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380 TONS of Explosives (HMX, RDX) in Iraq Left Unsecured, Now Looted!

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  • 380 TONS of Explosives (HMX, RDX) in Iraq Left Unsecured, Now Looted!

    BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - 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, produce 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 after the American invasion last year.

    The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."

    Administration officials said yesterday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

    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 be used to produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings. The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the material of the type stolen from Al Qaqaa, and somewhat larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

    [...]

    A European diplomat reported that Jacques Baute, head of the I.A.E.A.'s Iraq nuclear inspection team, warned officials at the United States mission in Vienna about the danger of the nuclear sites and materials once under I.A.E.A. supervision, including Al Qaqaa.

    But apparently, little was done. A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces "went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal." It is unclear whether they ever returned.

    By late 2003, diplomats said, I.A.E.A. experts had obtained commercial satellite photos of Al Qaqaa showing that two of roughly 10 bunkers that contained HMX appeared to have been leveled by titanic blasts, apparently during the war. They presumed some of the HMX had exploded, but that is unclear.

    Other HMX bunkers were untouched. Some were damaged but not devastated. I.A.E.A. experts say they assume that just before the invasion the Iraqis followed their standard practice of moving crucial explosives out of buildings, so they would not be tempting targets. If so, the experts say, the Iraqi must have broken I.A.E.A. seals on bunker doors and moved most of the HMX to nearby fields, where it would have been lightly camouflaged - and ripe for looting.

    But the Bush administration would not allow the agency back into the country to verify the status of the stockpile. In May 2004, Iraqi officials say in interviews, they warned L. Paul Bremer III, the American head of the occupation authority, that Al Qaqaa had probably been looted. It is unclear if that warning was passed anywhere. Efforts to reach Mr. Bremer by telephone were unsuccessful. But by that time, the Americans were preoccupied with the transfer of authority to Iraq, and the insurgency was gaining strength. "It's not an excuse," said one senior administration official. "But a lot of things went by the boards."




    Holy crap, that's a lot of explosives. Less than a pound of this stuff brought down the Lockerbie flight, and there are ~760,000 pounds running around...
    "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
    -Bokonon

  • #2
    Yeah. just read that...

    You would have thought that AT LEAST the admin. would have been able to secure all the sites Powell pointed out to the Un in Feb 2003 as places we "knew" WMD programs or parts to exist.

    If you don't like reality, change it! me
    "Oh no! I am bested!" Drake
    "it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong" Voltaire
    "Patriotism is a pernecious, psychopathic form of idiocy" George Bernard Shaw

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    • #3
      Phhhhhhttttt.....

      At least the terrorists are competent.
      Only feebs vote.

      Comment


      • #4
        Iraq is now looking like an episode of Hogan's Heroes except that the Americans are the Germans this time.

        WTF is wrong with these people.
        Only feebs vote.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by GePap
          Yeah. just read that...

          You would have thought that AT LEAST the admin. would have been able to secure all the sites Powell pointed out to the Un in Feb 2003 as places we "knew" WMD programs or parts to exist.

          In Soviet Russia, Fake borises YOU.

          Comment


          • #6
            Can this Administration ever not **** up?!?!?!
            Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

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            • #7
              Do-not-call registry.

              Comment


              • #8


                It's almost as if they are TRYING to **** up.

                How ****ing incompetent can they be?!?! This is ABSURD.
                We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by chegitz guevara
                  Can this Administration ever not **** up?!?!?!
                  According to them, they never do.



                  Yeah, there is really no way a different president could of handled this better.

                  -Drachasor
                  "If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work." - Barack Obama

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by GePap
                    Yeah. just read that...

                    You would have thought that AT LEAST the admin. would have been able to secure all the sites Powell pointed out to the Un in Feb 2003 as places we "knew" WMD programs or parts to exist.


                    No, FIRST the administration has to secure all the oil supplies for the Bush family . . . . I mean, Haliburton . . . . . no, that's not right either . . . . . oh, we need to secure the oil supplies for the Iraqi economy first, before we take care of such frivuluous matters as deadly explosives.


                    vote for Bush
                    A lot of Republicans are not racist, but a lot of racists are Republican.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Kuciwalker
                      Do-not-call registry.
                      Okay, you got me there.

                      I don't get anoyed by phone salesmen, but terrorists now have 380 tons of high explosives to blow up my phone with.
                      Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

                      Comment


                      • #12

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                        • #13
                          I wouldn't want to be the one to break this news to our troops.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Kuciwalker
                            Do-not-call registry.
                            Which was originally an idea of the states attorneys general, then stolen by the feds, IIRC.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Already another thread on this: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=124254

                              Sucka
                              Captain of Team Apolyton - ISDG 2012

                              When I was younger I thought curfews were silly, but now as the daughter of a young woman, I appreciate them. - Rah

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