Missing explosives in Iraq

[quote=“The New York Times”]DAVENPORT, Iowa, Oct. 25 - The White House sought on Monday to explain the disappearance of 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq that American forces were supposed to secure, as Senator John Kerry seized on the missing cache as “one of the great blunders of Iraq” and said President Bush’s “incredible incompetence” had put American troops at risk.

'Mr. Bush never mentioned the disappearance of the high explosives during a long campaign speech in Greeley, Colo., about battling terrorism. Instead, evoking images of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and traveling with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, at his side, Mr. Bush made an impassioned appeal to voters to let him “finish the work we have started.” [/quote]
Like, should we allow this Bozo to “finish the job” by just handing out some nukes to these terrorist assholes??? Is it possible that the Bush administration is just looking to test the envelope of incompetence? There is simply no other explanation for it – these guys go to the office every day trying to think up new catastrophic ways they can screwup and yet retain their jobs. There’s probably even an office pool going on re: who will finally do something so absolutely horrible that they will actually get fired.

the weapons were already gone when the us troops got there:

cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/ … index.html

i eagerly await your retraction of this false charge which you have leveled against the bush administration in multiple threads on this board. thanks.

looking at the other threads on here, i see that this story has already been vigorously debunked many hours before you even posted this. :laughing:

And now its being reported that CBS planned to report this bogus story on the eve of the election.

Whatever it takes, eh mofangongren? The truth really doesn’t matter to you folks, does it?

The story is not bogus. It has NOT been debunked yet, but nor has it been confirmed. Many papers continue to report that the explosives disappeared during the US occupation, while some report the administration

Just watch the pathetic Republicans go into scramble mode yet again:

1.) deny even when it doesn’t match the facts (e.g., the shoebox on Bush’s back during the debates, the “heavy rains” at fault for Bush’s bike accident, etc.)

2.) scream that it’s the “liberal” media screwing them again

3.) falsely claim that a current story has been “debunked”

4.) run frantically to a toilet (see Tainan Cowboy’s post above) to attempt to handle the shit being scared out of them by being confronted with truth

lol. i love when the lefties don’t know when to give up. keep clutching that fake story, guys. here’s the video from the nbc report of the 101st airborne finding some small arms at the site, but not the hmx or rdx:

dailyrecycler.com/blog/2004/ … ogate.html

here is a report from cbs’s archives about the lack of any hmx or rdx at the site BEFORE the 101st even got there:

cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/ … 7667.shtml

i challenge you 2 to find a single news story AT THE TIME which mentioned any of the heavy weapons being found at the site. surely you can muster that much, can’t you? :wink:

[quote=“mofangongren”]Just watch the pathetic Republicans go into scramble mode yet again:

1.) deny even when it doesn’t match the facts (e.g., the shoebox on Bush’s back during the debates, the “heavy rains” at fault for Bush’s bike accident, etc.)

2.) scream that it’s the “liberal” media screwing them again

3.) falsely claim that a current story has been “debunked”

4.) run frantically to a toilet (see Tainan Cowboy’s post above) to attempt to handle the shit being scared out of them by being confronted with truth[/quote]

christmas in cambodia. seared, SEARED!!! :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

fake cbs docs? :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

The evidence that “proves” the explosives were not there at that time is here, but it’s really scanty proof:

[quote]In the NBC report cited by the Bush campaign, the reporter embedded with American troops when they visited Al Qaqaa on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell, said she did not see any explosives.

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said the NBC report showed that Kerry’s allegations were “baseless.”

But the reporter, Lai Ling Jew, said in an interview Tuesday on the network’s cable arm, MSNBC, that the 24-hour visit by elements of the 101st Airborne Division was “more of a pit stop.”

U.S. troops did not conduct a detailed search of the compound nor did they try to prevent looting, she said.[/quote]

The reporter doesn’t remember seeing the explosives at that time. That’s it. No smoking gun. There were no real attempts to even see if the explosives were there at that time.

The news reported that thousands of boxes of explosives were found just days earlier at that site, though they were not visible when the NBC reporter got there less than a week later. The site is quite big, there was no search of it, and they were there for 24 hours.

The quantity of the explosives leads the Pentagon to believe that the trucks needed to transport the 380 tons of explosives would have been noticed by the troops there, despite looting. The explosives are important in the struggle against WMD because they are strong enough to detonate a nuclear warhear.

Next time Bush invades a country, I hope he has more foresight.

[quote=“mofangongren”]Just watch the pathetic Republicans go into scramble mode yet again:

1.) deny even when it doesn’t match the facts (e.g., the shoebox on Bush’s back during the debates, the “heavy rains” at fault for Bush’s bike accident, etc.)

2.) scream that it’s the “liberal” media screwing them again

3.) falsely claim that a current story has been “debunked”

4.) run frantically to a toilet (see Tainan Cowboy’s post above) to attempt to handle the shit being scared out of them by being confronted with truth[/quote]

Uh huh … :laughing: … pathetic. I really hope this is the DNC’s “October Surprise”. Because if it is, I’m laughing my ass off. Perhaps we should take MFGR’s advice and focus on something more substaintial, like Bush falling off his bike. At least that is a fact.

What’s really funny to watch is Kerry getting all excited about the bogus story, the story which failed to mention that the stuff was missing before we got there. I’m so happy now that Kerry is concerned about SADDAM’S W-M-Ds falling into the hands of TERRORISTS. :bravo: :bravo: I thought Bush LIED about Saddam having WMDs???

Oh, I love it. I love it. A complete 180 from the last year of campaining that Iraq didn’t have WMDs. What the DNC has done is create an October Surprise that supports why Bush went into Iraq. :loco: I guess you do whatever you can to get elected.

i have provided 2 links. 1 shows the results of a us search of the facility which did not turn up the weapons. another shows that a search of the facility BEFORE the 101st got there also did not turn up the weapons.

you have offered NO PROOF that the weapons were ever under us watch in the first place.

“no smoking gun”. lol. what about “no evidence to back up your argument”? :bravo:

Nice to see mofangoren up to his old tricks. I’m starting to wonder if he really thinks this way or if it’s just an act. ABout the missing explosive from

nationalreview.com/kerry/kerryspot.asp

[quote]A key point is that this is not dense stuff, where you can get a lot of weight into a small vehicle. If this was really in its raw form, it is white powder, like cornstarch or a light powdered sugar (NOT granulated sugar). Blow on it and it flies in the breeze- the stories I’ve seen haven’t said much about what form it was in, but you would want it to be relatively raw so you could form it into main charges for artillery, etc. They don’t pour granules into shells, it is mixed with binders and melted sonit will take a shape. You can’t be a nice terrorist, happen by, stick some in your pocket, and run away while the US Army isn’t looking- it isn’t “plastic” (like, say, comp C4, which is a plastic matrix impregnated with HE, thus has a lot of filler to make it shapeable). The kinds of trucks you would need to haul it are like grain hoppers, and lots of them. You can’t stack it on pallets.

That is why the nonsense about vandals running off with the stuff is just that — nonsense.

The issue, as always with explosives, is not HE- it is how to get the stuff to blow up. You can hit compressed RDX or HMX with a hammer and not set it off. And you can properly detonate ammonium nitrate fertilizer, as was done at the Oklahoma City Federal building by McVeigh et al, and have a disaster. You can also detonate wheat dust in a rural grain elevator and re-create the bombing of the African embassies.

The reason that old artillery ammunition is desired for creation of IEDs is not that it has high explosive in it, it is because those rounds have fuzes, lead cups, and boosters- the full fire train needed to make HE go “boom”. Remember your fireplace- you need to start with a match, then crumpled newspaper, add twigs when they are roaring effectively, then sticks, then small branches, etc. Trying to do something useful with pure HMX or RDX is like trying to flick your BIC lighter at a 20 pound pure oak log. It will be a long time before you warm up. When I was waling around Holston Army Ammunition Plant one time, where the US manufactured its RDX and HMX, there were cloth laundry carts all over the place full of white powder that looked and felt like conrstarch. I wasn’t in the least worried that if I tripped and fell against the cart I would be blown up.

The only way you make those 40 trucks crammed full of HE blow up is to set off an explosion near them. The Saddam drivers carrying them all to Syria and elsewhere in mid-March were probably smoking as they drove, with relative safety. Raw HE is easy to find- what is a challenge is making it controllably useful.[/quote]

Seems this stuff doesn’t go off to easily. Combine it with the IAEA head seeking a 3rd term against US objections releasing ifno he had in spring 2003, CBS planning on running it on Sunday before the election, the generally shabby reporting by the NYTimes(Blair, your spirit lives on!) and the Kerry campaign once again armchair quarterbacking and ridicule of events we are not certain of. I’m come to the conclusion that this is collusion, since Coincidence exists only in the minds of fools.

CYA
Okami

nytimes.com/2004/10/27/polit … b.html?8bl

'White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell.

'But the unit’s commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the site and had merely stopped there overnight.

‘The commander, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, said he did not learn until this week that the site, Al Qaqaa, was considered sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited it before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.’

It’s now time for the GOP to call Col. Anderson a liar, try to dig up some dirt on him, and get 101st Airborne vets to offer inconsistent and self-contradictory whoppers about why Anderson doesn’t deserve any of his medals.

Looks like the Republiconmen just don’t like the facts so they keep making them up. Troops spending the night in the area somehow turns into a detailed search of the site, in the Republican fantasyland. Good to see that Rove got you guys all suckered in.

mofan, show me one source which states that the weapons in question were at al-qaqaa at any point in time after april 10th, 2003.

once again, you’re making shit up and have NO PROOF to back your assertions. you have absolutely no proof that the weapons ever existed at the site after april 10th, 2003. did i mention you have no proof to back up your arguments?

Flipper – It’s a bit disingenuous that you’re claiming that troops who were not even searching the premises had somehow “searched” the site. Col. Anderson is very unlikely to be lying. The reporter who was with the troops that day was also unlikely to be lying when she said it was more of a “pit stop” – not a search.

The American people should know why explosives that had already been located and sealed by weapons-inspectors were allowed to disappear.

How much more Bush-administration goofiness are we going to have to tolerate?

what’s that? still no proof? i thought so.

you claim us troops let looters steal 380 tons of weapons and have yet to provide a single shred of proof that those 380 tons of weapons were even there at any pont in time after april 10th, 2003. :bravo:

Flipper, you’ve thus far brought out as support for your position the bogus claim that the U.S. military “searched” the location. Considering that the weapons inspectors had long since located and put seals on the explosives, you would think the U.S. could spend a few minutes to secure the site. Guess we were rushing so fast to get to the Iraqi Oil Ministry that we couldn’t secure identified weapons sites. Bush might just as well have handed the insurgents all the bomb-making materials they’ll need for a decade.

How many “false facts” (a favorite term for Tigerman) are you going to pull out of your keister? Keep it up. Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers are dying every day from the dumb decisions made by Bush and his bunch, and it has nothing to do with security for the American people.

1 more post and still no proof from mofan that the 380 tons of weapons were even in the compound after us troops got there. this isn’t a “false fact”, this is the total absence of any attempt to even try to present a fact. :bravo:

Flippy, you’ve so far presented only information straight from the Republiconmen that is rebutted easily by Col. Anderson and the reporter who was there. I’m waiting for you to present a credible challenge to the NY Times report. I posted an article, you tried to attack it by posting nonsense; now you want me to go help your poor researching skills.

Hurry up, chop-chop boy! Perhaps you can blather on some about “AIRBORNE VETS FOR TRUTH” as they try to tear down Col. Anderson, ridicule his decorations, make false accusations about his career. It’s what the Republicans do the best – make shit up. Come on, let’s see it. Still, you have simply not mounted a credible challenge.

It also now turns out that CBS 60 Minutes was planning to echo the New York Times story two days before Election Day. So what we have is an attempt by the New York Times, CBS, and a U.N. agency to work together to promote a very likely false story to damage President Bush’s reelection prospects. Perhaps no one should be surprised that the liberal media and the United Nations are willing to go to quite extraordinary lengths to promote Kerry’s prospects against Bush, but their behavior is not the issue.
The issue is Kerry’s willingness to advance allegations that his own campaign acknowledges may not be true
.