Explosives heist: the real story

AP’s Christopher Chester has a really clear “Q&A” presentation of the facts around the looting of the explosives from Al-Qaqaa.
He goes thru the following facts:
— that the IAEA monitoring team had previously gathered all or most of such potentially nuclear-trigger-able high explosives from Iraq in Al-Qaqaa, for easier monitoring, and had checked and renewed the seals on the bunkers containing them on March 15, 2003, shortly before they were ordered to leave when Bush issued his ultimatum for the war;
— that twice in early April, huge US military convoys had stopped at Al-Qaqaa to regroup or whatever as they made their way toward Baghdad. One of these had people in it who searched (unsuccessfully) for chemical weapons, but neither of them had anyone who showed any interest in the massive high-explosive cache — though information about its location and importance was easily available from the IAEA should the US have been interested.
Then, this:

    Q. Did the Americans observe [at Al-Qaqaa] that any looting had taken place?
    A. The unit that arrived April 3 reported some looting, and a spokesman for the brigade that arrived April 10 says looters were at the site. A month later, on May 8, a visiting American team found the plant heavily looted and several looters in the area, an Army official said Wednesday.
    Al-Qaqaa is a large installation with more than 80 buildings that could house weapons, and it’s unclear when and over how long a period of time the extremely heavy material was carted away.
    ___
    Q. Did U.S. troops ever search the facility for the high explosives?
    A. It appears that the first time U.S. troops searched specifically for high explosives was on May 27, 2003, after a purported request by the U.N. nuclear agency on May 3. The troops found that the seals had been broken. It’s not known whether they did a further accounting of the materials themselves.
    ___
    Q. If the Americans found the seals broken, did they inform the nuclear agency?
    A. It doesn’t seem so. The nuclear agency says it first learned of the disappearance of the explosives from the Iraqi government on Oct. 10, 2004. The Pentagon would not say whether it had informed the nuclear agency that the high explosives were not where they were supposed to be.
    ___
    Q. Why didn’t U.S. troops make an effort earlier than May 27, 2003 to account for the explosives?
    A. Troop commanders have said they had no orders to search for high explosives

8 thoughts on “Explosives heist: the real story”

  1. I am a bit puzzled about why this looting gets more attention then other looting. Are these explosives much more dangerous then the many, many other weapons stockpiles that were looted after the invasion? Is the point that they are used in nuclear bombs? Is this a Rove publicity stunt to distract attention from something more important? It almost seems like random chance when the media decides a scandal has occurred.

  2. The problem is the high quality of these explosives : unlike some others, they are very sure, they won’t detonate by accident, killing the persons handling them and they are very powerfull : all this makes them very handful for guerilla wars. Also, the quantity is impressive; I’m not sure whether other sites offered comparable high quantities and certainly not comparable high quality.
    Anyway, the fact that US didn’t take care of the many Iraqi weapons sites is a scandal in itself. The fact that the former inspectors were not allowed back to the site, the fact that they warnings were not taken into account was already denounced many times in the EU media, especially right after the invasion. I think that the US media didn’t do their work.. they should have denounced these failures much earlier and they should have made a scandal of them much earlier. They should have asked more question to their government. It’s as if the famous US inquiring media has disappeared.

  3. I guess I am wondering why the media is “discovering” this issue now. Are we being manipulated?
    Anyway, I suppose it is a useful issue to use against Bush, who presents himself as “pro-military” and justified this war on the grounds of keeping weapons from enemies. I think the media has to try hard not to find a scandal with the Bushies. They are everywhere you care to look. How many elephants in the room can the press miss? Too many it seems.

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