"Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq"

"The whole point of the invasion was to prevent this kind of transfer from taking place. Yet, thanks to this administration, it may have precipitated it." (Andrew Sullivan)

News and commentary on the missing explosives in Iraq.

2004/10/25 -

June 2005
"U.N.: Weapons Equipment Missing in Iraq" (Edith M. Lederer, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/06/02)

March 2005
"This Was Not Looting" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2005/03/15)
"Those missing WMD, again" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2005/03/15)
"Looting at Iraqi Weapons Plants Was Systematic, Official Says" (James Glanz and William J. Broad, The New York Times, 2005/03/13)

November 2004
"Soldiers Describe Looting of Explosives" (Mark Mazzetti, Los Angeles Times Times, 2004/11/04)

October 2004
Friday, October 29, 2004
"U.S. Team Took 250 Tons of Iraqi Munitions" (FOX News, 2004/10/29)
"U.S. left ammo site unguarded" (Mike Francis, The Oregonian, 2004/10/29)
"This reconaissance picture..." (AP, 2004/10/28)
"Photos point to removal of weapons" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/10/29)
"Munitions Issue Dwarfs the Big Picture" (Bradley Graham and Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2004/10/29)
"The outside of an arms bunker at Al Qaqaa..." (KSTP, 2004/10/29)
"Video Shows G.I.'s at Weapon Cache" (William J. Briad and David E. Sanger, The New York Times, 2004/10/29)

Thursday, October 28, 2004
"Video Suggests Explosives Disappeared After U.S. Took Control" (ABC News, 2004/10/28)
"5 Eyewitness News video may be linked to missing explosives in Iraq" (Gerard Baker, KSTP, 2004/10/28)
"Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/10/28)

Wednesday, October 27, 2004
"Saddam’s Surrogates" (Michael Isikoffand Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 2004/10/27)
"Discrepancy Found in Explosives Amounts" (ABC News, 2004/10/27)
"Iraq says 'impossible' explosives taken before regime fall" (AFP/TurkishPress.com, 2004/10/27)
"Eyewitness to a failure in Iraq" (Peter W. Galbraith, The Boston Globe, 2004/10/27)

Tuesday, October 26, 2004
"Pentagon responds to missing-explosives report" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2004/10/26)

Monday, October 25, 2004
"NBC blows a hole in the Kerry attack about the explosives" (The Kerry Spot, 2004/10/25)
"War Plan Orange" (wretchard, Belmont Club, 2004/10/25)
"Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq" (James Glanz et al., The New York Times, 2004/10/25)

 

"U.N.: Weapons Equipment Missing in Iraq" (Edith M. Lederer, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/06/02)
"U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in
Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.
U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.
In the report to the U.N. Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said he's reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased. ...
A third of the chemical items removed came from the Qaa Qaa industrial complex south of Baghdad which the report said "was among the sites possessing the highest number of dual-use production equipment," whose fate is now unknown." Significant quantities of missing material were also located at the Fallujah II and Fallujah III facilities north of the city, which was besieged last year."

"This Was Not Looting" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2005/03/15)
Missing WMD II: "My first question is this: How can it be that, on every page of every other edition for months now, the New York Times has been stating categorically that Iraq harbored no weapons of mass destruction? And there can hardly be a comedy-club third-rater or MoveOn.org activist in the entire country who hasn't stated with sarcastic certainty that the whole WMD fuss was a way of lying the American people into war. So now what? Maybe we should have taken Saddam's propaganda seriously, when his newspaper proudly described Iraq's physicists as "our nuclear mujahideen."
My second question is: What's all this about "looting"? The word is used throughout the long report, but here's what it's used to describe. "In four weeks from mid-April to mid-May of 2003 … teams with flatbed trucks and other heavy equipment moved systematically from site to site. … 'The first wave came for the machines,' Dr Araji said. 'The second wave, cables and cranes.' " Perhaps hedging the bet, the Times authors at this point refer to "organized looting."
But obviously, what we are reading about is a carefully planned military operation. The participants were not panicked or greedy civilians helping themselves — which is the customary definition of a "looter," especially in wartime. They were mechanized and mobile and under orders, and acting in a concerted fashion. Thus, if the story is factually correct — which we have no reason at all to doubt — then Saddam's Iraq was a fairly highly-evolved WMD state, with a contingency plan for further concealment and distribution of the weaponry in case of attack or discovery."

"Those missing WMD, again" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2005/03/15)
Missing WMD I: "A significant article in the New York Times yesterday acknowledges a fact that goes some way towards explaining the non-discovery of Saddam's WMD programme -- that the evidence for it was systematically looted after the fall of Baghdad. The claim has been made by Sami al-Araji, the Iraqi deputy minister of industry:

'Dr. Araji said equipment capable of making parts for missiles as well as chemical, biological and nuclear arms was missing from 8 or 10 sites that were the heart of Iraq's dormant program on unconventional weapons. After the invasion, occupation forces found no unconventional arms, and C.I.A. inspectors concluded that the effort had been largely abandoned after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. Dr. Araji said he had no evidence regarding where the equipment had gone. But his account raises the possibility that the specialized machinery from the arms establishment that the war was aimed at neutralizing had made its way to the black market or was in the hands of foreign governments...The United Nations, worried that the material could be used in clandestine bomb production, has been hunting for it, largely unsuccessfully, across the Middle East. In one case, investigators searching through scrap yards in Jordan last June found specialized vats for highly corrosive chemicals that had been tagged and monitored as part of the international effort to keep watch on the Iraqi arms program. The vessels could be used for harmless industrial processes or for making chemical weapons.'

The Americans have come up with some lame excuse about not having had enough troops to guard these sites. The fact is, however, that the looting of this material was one of the gravest and most disastrous errors made by the US throughout the whole Iraq episode." (See also: "Looting at Iraqi Weapons Plants Was Systematic, Official Says" (James Glanz and William J. Broad, The New York Times, 2005/03/13))

"Looting at Iraqi Weapons Plants Was Systematic, Official Says" (James Glanz and William J. Broad, The New York Times, 2005/03/13)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 12 - In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting.
The Iraqi official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery away.
Dr. Araji said his account was based largely on observations by government employees and officials who either worked at the sites or lived near them.
"They came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites," Dr. Araji said. 'They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting.'"

"Soldiers Describe Looting of Explosives" (Mark Mazzetti, Los Angeles Times Times, 2004/11/04)
"In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad, Iraqi looters loaded powerful explosives into pickup trucks and drove the material away from the Al Qaqaa ammunition site, according to a group of U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen who said they witnessed the looting.
The soldiers said about a dozen U.S. troops guarding the sprawling facility could not prevent the theft because they were outnumbered by looters. Soldiers with one unit — the 317th Support Center based in Wiesbaden, Germany — said they sent a message to commanders in Baghdad requesting help to secure the site but received no reply. ...
The U.S. troops said there was little they could do to prevent looting of the ammunition site, 30 miles south of Baghdad.
"We were running from one side of the compound to the other side, trying to kick people out," said one senior noncommissioned officer who was at the site in late April 2003.
"On our last day there, there were at least 100 vehicles waiting at the site for us to leave" so looters could come in and take munitions.
"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots," another officer said."

"U.S. Team Took 250 Tons of Iraqi Munitions" (FOX News, 2004/10/29)
Explosives XVII: "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 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."

"U.S. left ammo site unguarded" (Mike Francis, The Oregonian, 2004/10/29)
Explosives XVI: "Six months after the fall of Baghdad, a vast Iraqi weapons depot with tens of thousands of artillery rounds and other explosives remained unguarded, according to two U.S. aid workers who say they reported looting of the site to U.S. military officials.
The aid workers say they informed Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the highest ranking Army officer in Iraq in October 2003 but were told that the United States did not have enough troops to seal off the facility, which included more than 60 bunkers packed with munitions.
"We were outraged," said Wes Hare, city manager of La Grande, who was working in Iraq as part of a rebuilding program. A colleague who also visited the depot, Jerry Kuhaida, said it appeared that the explosives at the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area had found their way to insurgents targeting U.S. forces.
"There's no question in my mind that the stuff in Ukhaider was used by terrorists," said Kuhaida."

"This reconaissance picture..."
(AP, 2004/10/28)
"This reconaissance picture, released yesterday, shows two trucks parked outside one of the 56 bunkers of the Al Qa Qaa Explosive Storage Complex on March 17, 2003, prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq."

"Photos point to removal of weapons" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/10/29)
Explosives XV: "U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained satellite photographs of truck convoys that were at several weapons sites in Iraq in the weeks before U.S. military operations were launched, defense officials said yesterday.
The photographs indicate that Iraq was moving arms and equipment from its known weapons sites, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
According to one official, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as NGA, "documented the movement of long convoys of trucks from various areas around Baghdad to the Syrian border." ...
The arms that were taken out of the country included missile parts, nuclear-related equipment, tank and aircraft parts, and chemicals used in making poison gas weapons, the official said.
Regarding the satellite photographs, defense officials said the photographs bolster the information obtained from the European intelligence services on the Russian arms-removal program.
The Russian special forces troops were housed at a computer center near the Russian Embassy in Baghdad and left the country shortly before the U.S. invasion was launched March 20, 2003." (See also: "Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/10/28))

"Munitions Issue Dwarfs the Big Picture" (Bradley Graham and Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2004/10/29)
Explosives XIV: "The 377 tons of Iraqi explosives whose reported disappearance has dominated the past few days of presidential campaigning represent only a tiny fraction of the vast quantities of other munitions unaccounted for since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government 18 months ago.
U.S. military commanders estimated last fall that Iraqi military sites contained 650,000 to 1 million tons of explosives, artillery shells, aviation bombs and other ammunition. The Bush administration cited official figures this week showing about 400,000 tons destroyed or in the process of being eliminated. That leaves the whereabouts of more than 250,000 tons unknown."

"The outside of an arms bunker at Al Qaqaa..."
(KSTP, 2004/10/29)
"The outside of an arms bunker at Al Qaqaa with a seal that experts say was placed by U.N. inspectors."

"Video Shows G.I.'s at Weapon Cache" (William J. Briad and David E. Sanger, The New York Times, 2004/10/29)
Explosives XIII. More on KSTP's video: "Weapons experts familiar with the work of the international inspectors in Iraq say the videotape appears identical to photographs that the inspectors took of the explosives, which were put under seal before the war. One frame shows what the experts say is a seal, with narrow wires that would have to be broken if anyone entered through the main door of the bunker. ...
"The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al Qaqaa," said David A. Kay, a former American official who led the recent hunt in Iraq for unconventional weapons and visited the vast site. "The damning thing is the seals. The Iraqis didn't use seals on anything. So I'm absolutely sure that's an I.A.E.A. seal."
One weapons expert said the videotape and some of the agency's photographs of the HMX stockpiles "were such good matches it looked like they were taken by the same camera on the same day." (See also: "5 Eyewitness News video may be linked to missing explosives in Iraq" (Gerard Baker, KSTP, 2004/10/28))

"Video Suggests Explosives Disappeared After U.S. Took Control" (ABC News, 2004/10/28)
Explosives XII: "Experts who have studied the images say the barrels on the tape contain the high explosive HMX, and the universal markings on the barrels are clear that these are highly dangerous explosives.
"I talked to a former inspector who's a colleague of mine, and he confirmed that, indeed, these pictures look just like what he remembers seeing inside those bunkers," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.
The barrels were found inside sealed bunkers, which American soldiers are seen on the videotape cutting through. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency sealed the bunkers where the explosives were kept just before the war began.
"The seal's critical," Albright said. "The fact that there's a photo of what looks like an IAEA seal means that what's behind those doors is HMX. They only sealed bunkers that had HMX in them."
After the bunkers were opened, the 101st was not ordered to secure the facility. A senior officer told ABC News the division would not have had nearly enough soldiers to do so."

"5 Eyewitness News video may be linked to missing explosives in Iraq" (Gerard Baker, KSTP, 2004/10/28)
Explosives XI: "The news crew was based just south of Al Qaqaa, and drove two or three miles north of there with soldiers on April 18, 2003.
During that trip, members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS news crew bunker after bunker of material labelled "explosives." Usually it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get into the bunkers and see the material identified by the 101st as detonation cords. ...
There were what appeared to be fuses for bombs. They also found bags of material men from the 101st couldn't identify, but box after box was clearly marked "explosive."
In one bunker, there were boxes marked with the name "Al Qaqaa", the munitions plant where tons of explosives allegedly went missing.
Once the doors to the bunkers were opened, they weren't secured. They were left open when the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew and the military went back to their base.
"We weren't quite sure what were looking at, but we saw so much of it and it didn't appear that this was being secured in any way," said photojournalist Joe Caffrey. 'It was several miles away from where military people were staying in their tents.'"

"Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/10/28)
Explosives X: "Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.
John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad. ...
Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.
Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.
The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said."

"Saddam’s Surrogates" (Michael Isikoffand Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 2004/10/27)
Explosives IX: "But while the dispute has grabbed the headlines, United Nations officials tell NEWSWEEK that the Al Qaqaa case may only be the tip of the iceberg. As many as 10,000 other conventional-arms dumps dotted around Iraq are believed to have been looted after the U.S. invasion, the officials say. In addition, as many as 30 out of 90 of Saddam's known nuclear research facilities were also stripped down — some to the ground — by looters.
While much of the material taken from the nuclear sites is believed to have been "dual use" manufacturing equipment largely useless to terrorists, the looting of conventional-arms depots means that Zarqawi and the ex-Baathists are not unlikely to run out of weapons any time soon — and that the insurgency may have a long way to go before it runs out of steam."

"Discrepancy Found in Explosives Amounts" (ABC News, 2004/10/27)
Explosives VIII: "Iraqi officials may be overstating the amount of explosives reported to have disappeared from a weapons depot, documents obtained by ABC News show.
The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S. military control. ...
The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.
But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.
The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the start of the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003."

"Iraq says 'impossible' explosives taken before regime fall" (AFP/TurkishPress.com, 2004/10/27)
Explosives VI: "A top Iraqi science official said Wednesday it was impossible that 350 tonnes of high explosives could have been smuggled out of a military site south of Baghdad before the regime fell last year.
He warned that explosives from nearby sites could have also been looted. ...
Mohammed al-Sharaa, who heads the science ministry's site monitoring department and worked with UN weapons inspectors under Saddam, said "it is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime's fall."
He said he and other officials had been ordered a month earlier to insure that "not even a shred of paper left the sites."
"The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall and I spoke to them about it and they even issued certified statements to this effect which the US-led coalition was aware of."
He said officials at Al-Qaqaa, including its general director, whom he refused to name, made contact with US troops before the fall in an effort to get them to provide security for the site."

"Eyewitness to a failure in Iraq" (Peter W. Galbraith, The Boston Globe, 2004/10/27)
Explosives V: "In 2003 I went to tell Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz what I had seen in Baghdad in the days following Saddam Hussein's overthrow. ... On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.
When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere. ...
The looting that I observed was spontaneous. Quite likely the looters had no idea they were stealing deadly biological agents or radioactive materials or that they were putting themselves in danger. As I pointed out to Wolfowitz, as long as these sites remained unprotected, their deadly materials could end up not with ill-educated slum dwellers but with those who knew exactly what they were doing.
This is apparently what happened."

"Pentagon responds to missing-explosives report" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2004/10/26)
Explosives IV: "But Pentagon officials said yesterday that Iraq had already admitted to breaking the IAEA seals and moving tons of the explosives from the Al Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad, before U.N. inspectors re-entered the country in 2002. Officials said the rest of the explosives stockpiles may have been removed and hidden before the arrival of American troops. ...
A Pentagon statement said troops searched the Al Qaqaa site during and after major combat. They searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings, the Pentagon said, but found no weapons of mass destruction or any material under IAEA seal.
"Although some believe the Al Qaqaa facility may have been looted, there is no way to verify this," the Pentagon said. 'Another explanation is that regime loyalists or others emptied the facility prior to coalition forces arriving in Baghdad in April.'" (See also: "NBC blows a hole in the Kerry attack about the explosives" (The Kerry Spot, 2004/10/25) and "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq" (James Glanz et al., The New York Times, 2004/10/25))

"NBC blows a hole in the Kerry attack about the explosives" (The Kerry Spot, 2004/10/25)
Explosives III: "Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News pretty much dismantled the New York Times attack on behalf of Kerry today.

NBC News: 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 Qakaa 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)

If Jill Abramson, managing editor of the New York Times, had a shred of concern over her paper's reputation for getting the facts right never mind objectivity or fairness, she would be running the correction - or at least this blatantly contradictory information — in the giant headline font and above-the-fold location that today's story got." (See also: "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq" (James Glanz et al., The New York Times, 2004/10/25))

"War Plan Orange" (wretchard, Belmont Club, 2004/10/25)
Explosives II: "If MacArthur's delaying actions at the Agno and Pampanga Rivers enabled him to get his forces into Bataan intact, the successful campaign to prevent the US from pushing the 4ID down from Turkey gave Saddam the time and space to move assets into Syria and disperse munitions and men into the Sunni Triangle. About 600,000 tons of munitions were dispersed throughout the country of which 100,000 tons — five Hiroshima bombs worth of explosive — were taken to Anbar province in the Sunni Triangle alone.

The ammunition is strewn all over Iraq, and provides insurgents with easily accessible free material to make bombs ... "Approximately 100,000 of the estimated 600,000 tons of explosives in the country are located in the Al Anbar Province, I MEF’s area of responsibility," said Army Capt. Elmer Bruner Jr., the officer in charge of the operation for the battalion. ...

Faced with superior United States forces, this 21st century War Plan Orange was the natural choice of the Arab strategists. By denying the United States proof of its WMDs and grinding them down through occupation warfare -- the one mode of combat at which they excelled, they had a reasonable hope of holding America until a politician willing to treat with them was elected into office. There was no need for despair because, as James Lileks put it, "hope is on the way" — a reference to the eventual actions of the antiwar Left. In Iraq the ultimate blitzkrieg force met the ultimate protracted war army and the protracted war army awaited events confidently."

"Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq" (James Glanz et al., The New York Times, 2004/10/25)
Explosives I. As Andrew Sullivan points out: "The whole point of the invasion was to prevent this kind of transfer from taking place. Yet, thanks to this administration, it may have precipitated it. Sure, we have enough troops. Sure.":
"The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives — used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons — are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.
The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year. ...
American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings." (See also [PDF]: "Letter dated 25 October 2004 from the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency addressed to the President of the Security Council" (IAEA, 2004/10/25): The explosives in question are given as: HMX (195 tons), which had been under IAEA seal, and RDX (141 tons) and PETN (6 tons), both subject to regular monitoring of stock levels. The presence of these amounts was verified by IAEA in January 2003.")

See also:
"Post-war planning non-existent" (Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott, Knight Ridder, 2004/10/17)
"Iraq N-Sites Were Stripped Methodically - Diplomats" (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/14)
"U.S. seeks to block WMD through Amman" (Middle East Newsline, 2004/10/14)
"UN Fears Bombmakers May Get Iraq Nuke Items - Diplomats" (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/12)
"Nuclear-linked items 'have vanished from Iraq'" (Mark Turner, Financial Times, 2004/10/12)
"UN: Iraqi Nuclear-Related Materials Have Vanished" (Irwin Arieff, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/11)
"Iraqi Nuclear Gear Found in Europe" (Colum Lynch, The Washington Post, 2004/04/15)
"What happened to looted Iraqi nuclear material?" (Brett Wagner, USA Today, 2003/10/05)
"U.S. rushed post-Saddam planning" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2003/09/03)
"More WMD hunt incompetence" (Alex Knapp, Heretical Ideas, 2003/06/10)
"Odyssey of Frustration" (Barton Gellman, The Washington Post, 2003/05/18)

 

 

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