www.truthout.org/docs_04/102904Y.shtml
KSTP-TV report has a video link at the top which shows the embedded reporters filming the now-dis puted explosive materials at the al Qaqaa facility in Iraq. bear in mind that it is a Wi ndows Media file and may not play on all computers. You will also have to sit through a short commercial for an SUV. Recall that nearly 400 tons of highly explosive material - the same kind of stuff used to create the Lockerbie airline disaster, and the same k ind of stuff used to blow a hole in the USS Cole - went missing after t he US invaded Iraq. John Kerry points to the fact that no troops were used to guard al Qaqaa as an example of Bush administration incompetence in Iraq, while the Bush campaign is attempting to claim that the material had been removed bef ore the invasion. The latest explanation, floated this morning, is that the Russians took it before we came in. Worse, it shows the KSTP embedded reporters stating flatly that, despite the fact that all these explosives were inside the facility, the place went completely un guarded.
Soldiers who took a 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew into bunkers on April 18 said some of the boxes uncovered contained proximity fuses. A 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hu ssein was in the area where tons of explosives disappeared, and may hav e videotaped some of those weapons. The missing explosives are now an issue in the presidential debate. Democratic candidate John Kerry is accusing President Bush of not secur ing the site they allegedly disappeared from. President Bush says no on e knows if the ammunition was taken before or after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003 when coalition troops moved in to the area. Using GPS technology and talking with members of the 101st Airborne Division, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has determined the crew embedded with the t roops may have been on the southern edge of the Al Qaqaa installation, where the ammunition disappeared. The news crew was based just south of Al Qaqaa, and drove two or three miles north of there with soldiers on April 18, 2003. During that trip, members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS news crew bunker after bunker of material labelled "e xplosives." Usually it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get into the bunkers and see the material identified by the 101st as detonation cords.
Soldiers who took a 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew into bunkers on April 18 said some of the boxes uncovered contained proximity fuses. They also found bags of material men from the 101st couldn't identify, but box after box wa s clearly marked "explosive." In one bunker, there were boxes marked with the name "Al Qaqaa", the munitions plant where tons of explosives allegedly went missing. Once the doors to the bunkers were opened, they weren't secured. The y were left open when the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew and the military went back to their base. "We weren't quite sure what were looking at, but we saw so much of i t and it didn't appear that this was being secured in any way," said ph otojournalist Joe Caffrey. "It was several miles away from where milita ry people were staying in their tents".
Soldiers who took a 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew into bunkers on April 18 said some of the boxes uncovered contained proximity fuses. Officers with the 101st Airborne told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that the bun kers were within the US military perimeter and protected. But Caffrey and former 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS Reporter Dean Staley, who spent three mon ths together in Iraq, said Iraqis were coming and going freely. "At one point there was a group of Iraqis driving around in a pick-u p truck, "Staley said. "Three or four guys we kept an eye on, worried t hey might come near us." On Wednesday, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS e-mailed still images of the footage taken at the site to experts in Washington to see if the items capture d on tape are the same kind of high explosives that went missing in Al Qaqaa. The footage is now in the hands of security experts to see if it is indeed the explosives in question.
Go to Original 4 Iraqis Tell of Looting at Munitions Site in '03 By James Glanz and Jim Dwyer The New York Times Thursday 28 October 2004 Baghdad - Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days a fter American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on thei r way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday. The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and late r heaving unwanted items off the trucks. Two witnesses were employees of Al Qaqaa - one a chemical engineer a nd the other a mechanic - and the third was a former employee, a chemis t, who had come back to retrieve his records, determined to keep them o ut of American hands. The mechanic, Ahmed Saleh Mezher, said employees asked the Americans to protect the site but were told this was not the soldiers' responsibility. The accounts do not directly address the question of when 380 tons o f powerful conventional explosives vanished from the site sometime afte r early March, the last time international inspectors checked the seals on the bunkers where the material was stored. It is possible that Iraq i forces removed some explosives before the invasion. But the accounts make clear that what set off much if not all of the looting was the arrival and swift departure of American troops, who di d not secure the site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it. "The looting started after the collapse of the regime," said Wathiq al-Dulaimi, a regional security chief, who was based nearby in Latifiya . But once it had begun, he said, the booty streamed toward Baghdad. The agency has monitored the explosives because they can also be used as the initiator of an atomic bomb. Agency officials examined the explosives in January 2003 and noted i n early March that their seals were still in place. On April 3, the Thi rd Infantry Division arrived with the first American troops. Chris Anderson, a photographer for US News and World Report who wa s with the division's Second Brigade, recalled that the area was jammed with American armor on April 3 and 4, which he believed made the remov al of the explosives unlikely. "It would be quite improbable for this a mount of weapons to be looted at that time because of the traffic jam o f armor," he said. The brigade blew up numerous caches of arms throughout the area, he said. Mr Anderson said he did not enter the munitions compound. The Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division arrived outside th e site on April 10, under the command of Col. The brig ade had been ordered to move quickly to Baghdad because of civil disord er there after Mr Hussein's government fell on April 9 They gathered at Al Qaqaa, about 30 miles south, simply as a matter of convenience, Colonel Anderson said in an interview this week. He sai d that when he arrived at the site - unaware of its significance - he s aw no signs of looting, but was not paying close attention. Because he thought the brigade would be moving on to Baghdad within hours, Al Qaqaa was of no importance to his mission, he said, and he wa s unaware of the explosives that international inspectors said were hid den inside. Pentagon officials said Wednesday that analysts were examining surve illance photographs of the munitions site. But they expressed doubts th at the photographs, which showed vehicles at the location on several oc casions early in the conflict, before American troops moved through the area, would be able to indicate conclusively when the explosives were removed. David Perkins, who commanded the Second Brigade of the Third In fantry Division, called it "very highly improbable" that 380 tons of ex plosives could have been trucked out of Al Qaqaa in the weeks after Ame rican troops arrived. Moving that much material, said Colonel Perkins, who spoke Wednesday to news agencies and cable television, "would have required dozens of heavy trucks and e...
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