over the last several years, starting with a crisp Manhattan morning in September of 2001 and leading up to the present, their have been numerous startling revelations concerning the nature of this Nation's present struggle. Taken in their entirety, they hint at a picture too ghastly for many to comprehend. Recall for an instant, the image of our rebirth to reality. Fast forward, being the select method for reticent rationalized denial, America has skipped back one day and forward 1143 to the threshold of domestic chaos and a divisive Presidential election fueled on 9/10 rhetoric...

I've never understood the Kerry campaign's decision to make Al Qaqaa--that is, an attack on the competence of the U.S. Army, based on essentially no evidence--the centerpiece of the last week of the campaign. On the merits, the issue has fizzled. We now know (although it has not been widely reported) that around half of the explosives in question were surreptitiously removed from the site by Saddam Hussein prior to January 2003; this is acknowledged in the IAEA report of that date. We also know that American troops secured the area starting on April 3, 2003, and thereafter it is...

Ordnance Officer Confirms About 250 Tons of Munitions Removed From Iraqi Site By Kathleen T. RhemAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2004 -- A U.S. Army ordnance company removed roughly 250 tons of munitions from Iraq's Al Qaqaa weapons depot in mid-April 2003, that unit's commander said in the Pentagon today. But officials said it is not known if any of the material removed then is part of the roughly 380 tons of high explosives claimed to be missing from the site. In recent days, International Atomic Energy Agency officials have said about 380 tons of high-melting explosive,...

Just got this e-mail from the NY Times Editor: I thought you'd be interested in this response which comes from the Executive Editor. Our front page story of October 25 reported accurately that a senior official at Iraq's Ministry of Science & Technology informed the International Atomic Energy Agency in a letter on October 10 that the materials were lost from the Al-Qaqaa site after April 9, 2003, through "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security." As the story further reported, the IAEA took an inventory of the materials in January, 2003. In early...

Russia - Masque Of The Red Death Vladimir Putin has been hailed perhaps as the pivotal post cold war Russian leader. He has executed a skillful dog and pony show, convincing both the Bush and Blair administrations that the former Soviet Union was not only no longer a military threat to the West but was indeed now becoming a close ally. Obviously Russia's cooperation with the French and German UN delegation's intransigence in dealing with Iraq has done much to throw cold water on this heretofore-budding union. It's important to note that such a relationship offered hope, though ultimately unfounded,...