Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

[u2sarajevo]

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ, WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: October 25, 2004

This article was reported and written by James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."

Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings.

The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. The other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain.

"This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," one senior Bush administration official said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said Sunday evening that Saddam Hussein's government "stored weapons in mosques, schools, hospitals and countless other locations," and that the allied forces "have discovered and destroyed perhaps thousands of tons of ordnance of all types." A senior military official noted that HMX and RDX were "available around the world" and not on the nuclear nonproliferation list, even though they are used in the nuclear warheads of many nations.

The Qaqaa facility, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, was well known to American intelligence officials: Mr. Hussein made conventional warheads at the site, and the I.A.E.A. dismantled parts of his nuclear program there in the early 1990's after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In the prelude to the 2003 invasion, Mr. Bush cited a number of other "dual use" items - including tubes that the administration contended could be converted to use for the nuclear program - as a justification for invading Iraq.

After the invasion, when widespread looting began in Iraq, the international weapons experts grew concerned that the Qaqaa stockpile could fall into unfriendly hands. In May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping "themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."

[kg_veteran]

What's interesting about this story is that we don't know when these explosives went missing. For all we know, it could have been before the invasion took place.

Stolen from the Kerry Spot:

Now, the story fails to answer one core question: when did these explosives go missing? It is simply never mentioned anywhere in the body of the story. American forces, one official is quoted as saying, went through the facility sometime towards the beginning of the war, saw no materials carrying the IAEA seal, and moved on. Buried deep within the story is the most likely explanation for what happened to the stockpile: it was standard Iraqi practice to, prior to bombing, move explosives out into the open and camouflage it. In all probability, it was long gone before any American soldiers ever got near the place.

Presumably, this story is designed to feed on the liberal argument that too few troops were sent to Iraq and that, as a result, US casualties have been higher than they otherwise needed to be. John Kerry tried to push this line during the debates.

This ignores two critical points:

First: in all probability most of what was at Al Qaqaa and these other places was looted before the arrival of US troops. Post-war intelligence confirms what many of us have long believed: that Saddam had, by March of 2003, abandoned all hope of defeating the United States in a conventional war and, therefore, had staked his hopes on the victory of a guerrilla force which, in collaboration with seditionists in America, would undermine the morale of the American people and force a US withdrawal.

Second: more US troops, unless the numbers were truly substantial, would probably have not made a difference, except for resulting in more US dead. In the sort of operation such as the one ongoing in Iraq, a point is reached where more troops simply mean more targets. Iraq was (and is) a nation literally floating on a sea of explosives. To secure all of those sites (and to do so without sustaining heavy losses) would have required, literally, more than a million men. This, of course, is the point of these attacks. Liberals are now for defending America, so long as we’re able to do it with more troops than are physically available. Anyone even a vague knowledge of history fully knows that these things happen: munitions linger long after wars end. To this very day, people still occasionally find bombs from the Second World War lying about.

[Drbio]

Al Caca?


The "when" point will be ignored if it helps criticize this administration.

[kg_veteran]

This quote from Steve Schmidt sums up John Kerry's campaign strategy:

"John Kerry has no vision for fighting and winning the war on terror, so he is basing his attacks on the headlines he wakes up to each day," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said. "If John Kerry wants to spend the next eight days trying to explain his positions again, we welcome that debate."

[kg_veteran]

Wow, I'm a dummy. I just realized the most important aspect of this story:

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material. The other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain.

Wait a minute. I thought that there was no evidence of WMD in Iraq? Here, we have proof that Saddam did possess components to be used in nuclear weapons.

Does anybody HONESTLY believe that if the U.S. military had found such explosives when they arrived in Iraq that they would have left it unguarded? That's absurd. We would have preserved the evidence to bolster our justification for invasion. Logically speaking, the explosives had to have been long gone before the U.S. troops got there (imagine that: Saddam would want to cover up evidence of WMD).

I'm just glad that the New York Times, unwittingly, broke the story that Saddam did possess materials to manufacture WMD! Thank you New York Times! Now we don't have to listen to any more of that "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" nonsense.

[Mavdog]

I can't agree with the assumption that the US Military would have protected these explosives in light of recent reports of what happened to other items:

Iraqi N-sites 'stripped carefully'

VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) -- The mysterious removal of Iraq's mothballed nuclear facilities continued long after the U.S.-led invasion and was carried out by people with access to heavy machinery and demolition equipment, diplomats said on Thursday.

Link

BTW this is "evidence of WMD"? Hardly, unless you count "conventional explosives" as they are called in the above article as WMD.

[kg_veteran]

Originally posted by: Mavdog
I can't agree with the assumption that the US Military would have protected these explosives in light of recent reports of what happened to other items:

Link

The rest of the story indicates that they aren't certain when the facilities were cleaned out, with Jack Straw thinking that it took place in March of 2003.

So far as I can tell, this is just Monday-morning quarterbacking saying that the U.S. hasn't run a perfect war over in Iraq. I think everybody knows that.

BTW this is "evidence of WMD"? Hardly, unless you count "conventional explosives" as they are called in the above article as WMD.

I said it was evidence that Saddam possessed components to be used in manufacturing nuclear weapons.

[mavsman55]

I said it was evidence that Saddam possessed components to be used in manufacturing nuclear weapons.

Exactly. Didn't they find parts of WMD's and materials used only for making fuel for these weapons?
I guess it doesn't matter since we didn't find any completely assembled WMD's ready to launch, therefore Saddam was never and would never have been a threat.

[img]i/expressions/moon.gif[/img]

[Linde]

Originally posted by: u2sarajevo
Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ, WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: October 25, 2004

This article was reported and written by James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger.

B A senior military official noted that HMX and RDX were "available around the world" and not on the nuclear nonproliferation list, even though they are used in the nuclear warheads of many nations.

[FishForLunch]

Nice try NY Times, tried to pull a CBS on Bush.

NBCNEWS: HUGE CACHE OF EXPLOSIVES VANISHED FROM SITE IN IRAQ -- AT LEAST 18 MONTHS AGO -- BEFORE TROOPS ARRIVED

The NYTIMES urgently reported on Monday how the Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives are now missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

Jumping on the TIMES exclusive, Dem presidential candidate John Kerry blasted the Bush administration for its failure to "guard those stockpiles."

In an election week rush:

**ABCNEWS Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 4 Times
**CBSNEWS Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 7 Times
**MSNBC Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 37 Times
**CNN Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 50 Times

But tonight, NBCNEWS reported, once: The 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were already missing back in April 10, 2003 -- when U.S. troops arrived at the installation south of Baghdad!

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers.

It is not clear why the NYTIMES failed to report the cache had been missing for 18 months -- and was reportedly missing before troops even arrived.

"The U.S. Army was at the sight one day after the liberation and the weapons were already gone," a top Republican blasted from Washington late Monday.

Developing...

[kg_veteran]

Thanks to NBC for being honest and coming forward with the truth, but this is hardly new. A quick Google search revealed an AP article from 4-5-03 which stated:

U.N. weapons inspectors went repeatedly to the vast al Qa Qaa complex -- most recently on March 8 -- but found nothing during spot visits to some of the 1,100 buildings at the site 25 miles south of Baghdad.

So there were no explosives at al Qa Qaa for at least a month before United States troops arrived.

John Kerry has terrible political instincts. He should have let the media run with it. He's got serious egg on his face now.

[EricaLubarsky]

"This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," one senior Bush administration official said.

When did conventional explosives not loaded into illegal missiles become weapons of mass destruction? When are things "not on the nuclear nonproliferation list" a real nuclear danger? and how does the following statement add up to the assertion that there were WMDs in Iraq?

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material. The other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain.

Nuclear inspectors didnt find illegal WMDs. They were watching over the conventional explosives (which every country has), because they may be stolen and used in dirty bombs IF combined with nuclear materials. The article, as quoted, presents no evidence that there were in fact any legitimate components of a nuclear bomb. The idea that the other components are hard to obtain only makes the argument of pre-emption harder because they did not in fact have anywhere near the facilities or components for nuclear appropriation. That was released in the recent Duelfer report and seconded by world agencies.

I agree that it was a stupid move for Kerry to make a deal about stolen conventional explosives, but can we really watch the cards (evidence)? Does everyone in the political section have to overtag the evidence that they have?

So there were no explosives at al Qa Qaa for at least a month before United States troops arrived.

ummmm....

It is not clear why the NYTIMES failed to report the cache had been missing for 18 months -- and was reportedly missing before troops even arrived.

according to the preliminary article...

White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

[FishForLunch]

I am sure it was an honest mistake aka Dan Rather

[EricaLubarsky]

Originally posted by: FishForLunch
I am sure it was an honest mistake aka Dan Rather

So the statement made by the whitehouse and reported by all the major news organizations is a liberal plot? I dont get it.

[FishForLunch]

So why does the NY times jump on a story if they are not really sure?

[EricaLubarsky]

Originally posted by: FishForLunch
So why does the NY times jump on a story if they are not really sure?

what weren't they sure about? They had evidence from military sources, and they had quotes from the whitehouse. I don't know if that kind of scrutiny could be placed on any other News media.

[kg_veteran]

Originally posted by: EricaLubarsky

Nuclear inspectors didnt find illegal WMDs. They were watching over the conventional explosives (which every country has), because they may be stolen and used in dirty bombs IF combined with nuclear materials. The article, as quoted, presents no evidence that there were in fact any legitimate components of a nuclear bomb.

Except for the fact that it refers to the explosives as one of the components of an atom bomb.

The idea that the other components are hard to obtain only makes the argument of pre-emption harder because they did not in fact have anywhere near the facilities or components for nuclear appropriation. That was released in the recent Duelfer report and seconded by world agencies.

The argument for pre-emption wasn't based upon the Duelfer report.

I agree that it was a stupid move for Kerry to make a deal about stolen conventional explosives, but can we really watch the cards (evidence)? Does everyone in the political section have to overtag the evidence that they have?

I'm not "overtagging" evidence. I'm simply stating that Saddam possessed components that could have been used to build an atom bomb. Nothing more, nothing less.

ummmm....

according to the preliminary article...

Missing for 18 months as of the date of the article, not 18 months as of the date that U.S. troops arrived.

[/quote]

Considering that we invaded on March 19, 2003, and troops arrived at al Qa Qaa no later than April 10, 2003, I find it really hard to believe that insurgents or anybody else hauled off 380 tons of explosives, all without the U.S. noticing. Also, considering that weapons inspectors found no explosives on March 8, 2003, when they inspected the facilities, I consider it impossible that the explosives vanished at some point after our March 19, 2003, invasion.

Let's be honest. The Times did shoddy reporting, and Kerry was a moron for jumping on the bandwagon.

[FishForLunch]

What Kerry was trying to say was if he was the president he would have protected the explosive that were missing in the first place. What the heck it is less than a week to election, anything goes.

[kg_veteran]

Originally posted by: FishForLunch
What Kerry was trying to say was if he was the president he would have protected the explosive that were missing in the first place. What the heck it is less than a week to election, anything goes.

KERRY: Unlike Bush, I fought in Vietnam, and if I had been president, I would have been over there with an automatic rifle, standing watch over those 380 tons of explosives just like I stood watch over Jim Rasmussen when he was under enemy fire.

Or somesuch...

[Dooby]

From Drudge:

News of missing explosives in Iraq -- first reported in April 2003 -- was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode...

[Dooby]

From Cliff May of the National Review:

BOMB-GATE [Cliff May]
Sent to me by a source in the government: “The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The US is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

[FishForLunch]

60 MINS PLANNED BUSH MISSING EXPLOSIVES STORY FOR ELECTION EVE

News of missing explosives in Iraq -- first reported in April 2003 -- was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode.

Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of 60 MINUTES, said in a statement that "our plan was to run the story on October 31."

Elizabeth Jensen at the LOS ANGELES TIMES details on Tuesday how CBS NEWS and 60 MINUTES lost the story [which repackaged previously reported information on a large cache of explosives missing in Iraq, first published and broadcast in 2003].

The story instead debuted in the NYT. The paper slugged the story about missing explosives from April 2003 as "exclusive."

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

It is not clear who exactly shopped an election eve repackaging of the missing explosives story.

The LA TIMES claims: The source on the story first went to 60 MINUTES but also expressed interest in working with the NY TIMES... "The tip was received last Wednesday."

CBSNEWS' plan to unleash the story just 24 hours before election day had one senior Bush official outraged.

"Darn, I wanted to see the forged documents to show how this was somehow covered up," the Bush source, who asked not to be named, mocked, recalling last months CBS airing of fraudulent Bush national guard letters.

Developing...

[Drbio]

The MSM will do anything it can to elect a dimocrap. Anything. Truth be damned.

[dude1394]

As I said many times. The NYTimes is no longer a reputable new outlet. Nor is CBS. Read them (and worse believe them) at your own risk.

However there is one thing I think we can be assurred of. Any negative piece about Kerry is 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000% accurate.

[dude1394]

And of course Kerry is such a blinking idiot that he wants to make policy from the NYTimes. FLIP-FLOP...

[Usually Lurkin]

I don't think the Kerry campaign will be bothered by details like whether or not the explosives disappeared before our guys got there.
It sounds good to say Bush lost the weapons so they will say it.
The MSM will not make as big a deal about when they disappeared as they made out of the fact that they did disappear.
The only people that will realize Kerry is telling stories will be those who bother reading more than the biggest headline on the front page. And those people made up their mind long ago about the election.

Bottom line is: a ridiculous accusation is still a good accusation to make when you are desperate and have friends that will help you.

[Mavdog]

The following states the military does not know if the weapons were at the facility as they didn't take the time to search for them, only for other types. We don't know if the weapons were there then, and when they disappeared.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qaqaa Spokesman Says No Weapons Search

Wed Oct 27, 2:21 AM ET

By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer

One of the first U.S. military units to reach the Al-Qaqaa military installation south of Baghdad after the invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) 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.

The 101st Airborne was apparently at least the second military unit to arrive at Al-Qaqaa after the U.S. led invasion began. Pentagon (news - web sites) spokesman Bryan Whitman told The Washington Post that the 3rd Infantry Division reached the site around April 3, fought with Iraq forces and occupied the site. They left after two days, headed to Baghdad, he told the newspaper for Wednesday's editions.

Associated Press Correspondent Chris Tomlinson, who was embedded with the 3rd Infantry but didn't go to Al-Qaqaa, 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.

The enormous size of the bases, the rapid pace of the advance on Baghdad and the limited number of troops involved, made it impossible for U.S. commanders to allocate any soldiers to guard any of the facilities after making a check, Tomlinson said.

Pentagon officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday night. A spokesman for the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., said the unit was checking on whether any of its troops was at Al-Qaqaa.

The disappearance of the explosives was first reported in Monday's New York Times and has subsequently become a heated issue in the U.S. presidential campaign, with Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) questioning on Tuesday whether the explosives were still at the facility when U.S. troops arrived. The Kerry campaign called the disappearance the latest in a "tragic series of blunders" by the Bush administration.

Two weeks ago, Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology told the International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives had vanished from the former military installation as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security." The ministry's letter said the explosives were stolen sometime after coalition forces took control of Baghdad on April 9, 2003.

The disappearance, which the U.N. nuclear agency reported to the Security Council on Monday, has raised questions about why the United States didn't do more to secure the facility and failed to allow full international inspections to resume after the March 2003 invasion.

On Tuesday, Russia, citing the disappearance, called on the U.N. Security Council to discuss the return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq. But the United States said American inspectors were investigating the loss and that there was no need for U.N. experts to return.

The Al-Qaqaa explosives included HMX and RDX, key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in repeated bomb attacks on U.S.-led multinational forces and Iraqi police and national guardsmen. But HMX is also a "dual use" substance powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.

The 3rd Infantry left Al-Qaqaa and moved on to become the first U.S. unit into Baghdad. The day after Baghdad fell, the 101st Airborne arrived at Al-Qaqaa and remained there for 24 hours, later joining the 3rd Infantry in the capital.

"We still had Iraqi troops in Baghdad we were trying to combat," said Wellman, the 101st Airborne spokesman. "Our mission was securing Baghdad at that point."

NBC correspondent Lai Ling Jew, who was with the 101st, told MSNBC, an NBC cable news channel, that "there wasn't a search" of Al-Qaqaa.

"The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad," she said. "As far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away."

She said there was no talk among the 101st of securing the area after they left. The roads were cut off "so it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there," she said.

Wellman, the 101st Airborne spokesman, said the facility was in the unit's sector at that time but that he does not know if any troops were left at the grounds of the facility once the combat troops from the 2nd Brigade left.

The commander of the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade, Col. Joseph Anderson, told Times on Tuesday that he didn't learn until this week that international inspectors had been at Al-Qaqaa to inspect explosives before the war.

"We happened to stumble on it," Anderson told the Times. "I didn't know what the place was supposed to be. We did not get involved in any of the bunkers. It was not our mission. It was not our focus."

Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said that on May 27, 2003, a U.S. military team specifically looking for weapons went to the site but did not find anything with IAEA stickers on it.

The Pentagon would not say whether it had informed the IAEA that the conventional explosives were not where they were supposed to be. Boykin said that the Pentagon was investigating whether the information was handed on to anyone else at the time.

The explosives had been housed in storage bunkers at the facility. U.N. nuclear inspectors placed fresh seals over the bunker doors in January 2003. The inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time on March 15, 2003 and reported that the seals were not broken — therefore, the weapons were still there at the time. The team then pulled out of the country in advance of the invasion later that month.

Cheney raised the possibility the explosives disappeared before U.S. soldiers could secure the site in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.

"It is not at all clear that those explosives were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived in the area of Baghdad," Cheney said Tuesday.

Both HMX and RDX are key components in plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex, which are so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just a pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people.

[u2sarajevo]

Originally posted by: Mavdog
The following states the military does not know if the weapons were at the facility as they didn't take the time to search for them, only for other types. We don't know if the weapons were there then, and when they disappeared.

Okay... so if we don't know then we should not place blame then.

[Drbio]

Originally posted by: u2sarajevo

Okay... so if we don't know then we should not place blame then.

But that doesn't fit the liberal agenda. Too much common sense.

[kg_veteran]

Here's a CBS story from 4-4-03. Apparently, the 3rd Infantry Division had performed a thorough search of al Qa Qaa a week before the 101st Airborne arrived.

The weapons were already gone.

U.S. Searches 'Suspicious' Iraqi Site
NEAR BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 4, 2003
link

U.S. troops found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad. But a senior U.S. official familiar with initial testing said the materials were believed to be explosives.

Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex just south of Baghdad.

"It is clearly a suspicious site," Peabody said.

CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction continues at sites where the U.S. thought chemicals weapons might be hidden.

"And although there are no reports of actual weapons being found, there are constant finds of suspicious material," Martin said. "It obviously will take laboratory testing to find out exactly what that powder is."

The senior U.S. official, based in Washington and speaking on condition of anonymity, said the material was under further study. The site is enormous and U.S. troops are still investigating it for potential weapons of mass destruction, the official said.

"Initial reports are that the material is probably just explosives, but we're still going through the place," the official said.

Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.

He also said they discovered atropine, used to counter the effects of nerve agents.

The facility had been identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons site. U.N. inspectors visited the plant at least nine times, including as recently as Feb. 18.

The facility is part of a larger complex known as the Latifiyah Explosives and Ammunition Plant al Qa Qaa.

During the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. jets bombed the plant.

Troops also discovered what they believe is a training center for nuclear, chemical and biological warfare in Iraq's western desert, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said Friday.

One bottle found at the site was labeled "tabun" — a nerve agent that the U.S. government says may have been used during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. The soldiers found only a small amount of the chemical, indicating the site was meant for training, not storing or deploying chemical weapons, Brooks said.

"In that particular site, we believe that was the only sample," Brooks said. "That's why we believe it was a training site. Our conclusion is that this was not a (weapons of mass destruction) site ... it proved to be far less than that."

Photos of the site showed shelves of brown bottles with yellow labels. Brooks said troops did not understand some of the labels and were collecting the bottles for examination by experts.

On April 1, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, in a statement on Iraqi television, repeated Baghdad's position that it had no weapons of mass destruction. Referring to reports that gas masks and other chemical gear had been found elsewhere in the country, he said the coalition might plant weapons of mass destruction to implicate Iraq.

"Let me say one more time that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction," he said.

"The aggressors may themselves intend to bring those materials to plant them here and say those are weapons of mass destruction," he said.

[Drbio]

If I were Bush I would demand a full and unqualified apology from Hanoi John. Of course, we know the coward would only spin and sache his way around it, but I would make it headlines news.