The Russians (And French?) Again

[Kev Smyth]

GERTZ // THURSDAY // WASH TIMES: Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

[LeeG]

shouldn't there be some iraqis with direct knowledge of the facility?

[RayRay]

I missed this one Kev (working all day to help carry the load via taxation to enable us to continue kicking terrorists a** around the world....a fair share I gladly contribute) and find it most interesting. Those pesky Ruskies and French froggies just keep popping up.

Hey! Have you heard about the Oil For Food Program fraud? :rolleyes:

[Lucky Luke]

Originally posted by Kev Smyth:
.....he believes .....“almost certainly”....Remember the WMD, poor laughable cretins. You are being fooled, f***ed, killed by your "leaders", and still buy all their crap?

The amount of stupidity here is really amazing!

Die in your s***!!!!

Yes, I am being impolite, and that's all you deserve. At least, I (and my country) do not kill millions of people on false allegations!

[Kev Smyth]

Originally posted by Lucky Luke:
At least, I (and my country) do not kill millions of people on false allegations!No, pure greed has rendered your need to justify immaterial. No, you and your country(men) allow and abate the killing of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Iraqis while you fatten your lazy French butts off the profits of oil-for-food scams and weapons sales, continue to supply nuclear technology for weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, and defend those who slaughter with your arrogant noses in the air.

You are lower than the spuz on a dog's butt as he drags it across the floor, and give an even stronger stench to the term "French whores."

[ 10-28-2004, 01:41 AM: Message edited by: Kev Smyth ]

[BrianW]

Really? Millions? Must have missed that one. Of course no one has ever accused the French of doing much killing in any war. smile.gif

Say, why are all the boulevards in Paris lined with trees?...

Because the Germans like to march in the shade! :D

Man, I just love that one...

[High C]

Luke, I always had a feeling about you, that you were just barely holding it together. It's sad to see that you've lost the struggle, you nut. tongue.gif

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad. Well, if you believe that God created the heavens and the earth in a week in 4004 BC you may well believe the Washington Post.

Because, for sure, nobody else is going to! :D

A bunch of "Russian special forces" suddenly pop up and whisk away a few hundred tons of high explosive just before US forces get there? :rolleyes:

Are you sure they were Russians? Were they perhaps aliens from the fifth dimension? :D

[RayRay]

They sure weren't peaceniks.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

You may care to recollect the best known observation made by the father of Olin Stephens' first client.

If you have any interest in wooden boats, or even if you just read the magazine, you will have no trouble in identifying the remark to which I allude.

[Billy Bones]

Originally posted by Lucky Luke:
... At least, I (and my country) do not kill millions of people on false allegations!HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

This fog of liberal and conservative misinformation certainly finds fertile ground in the failed history education!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Nous avons retournee, Saladin!

Vive la roi!

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Originally posted by Billy Bones:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Lucky Luke:
... At least, I (and my country) do not kill millions of people on false allegations!HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

This fog of liberal and conservative misinformation certainly finds fertile ground in the failed history education!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Nous avons retournee, Saladin!

Vive la roi!</font>[/QUOTE]So, "Billy Bones" - you actually are (a) feminine with (b) a multiple personality disorder and (c) you believe your King to be a transvestite.

Well, I always did think you were a bit odd... :D

[Billy Bones]

Oh all right, forgive my guillotining of the French language. It's been decades since I've had to use it in actual combat. And quotation marks would have helped.

Still, I was quoting French general Gouraud upon entering Damascus after the battle of Maissaloun whereupon he headed straight for the tomb of Saladin, the celebrated Islamic hero of the Crusades who had expelled the Europeans from Palestine, knocked on its door and said, "Saladin, listen, we have returned." That charming slap in the face took place in 1920.

To put that in an historical context, the French had:

Between 1830 and 1857 conquered Algeria,

Between 1881 and 1883 conquered Tunisia,

In 1890 conquered Senegal,

Between 1891 and 1899 conquered Niger and the Ivory Coast,

In 1900 conquered Chad,

just to touch on the high spots. And since I'm just picking on the French, I didn't mention the simultaneous and equally dramatic and bloody conquests of both Britain and Russia, although to be fair the Brits seemed to be a bit less bloodthirsty in their colonial campaign; probably the Protestant in them.

The French were driven, hard, by their Catholic missionary zeal, and seem blithely to have ignored the utter failure of the huge Dutch missionary efforts against Islam of the previous hundred or so years.

"Vive la Roi! Off with 'is 'ed", we all recognize from the only bit of French history that seems popular to reenact on TV.

...and that's Messieurs Boneses to you, Andrew ;)

[LeeG]

I don't get what the big stink is about,,EVERYTHING that didn't have a guard ready to shoot was looted,,looters running out of hospitals weren't stopped, US troops were NOT available to guard everything of value,after a few days looters would get the signal "it's all FREEEEEEEE, PARTAY!!"" Folks think it's believable that looters to stole wiring out of of police stations and black velvet paintings from Udays castles but unguarded armories would be left alone?
There must be a reason that conservative war planners tossed out numbers like 500,000 troops to occupy Iraq, Shinseki at a few hundred thousand,think about it,,if you remove the need for occupation and ONLY plan for destruction of the Iraqi Defenses,,then Rumsfields 50,000 is entirely plausible. Pulling a trigger also requires less labor than applying life support and surgery to the person being hit. How anyone can think Rumsfield/Wolfowitz had a plan for the occupation is a prime example of faith based planning. That David Kay quit because he lost personell to complete the assay for WMD might be another hint that WMD were not important.

Brown: 2004 Bremer Report on al-Qaqaa Looting

Professor Nathan Brown of George Washington University writes:

In the dispute between the Kerry campaign and the Bush administration over the disappearance of explosives at al-Qaqaa, the core of the Bush defense is that we don’t know when the explosives disappeared; it could have happened before American troops arrived. President Bush stated today: “Our military is now investigating a number of possible scenarios, including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the site. This investigation is important and it’s ongoing, and a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief.”

I have to admit that I am unsure why this is a defense. If the investigation is so important, why is it still ongoing? One CPA document (discussed below) makes clear that the extent of looting has been known—not merely suspected but documented and evaluated—for some time. The reason we don’t know when the explosives disappeared is that we were not securing or monitoring the site. In other words, our lack of knowledge about the date of the disappearance is itself an indication that nobody was watching one of the most important military production sites in the country. Thus, to proclaim now that we don’t know what happened is not evidence of an open mind; it is evidence of an open barn door. Why did Bush wait until October 2004 to look into the matter? The 18 ½-month gap is no more to Bush’s credit than the 18 ½-minute gap was to Nixon’s. It is the absence of evidence that is the problem.

But the absence of evidence is not evidence of absent-mindedness. There were people who said a year and a half ago that this needed attention. In particular, the IAEA was trying to examine the site from the very end of the war. We barred them. In other words, the failure to monitor was not an oversight but a policy decision. It may have been partly based on the size of the American force, but it was also based on an ideological hostility to the United Nations.

Actually, we do know a little bit more than has been reported. But the little evidence we do have hardly supports the Bush case. What has been widely reported is that during and immediately after the war, some American military units and journalists briefly visited the site. What has not been reported is that on 15 April 2004—a year after the war—CPA head Paul Bremer issued a regulation transferring the employees of some military industries to various parts of the Iraqi government. I assume the point was to ensure that these critical people would get paid and not defect to the insurgents. That regulation can be viewed here.

Annex A to the regulation mentions al-Qaqaa (see p. 3 of the annex) and the extent of damage and looting there. 37% of the buildings were destroyed and fully 85% of its machines were destroyed or looted.

In other words, the place was very utterly trashed as of this past April, a year into the Iraqi occupation.

What does this have to do with the flap between Bush and Kerry? Well, it seems to me that if damage to equipment was so remarkably extensive—with the vast majority of the equipment ripped out or destroyed—any of the military units or journalists visiting in April 2003 should have noticed it even in a cursory examination. One of the accounts (by Fred Wellman, a former spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade) does indeed mention that looting was underway on April 9. This was roughly when the Iraqi regime disintegrated and the looting began, so the observation makes sense. Looting was not mentioned in the accounts of the first American visit to the site, the previous week. I do not know how long it takes to loot such a site so thoroughly (according the original NY Times story, the looting was still going on quite recently), but it seems that almost all of it occurred during the period of the American occupation. When the explosives were taken cannot be ascertained from this. But we seem to have evidence that virtually everything at the site—even the stuff that was nailed down—was taken while it was under our nominal control.

- Nathan Brown

[LeeG]

kevsmythrad,,always looking for the exotic 007 reason for things. Consider that a few russian special forces don't live in Iraq,,and a few thousand Iraqis live near these UNGUARDED facilities,,which one do you think will expend the least energy moving the most material?
Metaphorically speaking imagine a dead mouse in the woods,,how long will it take a vulture to find it compared to the ant,maggots and bacteria right around the rat ready to dissasemble it?
Read the following article and consider what the IAEA was talking about over the last year concerning UN tagged material showing up in scrap yards. If Iraqis could be running off with contaminated material from UNGUARDED nuclear facilities don't you think a few former soldiers and their nephews would be grabbing as much stuff from UNGUARDED armories once it was obvious the Iraqi gov't was defeated?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36985-2003May9?language=printer

[High C]

Originally posted by LeeG:
...UNGUARDED...UNGUARDED...UNGUARDED...Says whom? The explosives in question were already gone when our troops first got there. The commanders in the field have said so.

You think Hussien left them unguarded? Phht....

[LeeG]

says me.

http://24hour.startribune.com/24hour/world/story/1771184p-9620842c.html

[LeeG]

you lazy guy High,,

Al-Qaqaa spokesman says no weapons search
By Kimberly Hefling, Associated Press Writer | October 26, 2004

EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- One of the first U.S. military units to reach the Al-Qaqaa military installation south of Baghdad did not have orders to search for the nearly 400 tons of explosives that are missing from the site, the unit spokesman said Tuesday.



When troops from the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade arrived at the Al-Qaqaa base a day or so after other coalition troops seized Baghdad on April 9, 2003, there were already looters throughout the facility, Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit, told The Associated Press.

The soldiers "secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemical weapons were not present in their area," Wellman wrote in an e-mail message to The Associated Press. "Bombs were found but not chemical weapons in that immediate area.

"Orders were not given from higher to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions, as they (high-explosive weapons) were everywhere in Iraq," he wrote.

While Wellman said the 101st Airborne troops were the first at Al-Qaqaa after the U.S.-led invasion, NBC News reported Tuesday night that Army 3rd Infantry Division troops arrived several days earlier.

Quoting unidentified Army officials, NBC said 3rd Infantry soldiers got to the weapons complex April 4, finding "looters everywhere" carrying what they could out on their backs. The troops searched bunkers and found conventional weapons but no high explosives, NBC quoted the officials as saying.

Associated Press Correspondent Chris Tomlinson, who also was embedded with the 3rd Infantry, described the search of Iraqi military facilities south of Baghdad as brief, cursory missions to seek out hostile troops, not to inventory or secure weapons stockpiles. One task force, he said, searched four Iraqi military bases in a single day, meeting no resistance and finding only abandoned buildings, some containing weapons and ammunition.

[George.]

Two questions for Kev and Stan:

Why do you mention the French if even the wild Washington Times story-wannabe you quote is about Russians, not French?

Given that for the umpteenth time you gratuitously smear France for no good reason, does it really surprise you that Lucky Luke finally lost his patience and told you bigoted rednecks to fu<k off?

[George.]

Cool! Someone edited the end of my post, even though I spelled the F word using < instead of C!

Anyway, Lucky Luke told the rednecks to bug off :D , and they had it coming. ;)

[High C]

Originally posted by LeeG:
Al-Qaqaa spokesman says no weapons search...Well, there's an unimpeachable source. I certainly wouldn't believe our own commanders when there's an Al-Qaqaa spokesman to contradict them.

Let's see, soldiers enroute to Baghdad didn't stop and do an exhaustive search of the place. Well duhh; their mission was more pressing.

There were said to be looters everywhere, carrying off 380 tons of white powder on their backs. That would take, what, maybe a million looters?
:rolleyes: This stuff was not looted. It took a major effort with lots of large, expensive industrial equipment and semi-trucks to transport such a quantity. Looted indeed. :rolleyes:

Your own article says clearly that the missing explosives were never found after the invasion.

What is your point? That we should've invaded much sooner so whomever moved them could have been stopped in time? The weapons were already gone when we got there. This is not in dispute. Just because some Al Qaaqaa spokesman said we didn't look very hard doesn't change that. Those explosives weren't looted by backpackers, and they weren't there when we invaded. What does that add up to?

[LeeG]

High, you lazy guy.

http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

Those pesky Ruskies and French froggies just keep popping up.

You are lower than the spuz on a dog's butt as he drags it across the floor, and give an even stronger stench to the term "French whores."


Really? Millions? Must have missed that one. Of course no one has ever accused the French of doing much killing in any war.

Say, why are all the boulevards in Paris lined with trees?...

Because the Germans like to march in the shade!

Man, I just love that one...
It's sad to see that you've lost the struggle, you nut.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some small examples of why, when I travel, I wear a small Canadian Flag on my lapel. ;)

Edited to Add:

French Military deaths in WW2

213,324

French Military Missing or Wounded in WW2

400,000

French civilian death in WW2

350,000

[ 10-28-2004, 10:46 PM: Message edited by: Peter Malcolm Jardine ]

[High C]

Originally posted by LeeG:
High, you lazy guy.Hi, you active guy.

Yeah, I saw that. Who knows what that means, a loose collection of speculation and guesswork. Ho hum... It' just ABC to boot. Might as well be coming from the Kerry campaign or the National Enquirer for all the credibility the mainstream media has anymore. I don't believe them. Fewer and fewer people do as they spin openly for Kerry. This is the network that recently sent a crew to Vietnam to "interview" a VC soldier in a transparent attempt to support Kerry's version of events on the old swiftboat. Let there be no mistaking where their sentiments lie.

Our commanders on the ground say it's BS.
I say the media spreads BS. 380 tons of powder carted off in backpacks. :rolleyes: :D Absurd.

[ 10-28-2004, 11:02 PM: Message edited by: High C ]

[High C]

I wonder what these big trucks were doing at Al Qaaqaa several days before the invasion? Delivering backpacks, perhaps?

http://www.foxnews.com/images/142883/8_23_102804_al_qaqaa_450.jpg

In fact, this satellite photo was taken the very day that President Bush gave Hussein a 48 hour warning to leave Iraq, or face war.

[ 10-28-2004, 11:26 PM: Message edited by: High C ]

[LeeG]

got any photos of aluminum tubes? how about Scud launchers,,or mobile bioweapons labs.

Let's see,,you got a video in front of you showing soldiers and embedded TV crew in a bunker that has 55gal containers with labels that say EXPLOSIVES plus other containers and you say "I don't believe it".
I believe you.

[High C]

Originally posted by LeeG:
Let's see,,you got a video in front of you showing soldiers and embedded TV crew in a bunker that has 55gal containers with labels that say EXPLOSIVES...And the guy who shot that video said, "We weren't quite sure what were looking at..."

There is no mention in that story, at all, of the explosives that are missing, HMX and RDX. There's no "there", there. This story wouldn't serve as evidence even in the Florida Supreme Court.

Maybe we should figure out what those trucks were up to.

[LeeG]

The photo you're showing is dated Mar17,,the embedded reporters are showing film from April 18.
Whatever those trucks were doing they forgot to finish the job.
But maybe that video is of a mockup bunker in Nevada,,next to the mockup moon landing.

[LeeG]

Originally posted by High C:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by LeeG:
Let's see,,you got a video in front of you showing soldiers and embedded TV crew in a bunker that has 55gal containers with labels that say EXPLOSIVES...And the guy who shot that video said, "We weren't quite sure what were looking at..."

There is no mention in that story, at all, of the explosives that are missing, HMX and RDX. There's no "there", there. This story wouldn't serve as evidence even in the Florida Supreme Court.

Maybe we should figure out what those trucks were up to.</font>[/QUOTE]HighC,,it's time to acknowledge reality. It's even on Drudge,,now that means it passes the sniff test. If that's not good enough then how about David Kay?
So are you a creationist or handle snakes?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/politics/29bomb.html?ei=5065&en=9b3f4b6995f82009&ex=1099627200&partner=MYWAY&pagewante d=print&position=

The Minneapolis television crew was with an Army unit that was camped near Al Qaqaa, members of the crew said. The reporter and cameraman said that although they were not told specifically that they were being taken to Al Qaqaa by the military, their videotape matches pictures of the site taken by United Nations weapons inspectors, according to weapons experts.

"The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al Qaqaa," said David A. Kay, a former American official who led the recent hunt in Iraq for unconventional weapons and visited the vast site. "The damning thing is the seals. The Iraqis didn't use seals on anything. So I'm absolutely sure that's an I.A.E.A. seal."

One weapons expert said the videotape and some of the agency's photographs of the HMX stockpiles "were such good matches it looked like they were taken by the same camera on the same day."

Independent experts said several other factors - the geography; the number of bunkers; the seals on some of the bunker doors; the boxes, crates and barrels similar to those seen by weapon inspectors - confirm that the videotape was taken at Al Qaqaa.

"There's not another place that you would mistake it for," said Dean Staley, the KSTP reporter, who now works in Seattle.

The accidental news encounter began last year after the invasion, Mr. Staley recalled in an interview. Their Army unit arrived in the region on Friday, April 11, and made camp. The Fifth Battalion of the 101st Airborne's 159th Aviation Brigade flew helicopter missions from the camp in the Iraqi desert, moving troops and supplies to the front.

A week later, on Friday, April 18, two journalists recalled, they joined two soldiers who were driving in a Humvee to investigate the nearby bunkers. Among other things, wandering inside the cavernous buildings offered the prospect of relief from the desert sun.

"It was just by chance that we were able to go," said Joe Caffrey, the team's photographer. "They wanted to go out and we asked to tag along."

Mr. Caffrey provided The New York Times with the latitude and longitude of the camp, which places it between 1.5 and 3 miles southeast of Al Qaqaa bunkers. A commercial satellite photograph of the region shows that the camp was close to the storage site. Mr. Caffrey said the soldiers used bolt cutters to cut through chains with locks on them, as well as seals. He said the seals appeared to be lead disks attached to very thin wires that were wrapped around the doors of the bunker entrances, forming a barrier easily cut in two.

They visited a half dozen bunkers, he said. The gloomy interiors revealed long rows of boxes, crates and barrels, what independent experts said were three kinds of HMX containers shipped to Iraq from France, China and Yugoslavia.

The team opened storage containers, some of which contained white powder that independent experts said was consistent with HMX.

"The soldiers were pretty much in awe of what they were seeing," Mr. Caffrey recalled. "They were saying their E.O.D. - Explosive Ordinance Division, people who blow this kind of stuff up - would have a field day."

The journalists filmed roughly 25 minutes of video. Mr. Caffrey added that the team left the bunker doors open. "It would have been easy for anybody to get in," he said.

Mr. Staley recalled that during the drive back to camp, they saw a red Toyota pickup truck with some Iraqis in it. "Our impression was they were looters," he said. "This was a no man's land. It was a huge facility, and we worried that they were bad guys who might come up on us."

The two journalists filed a short story, which ran soon thereafter in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

In the interview, Mr. Caffrey said he had carefully rechecked the date on the cassette for his camera, adding that he was sure it was April 18, 2003.

Yesterday Mohamed al-Sharaa, director of the national monitoring directorate at the Iraq Ministry of Science and Technology, explained for the first time why Iraqi officials had specified in their letter to the United Nations agency that the explosives had been looted after April 9, 2003. "We have some witnesses," Mr. Sharaa said outside his office at the ministry. "They say that the materials," he added, were "in this site after April 9."

The witnesses were people working at Al Qaqaa, Mr. Sharaa said. Still, he said, the evidence is not yet definitive, and "we don't say it's impossible" that the material was somehow taken out of Al Qaqaa before the American forces came through the area. The first American forces arrived at Al Qaqaa on April 3.

Rashad M. Omar, the minister of science and technology, said that as far as he was concerned, the exact timing of the disappearance remained unknown. "How, where, when is it taken, all these questions, we don't have answers," Dr. Omar said.

He said a committee headed by himself was about to undertake an investigation of the disappearance, in parallel with American efforts to clear up the mystery. Dr. Omar said that he was extremely confident that the investigations would determine the facts of the case.

"The quantity was so huge," Dr. Omar said. "Somebody must know what happened to the material. I am sure the facts will not be hidden for a long time."

James Glanz contributed reportingfrom Baghdad for this article.

[LeeG]

High,,it's time to read a little.

www.talkingpointsmemo.com (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com)

[imported_Steven Bauer]

Now Lee, you know JT doesn't like it when you go and mess up a nice thread with facts and videos and eyewitness testamony. You know it couldn't possibly be doubleyou's fault. Somehow Kerry must have done it. Yeah, that's it, Kerry did it, yeah. :D

Steven

[Keith Wilson]

Kev/Conrad - Look at what the quote actually said (emphasis added by me):


John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, “ almost certainly ” removed the high-explosive material No evidence in sight, just one guy's belief that they probably did it. Maybe they did, although I wouldn't bet on it. OTOH, this article provides no basis to think so except one man's opinion.

Folks, it's becoming obvious the current administration has screwed the pooch (again). In the confusion immediately after the invasion, when nobody from the US seemed to have a clue what to do next, a whole lot of stuff got carried off from just about everywhere except the oil ministry, which we were guarding carefully. It sure looks like at least some of this bunch of explosives was one of the things that got liberated by the recently liberated Iraqis. The IAEA was keeping track of it initially, and there's a lot of evidence it WAS still there after American troops first passed through, and it's sure as hell gone now. I don't know enough abut explosives to say if it would be useful to those who would like to blow our guys up, but they unfortunately don't seem to have any shortage of material for IEDs. That may have come from elsewhere, however, I have no idea.

Given everything else that has happened, this is of mainly symbolic importance, but elections sometimes turn on symbols. Whether or not the invasion of Iraq was justified, it certainly seems to me that the occupation has not been handled competently at all, Yes, I know that wars, or even occupations, are messy and complicated and full of unexpected difficulties and setbacks, but this seems a bit much. Even if you think the war was a good idea, it's possible to do a good thing very very badly.

Kev, you may say as many nasty things about the French as you like, but I'm starting to believe Mr Bush will lose on Tuesday, mainly because of his mistakes around the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

And High C, there are many obvious explanations for trucks at a weapons storage facility two days before the invasion - getting supplies for the Iraqi army, perhaps? I don't think this specialized explosive was the only thing stored there.

[ 10-29-2004, 02:13 AM: Message edited by: Keith Wilson ]

[LeeG]

have you ever been in a very very tense situation where your senses are heightened? Kind of a controlled adrenaline moment? External reality hasn't changed,,just your perception is razor sharp. That's what has happened in this last week before the election. What is going on in Iraq is what has always been going on. Sure a few hundred tons of high explosives is a very small percentage of what's spread all through Iraq, sure a few looted nuclear facities is a small percentage of all the looting. If you start adding up all those rationalizations,,you're either in denial,,or considering that maybe things aren't as hunkydory as the administration is saying.
But for some reason it matters now,,just like like forged memo "proving" Saddams attempt to buy yellowcake was moot. The revelation had no power,no consequences. The war was in motion.
But NOW that the story makers are at risk of losing power everything gets sharper,,the decisions clearer, it's no longer manana. It's NOW!

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/10/27/eyewitness_to_a_failure_in_iraq?mode=PF

[George.]

And just to cap off yet another xenophobic redneck thread...

If the US Army had been attacked by the German blitzkrieg in May 1940, we could all make jokes about why the Mall is lined with trees...

If you doubt that, check your history. Check the US Army's strenght and preparedness (not to mention outdated weapons) nearly a year into WWII.

You rednecks don't even know how lucky you were to have an ocean between you and Germany.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Oh, it gets MUCH better, George...

Charles Lindbergh was actively campaigning for Nazi Germany, long after the Blitzkrieg.

Joseph Kennedy, the US Amassador to London, thought that Britain would lose the war, and said so. FDR had to send Harry Hopkins over to get a proper view of the situation; when Joe fled back to the States he was convinced Churchill was trying to have him assassinated to draw America into the war.

We will pass lightly over what President Bush's grandfather did...

But some Americans accuse the French and the British of cowardice because of the Anglo-French policy of "appeasement". They ignore the military balance in 1938 just as they ignore the fact that Britain and France guaranteed Poland and went to war over it.

Fortunately, the majority of Americans, then as now, were and are decent people, who thought, and think, differently.

[Ian Wright]

Russian troops are easy to recognise, they have snow on their boots.
IanW

[LeeG]

more for the west texas apologists. The sad part of this is that the white house pulls out a satellite photo with fuzzy images of trucks. If anyone is willing to search there are satellite photos from Desert Storm that Powell used to prove Scuds were being hit and the CIA analysts were later quoted as saying they were just fuel tankers,,they had to say something to tell the Israeli public they were getting scuds. The aluminum tubes at Powells UN presentation was total bunk.

There's video of the IAEA seal, video of the bunker, video of the containers, quotations by David Kay and other inspectors ALL agreeing it looks exactly like what they saw with references to other sealed bunkers.

And GW has the cluelessness to say "how can you trust a leader who doesn't have all the facts?",,this is beyond chutzpah,,it's the boy in the bubble talking about the wilds as he was spoonfed Chalabis milk.

Sure looting was going on,,sure we went to war on the imminence of Saddams wmd programs where he was going to give nukes to Osama,,,

Facts,,that's for people who don't have power.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/politics/29bomb.html?hp&ex=1099108800&en=7b767c25018de326&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Weapons experts familiar with the work of the international inspectors in Iraq say the videotape appears identical to photographs that the inspectors took of the explosives, which were put under seal before the war. One frame shows what the experts say is a seal, with narrow wires that would have to be broken if anyone entered through the main door of the bunker.

The agency said that when it left Iraq in mid-March, only days before the war began, the only bunkers bearing its seals at the huge complex contained the explosive known as HMX, which the agency had monitored because it could be used in a nuclear weapons program. It is now clear that program had ground to a halt.

The New York Times and CBS reported on Monday that Iraqi officials had told the agency earlier this month that the explosives were missing, and that they were looted after April 9, 2003, the day Baghdad fell.

[Billy Bones]

Andrew, can you put Neville Chamberlain in context? He's certainly not seen now in a favorable light tho I can easily see that he is a victim of circumstances.

[LeeG]

High, do you recall the satellite photos of mobile biological weapons laboratories "proving" Saddam had an active bio-weapons program. Did you know Steve Hatfill was commissioned to make a mock-up of a mobile bio-weapons trailer prior to the invasion of Iraq? There were satellite photos just as you provided,,,guess what? The weren't mobile bio weapons trailers. You would have thought a satellite photo would have provided enough info.


Originally posted by High C:
I wonder what these big trucks were doing at Al Qaaqaa several days before the invasion? Delivering backpacks, perhaps?

http://www.foxnews.com/images/142883/8_23_102804_al_qaqaa_450.jpg

In fact, this satellite photo was taken the very day that President Bush gave Hussein a 48 hour warning to leave Iraq, or face war.Bush, Cincinnati address, October 7, 2002: “Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq his rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of his nuclear program in the past.”

Mark Phillips, CBSNews.com, February 20: “When the U.N. went into the new buildings they found ‘nothing.’”

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB 80/new/nuclear%20systems.pdf (http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/new/nuclear%20systems.pdf)
more photographic proof...that photographs need contextual reference and detail to be useful. These 60,000 aluminum tubes are proof of what? That thick anodized aluminum tubes can be stored outside and still be used for primitive unguided rockets whereas aluminum tubes used for centrifuges are entirely different. But who cares,,it's a photograph!

[ 10-29-2004, 10:44 AM: Message edited by: LeeG ]

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Originally posted by Billy Bones:
Andrew, can you put Neville Chamberlain in context? He's certainly not seen now in a favorable light tho I can easily see that he is a victim of circumstances.It's an uphill struggle, even here, Billy, but I'll try.

Neville was the younger son, by his second wife, of Joseph Chamberlain. Joe Chamberlain is one of the great figures of ninteenth century British politics. He was the son of a London shoemaker, made a fortune, became Mayor of Birmingham, entered Parliament and in due course became Colonial Secretary (it was he who prosecuted the Boer War - our last unjustified invasion).

Joe Chamberlain began as a Radical and moved steadily Right, across the Liberal and Conservative parties, finishing as an Imperialist.

Neville's elder half brother was Austen Chamberlain, Conservative Foreign Secretary in the 1920's, who incidentally collected the Nobel Peace Prize for the Locarno Pact.

Neville, like Austen, went into politics almost automatically. He was a good Chancellor of the Exchequer and a promoter of some useful reforms of housing and factories.

He got Hitler wrong, and I suspect that this was at least in part because, as Prime Minister, he wanted to repeat his elder brother's sucesses in foreign affairs. But the 1930's were not the 1920's and whereas Austen was a charming, suave, cynical and very effective effective merchant of realpolitik, a Kissinger figure, Neville was hopelessly inexperienced and far too straightforward. He lost his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, who resigned and joined Churchill on the back benches (becoming Churchill's Foreign Secretary in 1940) and tried to be his own foreign secretary (well, he had Halifax, but Halifax was a yes man).

Even the eventual stiffening of his spine was inept - we never had the slightest chance of saving Poland, so we went to war for a lost cause, at a time when we were still very weak.

However, there are three points to make on the plus side. He certainly was no coward, as his declaration of war proves. He threw the economy onto a war footing, regardless of "peace in our time" - a point that is often overlooked and which certainly helped to save us. Lastly it is argued that Munich bought us a year in which to become more prepared for war, so that we had metal monoplane fighter aircraft, radar, etc. Those who say this say that Neville was under no illusions about Hitler, but knew that he needed to buy time.

To sum up, he had to grow up under the shadow of his father, a man who was rather like Theodore Roosevelt, and his elder brother, but unlike either of them he achieved what Disraeli called the top of the greasy pole. Had it not been that he got there in 1937, he might have gone down to history as a model Conservative politician of the left, or "one nation", wing of his party, and Churchill would be a footnote in the history books.

As it was, he either made a serious mistake, or was extremely cunning. I'm inclined to think that he hoped Hitler would stick to his word, but hedged the nation's bets none the less, and when left in between a rock or a hard place by Hitler's invasion of Poland, he did the decent thing.

Interestingly, the only one of Hitler's advisers who predicted that Chamberlain would go to war over Poland was Admiral Canaris, whose qualifications as a German hero are beyond dispute.

[ 10-29-2004, 10:59 AM: Message edited by: Andrew Craig-Bennett ]

[Billy Bones]

Thanks for that, Andrew. It is fascinating that so much of the inevitability of things gets cast onto the players after the fact. I should have said that he is seen somewhat unfavorably amid those who know him in history in America and that number is frighteningly small.

My brief reading in the area shares your concensus that he staved off the inevitable while preparations could be made.

Again, thanks.

[George.]

I wonder what the result would have been of Britain and France declaring war on Hitler in 1938, instead of "appeasing" him.

Hitler might have liked that a lot. He might have won the Battle of Britain, and gone on to invade. No help from the US would be forthcoming...

[Keith Wilson]

Any word from the right? Any more Russian special forces, Syrian operatives, agents of the DNC, or French whores? Even NewsMax may have a little trouble explaining away this one. We now have television footage of US troops poking around Al-Qaqaa, of IAEA seals intact, and piles of stuff I sure wouldn't want in my basement. The evidence is about as good as it gets, barring a signed affidavit from God, that a bunch of explosives were there after US troops arrived. It's not there now, and nobody knows where it is.

Again, from a strictly practical military point of view, it may not really matter. There was probably enough left-over conventional Iraqi army equipment to supply the insurgents for as long as they want to fight. This is, however, a spectacularly clear example of how the militarist ("neo-conservative") faction in the Defense Department bungled the occupation - no plan to secure the country, not enough troops, disdain for those who knew Iraq better and urged caution, rosy ideologically-driven assumptions with no backup position, getting caught completely flat-footed by the chaos and looting after the fall of the old regime. Well, we’re paying for it now, in blood, in money, in vastly increased difficulty putting Iraq back together, and in increased risk of things going completely bad.

Go W.

[ 10-29-2004, 11:48 AM: Message edited by: Keith Wilson ]

[George.]

Come on, Keith! The only source of problems in Iraq is the liberal news media and the cheese-eating defeatists at home!

[LeeG]

White House responds,,200tons removed,,,guess the imbedded reporters were in Nevada.

[LeeG]

Larry DiRita says 250Tons,,still unclear on the time of removal. The one comment still worth noticing is what the newvideo gave that there was no securing of the bunkers after opening them. Pictures I've seen make it look like Qaqaa is near where people live. Soldiers go back to bases,,looters continue looting. Hospitals were looted,,why not armories.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Turns out the trucks in the satellite photo are outside the wrong bunker.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/al_qa_qaa-imagery4.htm

The trouble with blaming your wicked invasion on "bad intelligence" is that you piss off your own, rather good, careful, intelligence community no end...

[LeeG]

ahh, April 13 removal date,,April 18 news video.
I'm guessing a few bunkers weren't emptied.
Materially not that significant,,I mean a few pallets or bunkers of high explosives isn't nothing but it's not a WMD. Damn,,I was hoping for some WMD.
That was exciting. Now for a time line and four page explanation in Saturdays Washington Post.

[LeeG]

ahh, April 13 removal date,,April 18 news video.
I'm guessing a few bunkers weren't emptied.
Materially not that significant,,I mean a few pallets or bunkers of high explosives isn't nothing but it's not a WMD.
This does highlight what a hard job it must be to provide security for hospitals, buildings, infrastructure etc. when there isn't a big column of armored vehicles ready to do something.
That was exciting. Now for a time line and four page explanation in Saturdays Washington Post.

[LeeG]

ahh, April 13 removal date,,April 18 news video.
I'm guessing a few bunkers weren't emptied.
Materially not that significant,,I mean a few pallets or bunkers of high explosives isn't nothing but it's not a WMD.
This does highlight what a hard job it must be to provide security for hospitals, buildings, infrastructure etc. when there isn't a big column of armored vehicles ready to do something.
That was exciting. Now for a time line and four page explanation in Saturdays Washington Post.

[High C]

Wow, you boys have been busy today. But don't be so smug.

Here's something from a reliable news source.
U.S. Team Took 250 Tons of Iraqi Munitions (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137017,00.html)

[ 10-30-2004, 12:57 AM: Message edited by: High C ]

[LeeG]

High,,it's not being smug to want accuracy in reporting. From the gov't that sends soldiers to kill and die as well.

You aren't even reading this stuff are you?

Damn I'm getting pissed off with this willful ignorance. Larry Derita couldn't even answer whether it was RDX or the HMX that the IAEA had sealed as it was the specific explosive linked to nuclear weapons production. Not plastic explosives but the higher density HMX.
The US gov't was tossing out pure b.s. with those satellite photos,,why? they weren't even at the HMX bunkers.
A few hundred tons isn't the issue High,,it's the FACT that there were hundreds of sites unguarded just as there were hospitals and civil service buildings unguarded and looted. The US forces are doing a fantastic job. Would that GW/Rumsfield were willing to do the same. But their priority WASN'T to secure a defeated country. GW called it a Catastrophic Success. What's that? The were expecting a long drawn out invasion to take longer so the 4th Infantry could swing in? No,,they were ONLY concerned with proving to the surrounding countries how effing dangerous the 21st American Military is. And it is. But there's no way you can explain the disparity in troops required to secure the country after it's security apparatus is defeated compated to the attacking force.
Spouting off cheerleading phrases is shamefully inadequate. That the president uses cheerleading to cover no-fault leadership is irresponsible.
A catastrophic success.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/al_qa_qaa-imagery4.htm

[LeeG]

Here's a simple Q&A,,this kevsmyth guy has got to stop posting the first thing off of Drudge.

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 — only for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Saddam's alleged hidden stockpiles of these weapons of mass destruction were the Bush administration's justification for the war. The nuclear agency had warned about HMX in a report to the United Nations in February 2003 but did not specifically mention Al-Qaqaa.

___

Q. Was the U.N. nuclear agency in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the invasion?

A. No. The inspectors pulled out before the invasion, and the U.S.-led coalition has not allowed their return for a resumption of general inspections. The coalition did invite inspectors to return briefly on two occasions for specific tasks, neither at Al-Qaqaa.

___

Q. Did the nuclear agency have legal custody of the site once the coalition invaded?

A. The agency never had legal custody, was not in charge of the facility or responsible for securing it overall.

[LeeG]

Like Abu Ghraib the decisions start at the top. Remember the influence of Perles exiles?,,Gingriches buddy,,the INC? The folks who brought us Khidir Hamza and the entertaining fiasco of attempting to put an exile who was 14 when he left Iraq while under criminal prosecution from Jordan. The excerpt below comes from the KnightRidder article in the other thread.
This is a successful catastrophy.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Al Qaqaa was on a classified list of Iraqi weapons facilities that the CIA provided to Pentagon and military officials before the invasion, said the U.S. intelligence official.

But when the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command produced their own list of sites that a limited number of U.S. "exploitation teams" should search, priority was given to those identified by exiled Iraqi opposition groups, he said. Al Qaqaa wasn't one of them.

"The top of the list was dominated by nuclear facilities and places where we expected to find chemical and biological weapons," he said. "Iraqi exiles had a very heavy hand in determining which places got looked at first."

[LeeG]

it's time for a review. There is analysis of intel,,there are policy makers. This is what happens when the two sleep together. Like Abu Ghraib,,no one is responsible,,just a catastrophic success.

Remember from the above post that the significance of some sites was influenced by INC exiles. Khidir Hamza was an INC exile,,supported by experts in Iraqi intelligence like Perle, Gingrich, Woolsey,,Woolsey? well yes,,that's another story.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38130

[High C]

Lee, if there's a point buried somewhere in the blizzard of C+P you've posted on this, it's well disguised.

Nobody seems to be sure what happened at Al Qaaqaa except for you and a handfull of other Kerry partisans. There are contradictions aplenty, on the scene, by those who were actually there.

380 tons of powder carried off in backpacks. :rolleyes:

To repeatedly grasp at these straws is not pretty. It's desperate spin coming from pannicked campaign staffers and their pals in the "news media", and it's backfiring.

CBS's forged documents...
ABC's trip to Vietnam to interview VC...
This silly story of looted near WMDs...

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[ 10-30-2004, 11:12 AM: Message edited by: High C ]

[LeeG]

High, you aren't addressing any issues in the link you provided other than personalizing the thread. One would think the specifics are immaterial.

One April 18 a TV crew shows a film of a sealed bunker filled with HMX as identified by David Kay and other inspectors. The whitehouse shows a photo from Mar17 of a truck that's not anywhere near the HMX bunkers.
The Whitehouse has a short news flash saying RDX was removed.

The links I provided is to flesh out the context of WHY munitions are available to looters.

What i find interesting is that the consequences of looting on the health care infrastructure are pretty much ignored but munitions are important. The Whitehouse emphasized the threat Iraq presented to US so there's already a sensitivity to news about "WMD" parts of "WMD" and other magic voodoo juices used by that "evil man". Kind of a similar bias we have to knowing our dead but not really having a number on their dead.
The threat to US soldiers and Iraqis is a collection of things,,but the words IED,RPG are kind of catchy compared to "no electricity for medicines in clinics" so when we get a tidbit of news describing MISSING WEAPONS there's already a priming of the pump by the Whitehouse and news customers (you and me) to wonder,,,"missing weapons,,what kind, where,,are they wmd,,dmw,,mdw?"

[ljb5]

Originally posted by High C:
Nobody seems to be sure what happened at Al Qaaqaa except for you and a handfull of other Kerry partisans. There are contradictions aplenty, on the scene, by those who were actually there. I don't claim to know what happened. But I do know who is supposed to be in charge.

Bush hasn't a clue what happened.

This happened 18 months ago and Bush only found out last week.

Bush has offered half a dozen explanations of what happened.

It's time for some straight talk and some accountability.

[Keith Wilson]

High C, let's review what we really know, and I'll try to be as impartial as possible.

The IAEA knew that the stuff in question was there, the'd been keeping an eye on it, and it was sealed.

They warned the US about it.

It was still there, still under seal when the US troops with the camera crew passed through.

It isn't there now. Nobody knows where it is.
The facility was not guarded against looters until much later.

Fair enough?

This is not a story that was "fabricated by the news media". They chose to report it, but they didn't make it up.

And please stop the nonsense about "350 tons in a backpack". How much can two overloaded pickup trucks carry? It would take a lot of trips and several guys to load, but it's not at all implausible.

From what we know, this looks like a genuine screwup. How significant it is, I don't know, probably not very in the long run. It's only significant politically becuse some folks, including me, think it's symbolic of a larger problem with the planning and execution of the occupation of Iraq. It also makes me wonder what else was lying around unguarded in that munitions storage facility, and where it is now.

[ 10-30-2004, 11:32 AM: Message edited by: Keith Wilson ]

[Billy Bones]

Originally posted by ljb5:
It's time for some straight talk and some accountability.I agree!

You start.

[High C]

Originally posted by Keith Wilson:
...And please stop the nonsense about "350 tons in a backpack". How much can two overloaded pickup trucks carry?Severely overloaded, maybe a ton each. That's 380 pickup loads. Not to mention the lengthy drive to... wherever????

Doesn't sound plausible to me. Or to our commanders on the scene. I don't dismiss them out of hand.

There's too much contradiction between seemingly good sources. This is not clear at all.

[LeeG]

What's not clear.

Fact,,on May 27 HMX and other bunkers empty per complete military inspection.
Fact,,on April 18 embedded reporters and US soldiers break seals into HMX filled bunkers leaving the site unguarded.
Fact,,on April 13, US military remove 200+tons of RDX and other materials from easily accessible and unsealed facilities as stated in Fridays newscast from the Whitehouse.
Fact,,white house implies russians moved it,,shows satellite photos from Mar17 that is contradicted with publicaly accessible info.
Fact,,looting of every facility not guarded was epidemic.

What's not clear?

[ljb5]

Originally posted by Billy Bones:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by ljb5:
It's time for some straight talk and some accountability.I agree!

You start.</font>[/QUOTE]Um, I was kinda hoping for some straight talk and accountability from the president.

[Billy Bones]

I'm not nearly so picky.

Anyone on the left will do.

[George.]

So going back to the title of this thread, are we agreed that the Russians and French have nothing to do with this mess?

Maybe we can change the title to "The Xenophobes (and Rednecks?) Again :D

[LeeG]

sure, but as long as he posts poop I'll rub his face in it.