From reading through several articles, it seems that NYTimes broke the story yesterday. The Iraqi government told the IAEA on Oct 10th that the explosives from Al Qaqaa have gone missing. The IAEA is the group of UN inspectors who were monitoring the explosives before the war, and haven't been allowed in since the war began. The US Govt found out on Oct 15th. It seems that the explosives were stolen some time since the war began, maybe during the beginning of the looting. But I haven't seen anything definite (can anyone find this?). The IAEA had warned the US several times about the importance of securing Al Qaqaa.
The explosives include HMX and RDX, though I haven't seen numbers on how much of each kind. Suffice to say, 350 tons is enough to blow up a lot of things.
posted
So what's new? The US's own military inspectors told US military commanders that radioactive material kept at an Iraqi test site needed to be guarded. The advice was ignored, and the site was looted.
The overwhelming majority of US&Coalition casualties are due to Rumsfeld's "let the Iraqis celebrate their freedom" attitude toward looting. Military armament and munitions were stolen out of Iraqi armories and being openly hawked in the street markets for pennies on dollars within a few days after the fall of Baghdad.
More cynicly, it was the DubyaAdministration attitude of "the more destruction&chaos in Iraq, the more we can loot America to enrich our friends".
posted
I was going to post a topic on it. With a picture of the headlines posted on Yahoo. Under this one it said that Bush says he can keep America safe. I thought that was painfully ironic. But seriously, WHY IN THE HELL WERE THEY NOT PROTECTING THIS SITE?!!
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posted
Hey aspectre, did you change your post a lot? It looks very different from what I read the first time around.
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quote: The overwhelming majority of US&Coalition casualties are due to Rumsfeld's "let the Iraqis celebrate their freedom" attitude toward looting. Military armament and munitions were stolen out of Iraqi armories and being openly hawked in the street markets for pennies on dollars within a few days after the fall of Baghdad.
More cynicly, it was the DubyaAdministration attitude of "the more destruction&chaos in Iraq, the more we can loot America to enrich our friends".
WHAT?!?! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FREAKING KIDDING ME!? You mean to tell me they knew about this and DID NOTHING ABOUT IT?!
quote:The Iraqi letter to IAEA identified the vanished explosives as containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or "high melting point explosive," 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or "rapid detonation explosive," among other designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or "pentaerythritol tetranitrate."
quote:The senior administration official downplayed the importance of the missing explosives, describing them as dangerous material but "stuff you can buy anywhere." The official added that the administration did not see this necessarily as a "proliferation risk."
quote: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.
posted
If I did my calculations correctly (someone can check me here), RDX has a density of 1.806 g/cc which gives 142 tons of RDX a volume of 78.6 cubic meters.
That's like 3 meters by 3 meters by 8.7 meters of pure RDX powder.
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quote: They are thought to have been taken from the al-Qaqaa complex, 25km (16 miles south of Baghdad, at some point after 9 April 2003. . . It says the coalition forces were specifically told to keep the material secured.
Sounds like they're pretty sure it was after the invasion. Course, neither you nor I have read the actual report.
posted
I have no idea what kind of response you'd want, then. I made a topic on it. I found it astounding. But I haven't been ranting, and I've been doing a minor amount of finger pointing.
posted
How about "NO" finger pointing until you have all the facts in order. I'm not pointing the finger of blame on anyone.
Only an idiot (like John Kerry) would try to affix blame to someone with a knee jerk reaction, without having all the facts. What happens if it was the Iraqi Government's fault that it wasn't protected?
Think Kerry will open his big mouth and say the same things about their government if that's the case as he has about Bush being responsible?
Kerry has tried to place blame "early" before and gotten caught wrong (flu vaccine). You'd think he'd have learned a lesson. Yesterday's speeches (or today's) show he hasn't.
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posted
Actually, I think I've done no finger pointing. I've just been quoting articles, for the most part. That way it's harder to get blamed for "misinterpreting" or misleading.
And I haven't brought up Kerry's response at all.
You are stirring up trouble.
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posted
Sounds fine. Kerry's mentioned because he's made a statement. Bush hasn't made a statement (at least, not this morning). Kerry's probably going off of some summary. Bad for him if he's assuming things that are wrong.
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quote: Only an idiot (like John Kerry) would try to affix blame to someone with a knee jerk reaction, without having all the facts. What happens if it was the Iraqi Government's fault that it wasn't protected?
Do you really think it's alright to call someone who is clearly not an idiot an idiot?
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posted
From a random "manual for environmental calculation of international freight transport" it seems that the usual is around 40 tons.
Which would make for around 9 freight trucks of explosives. But more likely is that they jam-packed what they could, so fewer than that. Are semi-trucks common in Iraq? I have no clue.
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posted
So this stuff is denser than a lot of stuff shipped in trucks.
Although there may be lots of packing around individual portions of the explosives that would add bulk. Are yor figures for the raw, unpackaged material?
posted
Yeah, raw unpackaged stuff. Just chemical equation number crunching. Someone should check to agree with my numbers.
I was curious, because things like "350 metric tons" doesn't really mean anything in the average person's visual consciousness. But ballpark figures for volume are nice.
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posted
This isn't the first time the IAEA has left sensitive stuff lying around for our enemies to find. Remember that is how North Korea got the bomb.Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
No, see you're wrong. According to Mr. Kerry (and the Media "spin") it's Bush's fault that the IAEA left the stuff unattended before the invasion. So if the stuff was taken during the first weeks of the invasion, it's all Bush's fault.
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posted
Yup, you can't really blame the IAEA for us invading Iraq against their wishes, preventing them from doing their job, and failing to protect the sites ourselves. We were warned of that danger before the war and we invaded anyway.
quote: Actually, the Bush administration says it's the Iraqi government's problem now.
LIES! All lies! Bush knew all along they were missing. In fact, I think he sold them to Saudi Royal Family since they're such close friends and all ya'know.
posted
It seems most appropriate that the materials were moved during the open window between the inspectors leaving and the start of the war.
It doesn't take that long to load trucks and send them off. They couldn't have done it during the invasion and it would have been very, very risky to do it afterwards.
There's nothing like a surprise attack with plenty of forewarning...
But if these items were gone, I wonder what else has gone too?
Anyone feel like wrestling with this tarbaby?
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quote: Or he waited around long enough after the inspectors left to give Saddam a chance to remove them.
No, no, no. Kerry speaks the truth! We "rushed" to war. We should have waited. 10 years of sporadic inspections was not enough time to figure out he didn't have them. I mean, just because he had "used" them before, doesn't mean he actually had them then. We all know he used them, but didn't actually have them...in fact I think he used them all so they were all gone.
Pffft...waited too long...we rushed to war after 10 years of waiting.
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posted
Exactly. I fully expect Kerry to complain to the FCC that the article you presented was wrong and needs to be censored. We all know that Kerry said yesterday (or was it today) that Bush was responsible for those weapons disappearing and we know he only regurgitates the true news. So we know that article is false.
Kerry is of course correct regardless of the facts. Posts: 1533 | Registered: Sep 2004
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