October 25, 2004
IAEA: Tons of Iraq explosives missing
IAEA: Tons of Iraq explosives missing:
The explosives — considered powerful enough to demolish buildings or detonate nuclear warheads — were under IAEA control until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. IAEA workers left the country before the fighting began.
So we went in ostensibly looking for weapons of mass distruction, then didn't even secure the sites we knew about? Why do people feel safe under this administration? For all the bickering about what mistakes they've made so far, what scares me is what mistake they'll make next...
Posted by bug to Politics at October 25, 2004 8:32 AM | TrackBackAnd NBC is about to report it turns out the place was cleaned out before the US army arrived. Which makes sense. The boom-paste there wasn't just weapons; it was evidence.
Posted by: Omri at October 25, 2004 8:26 PMWhat NBC is actually reporting is that the 101st Airborn, the division their reporter was embedded with, didn't find the explosives because they weren't tasked with looking for weapons:
Following up on that story from last night, military officials tell NBC News that on April 10, 2003, when the Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne entered the Al Qa Qaa weapons facility south of Baghdad, that those troops were actually on their way to Baghdad, that they were not actively involved in the search for any weapons, including the high explosives HMX and RDX. The troops did observe stockpiles of conventional weapons but no HMX or RDX, and because the Al Qa Qaa facility is so huge, it's not clear that those troops from the 101st were actually anywhere near the bunkers that reportedly contained the HMX and RDX.
That's OK though — because the 3rd Infantry Division had already been there six days earlier, and had reported "finding thousands of five-centimetre by 12-cintimetre boxes, each containing three vials of white powder."
You've gotta start listening to more than Fox News ;-)
Posted by: Bug at October 26, 2004 9:29 PM