CBS: Why GIs Didn't Hunt Explosives

[BeatleBoot]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/25/iraq/main651082.shtml

NOT ENOUGH TROOPS!!!!!

<snip>

"Our focus was killing bad guys," he continued, adding that he would have needed four times as many troops to search and secure all the ammo dumps his troops came across during the push into Iraq.

A special unit known as Task Force 75 finally searched the compound seven weeks later and found no sign of the explosives, which experts have said had the potential to be used either conventionally or to trigger nuclear weapons.

And while their whereabouts remains a matter under investigation, David Kay - who once headed up the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - says traces of the same type of explosives were found after a bombing this year outside a mosque in Najaf.

[dogman]

1. There was no reason to search.

The Commander-in-Chief had declared "Mission Accomplished!".

[TrueAmerican]

2. Task Force 75?

Wasn't that the Task Force who was responsible for hunting down Sadaam? Why would they be searhing an ammo dump for explosives?
EDIT
Never mind, I'm getting my Task Forces confused. That was there job is to find WMD's/

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. The reason to put infantry on the ground...

Is to take ground and hold it. In that is the task of taking possession of, and securing, men and material of the enemy. If you are not doing that, what the hell is the rationale for putting troops on the ground? Can someone remind me?

At the core of things, Rumsfeld's "doctrine" is something along the lines of attempting to use infantry to do a fly-over. That works like windshield wipers on a duck's ass.

Donald Rumsfeld shows clearly what happens when you put your armed forces in the hands of a sociopath with a thin grip on reality.

[UpInArms]

5. well said

for some strange reason (or lack thereof) these idiots from PNAC (with minimal military experience among them) decided that war was a video game and their lack of planning and the end result shows it.

[fob]

23. Come on UIA, everyone knows that once you clear an area the computer

doesn't restock it with "bad guys". You don't have to secure anything, and with those endless ammo weapons...hooah!!

/sarcasm

[Just Me]

27. Yup,...and the overriding priority was to sell off the country,...

,...and create a utopian free market *LOL*,...a neoCON get-rich-quick scheme that cost the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people and will impact tens of millions.

[Lerkfish]

18. absolutely right. even a pacifist like me would know that...

farking idiots.

[SHRED]

4. Am I missing something here?

Regardless of when or where...do we not have multi-billion dollar spy satellites trained on Iraq?
They can't see 800,000 pounds of material being moved?
What good are these satellites if we don't use them?
Bu$h fails us again.

[lindashaw]

8. Exactly! Colin Powell went to the UN and knew to the ounce exactly

what Saddam Hussein had. Point being: We didn't know what he had, and we didn't pick with all our fancy equipment the trucks that were hauling all this stuff around.

[ProfessorGAC]

11. You're Right

That's 22 semi-truck loads of H/X. Seems like we might have seen that on satellite. Not only 22 trucks, but the hour it would take to load each. It would have taken a complete crew one full day to take away that much stuff.

This not only had to be a decent number of people, but folks WHO KNEW THE H/X WAS THERE!

Maybe we could have secured the people with that knowledge?
The Professor

[MeinaShaw]

30. When did they go missing?

The thing that bugs me about this story is that the New York Times did not say when they went missing. Basic journalism is Who, What, When, Where, Why and sometimes How. How could a major paper like the NYT omit the When? Just as a study of journalism, this is a legitimate question. Maybe I missed it.

That aside, Bush should have secured this facility or planned for it. There non-answer to the charge speaks volumes about What happened. They don't know!

[alfredo]

33. they should have mentioned that our troops did go there when

we first invaded, unsealed the UN seals, looked around and left.

[NickB79]

47. Not only spy satellites, but unmanned drones and spy planes

All flying overhead before, during and after the invasion. Your's is exactly the reason I give to counter Freepers who claim WMD's could have been smuggled over the border to Syria. We could see individual missiles in forests with 1960's technology in Cuba, but couldn't pick up semi-trailer convoys in the middle of a friggin desert with 2003 technology?

[Mokito]

57. Contradiction in terminus

Wasn't it Powell who showed all those fancy high tech satellite photo's of...ahum..."mobile laboratories"?

[Francine Frensky]

6. So Bush mismanaged the war, ok; but another bigger question:

why are we just hearing about this now?? Have we been looking for this stuff since early summer 2003??? And if we have, then why would Condi Rice say, "we only learned about the missing explosives last month"?????

The big question: Was there a cover-up of this massive failure????

[russiamommy]

12. This is the big question here

WE KNEW THEY WERE THERE!!!

It's not like we had to go searching for them. We knew exactly where they were supposed to be. I find it hard to believe (even with this bunch of incompetants) that noone went to see them, much less secure them, in more than 18 months. If they did indeed disappear before we got there, wouldn't we have seen a convoy of tractor trailers leaving the facility? After all, we were in combat at the time. Don't you think this should have raised a few red flags?

No matter how you look at this, this situation stinks to high heaven. There's no way to spin it. Kerry needs to keep pounding away at it - making the point that even if it wasn't there when we got there it was still a major screw up, if not a coverup.

[wabeewoman]

21. That may have been what the big WMD search

was that they did some time after the 'war ended'. Remember when they had a large contingent of forces looking for the WMD (David Kay and his group). Maybe they were looking for this stuff too.Has anyone asked Kay about it? They had to know what a diaster it was to let that fall into the wrong hands.

[drdtroit]

31. The weapons inspectors had already tagged it.

Bush wanted the insurgents to have the materials to perpetuate the "everlasting" war. This is big business, a corporate takeover at the highest level and it is important for "business" that the fighting continues forever.

[cubsfan forever]

17. Ms Rice is a miserable fraud and failure

She is the epitome of the incompetence,clueless, and privileged arrogance that have been the hallmarks of this most disgraceful "administration."

Professor 2

[saigon68]

53. RICE = clueless, and privileged arrogance

Not to mention BUTT and COYOTE Ugly.

she is the Penultimate 2 BAGGER

[no_hypocrisy]

7. Well, if you had a choice between protecting the Oil Ministry and tons of

explosives, which would YOU choose?

[UpInArms]

10. somehow the tune from Wizard of Oz

keeps playing in my head

"If I only had a brain"

Thinking logically, if they had secured the weapons, would that not also have prevented further looting and lots of damage to the oil industry?

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. al Qa Qaa was not your ordinary everyday ammunition dump

It was a major site of Saddam's chemical and nuclear weapons programs. Plus, we knew exactly what and how much was stored at this site. Securing al Qa Qaa and Tuwaithe should have been top priorities, since these weapons were the main reason for invading Iraq in the first place. Too bad Rummie & Co were more concerned with protecting the oil fields instead.

[shelley806]

43. BINGO!

"Securing al Qa Qaa and Tuwaithe should have been top priorities, since these weapons were the main reason for invading Iraq in the first place."

If they were looking for WMD's QaQaa and Tuwaithe would have been first priorities. This means that their invasion was for oil and WMD's was a lie. Why isn't media or Kerry picking up on this most important conclusion?!?

[lawladyprof]

13. Didn't dribble away

If it was taken during a seven week window, then it wasn't, as I seem to remember some folks argue, 100 pounds here, five pounds there, over a prolonged period of time.

[democracy eh]

14. the only thing worse than a war,

is a half-ass, on the cheap, poorly planned, unnecessary, initiated under false pretenses, inadequately staffed war of convenience.

George W Bush - YOU WILL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

[jmatthan]

15. Truly amazing was

that Colin Powell could play tapes of highly specific conversation between Iraqi soldiers, obviously taped from spy satellites, but he could not see explosives, 76000 pounds of it being shifted from a facility which was known to have highly dangerous materials!!

I always believed that the conversation was between Chalabi and Allawi acting as Iraqi soldiers. :-)

Jacob Matthan
Oulu, Finland

[Dhalgren]

16. I think the really big point to pound on

is the one Plaid Adder brought up in her column. Bush says he invaded Iraq to keep Saddam from giving weapons to terrorists; Bush then turns around and gives weapons to the terrorists, himself. With Saddam in power we knew right where the high explosives were and they were out of reach to the terrorists, now, the terrorists have all that explosive materiel... Not only a huge Bush failure, but it also shows the lie of why Bush invaded in the first place.

[joefree1]

19. Um, why didn't Rummy bomb this site?

350 tons of high powered explosives and Rummy lets it sit there?

The King has no clothes! There, I've said it.

[msmcghee]

25. We did bomb it . .

. . but only enough to blow the doors off the bunkers so the looters wouldn't have to deal with locks and barriers.

The NBC embed said the GI's wnadered around the facilities looking at the tons of scatterd munitions lying around.

[PATRICK]

20. The Simple Plan

was never changed! Bush/Cheney set the idiotic objectives, caved to adding more troops who were inadequately supplied. In Bushco's mind they would be just more to the party. The quickly pacified jubilant Iraqis would not require rapid disarming or guarding.

The dummies have never adapted away from the rosy scenario. Certainly the troops had no concept of either the rosy scenario they never saw or what to do otherwise. And like most poorly run presumptions it has just dragged on trapped in its own inertial force, unchanged except in trivial ad hoc details.

The news media misses the hugely simple story, the the fundamental mismanagement entered a morass and continued, brainless, to mismanage without an alternate plan that dealt with reality and hard thinking. The military meanwhile stoically goes about problem solving and missions(sometimes purely for domestic American politics) underneath the leaky Bush policy team umbrella.

So they interview a soldier. "I dunno." How could he? The only people with orders were those sent to guard the oil ministry- a clear sign that there was no plan at all to deal with looting or safeguarding nuclear material or munitions. Interview a general and you will get efficient reports and analyses- but no sense at all of the plan which is being run solely by Rumsferatu.

Interview Bushco and you get lies. What you don't get from anyone is a coherent truth.

[tomfodw]

22. Because they weren't ordered to

And why weren't they ordered to? Because the Bush Administration, despite being warned by the IAEA about this cache, didn't want to put enough troops into Iraq to do anything other than overthrow Saddam Hussein quickly in order to validate Rumsfeld's theory about new mobile forces. They were convinced there would be no need for a lengthy occupation so they made damn sure they didn't send enough troops for any kind of occupation. The troops were ordered to get to Baghdad as quickly as possible and not make any unnecessary stops along the way.

[Norquist Nemesis]

24. Well, back in May 2003

http://www.theolympian.com/home/specialsections/War/20030511/2818.shtml

The 75th Exploitation Task Force, as the group is formally known, has been described from the start as the principal arm of the U.S. plan to discover and display forbidden Iraqi weapons. The group's departure, expected next month, marks a milestone in frustration for a major declared objective of the war.

Leaders of Task Force 75's diverse staff -- biologists, chemists, arms treaty enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts, and special forces troops -- arrived with high hopes of early success. They said they expected to find what Secretary of State Colin Powell described at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 -- hundreds of tons of biological and chemical agents, missiles and rockets to fire them, and evidence of an ongoing program to build a nuclear bomb.
<snip>
U.S. Central Command began the war with a list of 19 top weapons sites. Two remain to be searched. Another list enumerated 68 top "non-WMD sites," without known links to special weapons but judged to have the potential to offer clues. Of those, the tally as of last week showed 45 surveyed without success.

<snip>

I suspect the 'investigation' detailing the search of the sites will be...suppressed.

[On the Road]

26. Here's the Smoking Gun

"David Kay...says traces of the same type of explosives were found after a bombing this year outside a mosque in Najaf."

So in case anyone had doubts, those explosives are being used by the insurgents to kill Americans.

[The_Casual_Observer]

29. The pentagon immediately said that none of this has been used

after the news broke. It was the most clear cut case of CYA I have ever seen. Most likely they have known that these bombs were made of this shit since the beginning, but they figured that everybody was too dumb to ever figure it out, so they said nothing. My guess is that these IEDs are nothing more that plastic explosives, not old shells, and thats why they are so easy to hide and are so deadly.
This is a major scandal.

[On the Road]

36. Well, I Assumed the IEDs Were Plastic Explosives

which can be made in someone's basement. But the explosion in Najaf was specifically identified as one of the missing substances, which are not too common. No comment on other explosions.

[The_Casual_Observer]

37. They have always been quick to point out that IEDs

are fashioned from surplus artillery shells. RDX or C4 has never been mentioned, and now it's clear why.

[The_Casual_Observer]

38. They have always been quick to point out that IEDs

are fashioned from surplus artillery shells. RDX or C4 has never been mentioned, and now it's clear why.

[donsu]

28. perhaps the bushgang wanted them to be stolen

nt

[drdtroit]

32. No doubt! n/t

[JoFerret]

58. With this crowd

you always have to consider that reality. that no matter how FU things are it may have been intentional (like the deficit for example.)

[AKing]

34. We had an oil ministry to protect

[zydeco]

35. The world is so not a better place! n/t

[Name removed]

39. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[gratuitous]

41. Why not?

After all, they exposed some more of Bush's spotty National Guard record and made charges that have never been refuted anent Bush's failure to take a mandatory physical in 1972 and his flat-out disappearance from his obligations from May 1972 to October 1973.

Or maybe you were referring to something else?

[shelley806]

45. I have watched Dan Rather since the Rovian Rathergate fiasco

He was set up with documents that were not properly authenticated, but Rather told the truth. The media blamed the messenger instead of Bush. Just like Kerry, instead of being portrayed as the true hero that he is, was smeared so that Bush's sorry record would no longer be in the public debating arena. Oh, these wonderful, lying "Christians...."

I support Dan Rather. So should all of you.

[NickB79]

48. If anything, they should be MORE trustworthy now

They got smacked down hard for their blunder with the Bush papers, so they're probably checking, double--checking, and TRIPLE-checking all their sources from now on so as to never get in that situation again. Besides, they admitted their mistake rather than try to cover it up or bury it, which shows a great deal of journalistic integrity to me.

[Whoa_Nelly]

40. Where is Scott Ritter on all this???

Have looked for statements from him re: missing explosives, and have found nothing. Would sure like to hear his take on this.

[shelley806]

42. "Killing bad Guys!"...I thought our mission was to find WMD's

to make the world safer! How can you go to war on the pretense of WMD's and fail to look for them? Why would you ignore a potential cache of WMD's, if they didn't already know that no WMD's were there? It makes no sense. The only conclusion is that Bush knew there were no WMD's all along.

[TheKingfish]

44. Not enough troops indeed

From last nights Frontline

Frontline Question
"When Gen. Shinseki testifies, he's uncomfortable answering the question, "What's the number? How many do we need?" He doesn't want to answer it, and then he kind of does a math problem, and then he answers it. I think it's two days later Wolfowitz comes in."

Gen. Thomas White:
Oh, yeah. First of all, it's the Senate Armed Services Committee, and it's Sen. Carl Levin. And Levin wants a number, which is not an unreasonable thing for Sen. Levin to be asking for -- "What's going to happen when the war's over? How many people?" -- right? That's a reasonable question to ask.

And so Shinseki tells him, "Maybe as many as 200,000," or some words to that effect. But the number 200,000 was out there. I thought that was perfectly reasonable. So the next morning, I get a call from Wolfowitz, who is upset that Shinseki would give this number. And I forget exactly what I said, but I said: "Well, he's an expert. He was asked. He has a fundamental responsibility to answer the questions and offer his professional opinion, which he did. And there was some basis to the opinion because he is a relative expert on the subject ."... They go public shortly thereafter to discredit Shinseki. And says "wildly off the mark," and he gives this little speech about he "couldn't conceive of how you would have a case where it takes more people to secure the peace than it does to win the war." Well, you can look over the past 50 years in stability operations, and it's quite clear that that's precisely how the equation normally comes out, that Shinseki has a basis for this view. And Rumsfeld says something about it as well at the time.

So they discredit Shinseki. Then a week later, I get in front of the same committee. I see Sen. Levin before the hearing starts, and he says, "I'm going to ask you the same question." I said: "Good. You're going to get the same answer."

At that point, Shinseki and White are not on the team, right? We don't get it. We don't understand this thing, and we are not on the team. And therefore, actions are going to be taken.

- Gen. Thomas White (U.S. Army-Ret.) was Secretary of the Army from 2001 until April 2003, when he was fired by Donald Rumsfeld

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pentagon/interviews/white.html

[shelley806]

46. Thanks so much for posting this and the Frontline link...

I was going to view Frontline, but I honestly couldn't stand to watch Rumsfeld. His glib wit, required to disguise the truth or to downright lie, make me as ill as Bush's jokes about WMD's. These men are criminals, but if America reselects *, they deserve them all.

[omnos]

51. Interview with former Secretary of the Army

Great link. Which deserves wide readership.

This interview with the former Secretary of the Army is an insider's view of the battle between career army generals and the Bush-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz neocon ideologues. The generals told them that it would take twice as many troops to put Iraq back on its feet than it would to topple Sadaam, and that the Iraqi army (minus the Republican Guards loyal to Sadaam) had to be kept in place to help prevent post-invasion looting and the other multiple tasks of reconstruction. But they ignored this sound advice. And the rest -- including more than a thousand dead Americans -- is history.

Since the buck stops at the top, and Bush approved everything Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz decided, he is guilty of gross incompetence in his overall conduct of the Iraqui war. His incompetence in allowing Sadaam's explosives at al Qaqaa to be looted and used by the insurgents at the cost of American lives is just one example of a gigantic screw up.

[camero]

49. But hey, they could guard the oil wells.

Sounds more like a matter of priorities to me. Since the troops they used to guard the oil could have been used to guard the weapons, thus giving the "bad guys" less ammo and decreasing the likelihood of new attacks.

Those orders come from above, not below.

[coreystone]

50. Bush could not have sold the economic or military costs of this war…

to Congress or anyone else, if he, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, or, anyone else had a clue of the necessities which were needed to execute a successful operation; to say less about the fallacious justifications of pursuing this abominable travesty, the United States of America under the leadership of a RESPONSIBLE PRESIDENT AND STAFF could have pursued a less destructive road to resolving the issues of leadership in "conflict resolution", "peace keeping", and neutralizing the threats of terror to our citizens.

Knowing that the IAEA had secured the bunkers prior to the predominantly led invasion in March of 2003, it is amazing that the chain of command, and, the distribution of information contributed to such a blunder. "And while their whereabouts remains a matter under investigation, David Kay - who once headed up the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - says traces of the same type of explosives were found after a bombing this year outside a mosque in Najaf." It certainly does not sound as though Bush, Rumsfeld, or, anyone else was helping to protect our troops, nor, the national security interests of WHY Congress gave Bush a blank check to go "honking our horn" for American Imperialism.

Let's pretend I'm in High School! If, * told dad that * wants the car to go to a party on a Saturday night, and, dad asks, "Will there be drinking of alcoholic beverages at this party"? Then, * says, "No, these are good kids; they always do the right things." Then dad says, "WELL, if there is any "drinking" going on there. I want you to leave immediately"! "Sure dad", * says, "I am so glad you TRUST me!

"Oh! Crap! * pounded down a "twelve pack of beer", * was making out with Haley Burton, and, on the way home, * smashed the BMW 526 right into a tree on a "straight" section of road. The hitchhiker, * means, some guy from the Department of Defense...did you ever hear of them before..dad?...was doing it with "Haley" in the back seat. * was splitting a gut, dad, she was loving it so much. * just took his eye off the road for a second....bingo!...the next thing you know "* et al" were all happy as pig doo-doo that none of "* ET AL" got hurt.

"Now, you know it wasn't *'s fault, dad. Heck, "* ET AL" were just having a good time. Do think that "Kar-el" guy could help "* ET AL" out, so that policeman would get blamed for doing a "sloppy" investigation?" "He sure was upset when * "blew" the alcohol meter into the red zone. He actually thinks that * was being irresponsible. Boy, * tells dad...his name was Carey. "* has a good reputation to maintain; * knows * is going places in his life....all he asks is that to BLAME that cop who insulted him by telling me that I being "irresponsible"!


:silly: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

[ThoughtCriminal]

52. We supposedly knew exaclty where non-existant

WMDs were, but missed securing the high explosives where the inspectors TOLD us they were. The more they spin it, the more they look like idiots.

[maddezmom]

54. great post, wonder how many other ammo dumps they knew about

and have failed to search.

[flying_blind]

55. Fox's Bret Baier reports on Al Qaqaa

I have scoured the net for a link to this. It appears it fell from Fox News' site almost as fast as it got there. Small wonder given the report...

BRET BAIER'S REPORT ON AL QAQAA
BRET BAIER: the key is the time line. let's start with the IAEA. they sealed and tagged at least some of the 377 tons of missing explosives at this facility. and now in march 8, 2003, they went back to the site. the IAEA says they checked on some of the explosives at the site but did not see all of explosives. they did not check on all of them. they leave and the war starts.

The next date is April 3. that is when the third infantry division arrives at the site.

The next date is April 10. 101st airborne division gets there

The next date is May 8, 2003, when the 75th exploitation task force comes in. they search the bunkers and don't find any of the marked material.

The New York Times"" reported on Monday that the weapons appeared to have been taken recently.

BAIER: that is not true. May 8, 2003, the 75th task force exploitation task force searched the 32 bunkers and found no IAEA marked material. which meant in May of 2003, they knew those explosives were gone.

[milkyway]

56. I debunked this scoop of Baier and Fox last night. Here's

the link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1182794&mesg_id=1182794

[CHICKEN CAPITOL USA]

59. weapons of MEDIUM Destruction

not worried about those at first...
just looking for the Mass destruction weapons...

didn't find any?

I guess they later went looking for the next best thing--too late
---and now they didn't find the weapons of medium destruction either --
looser idiots planned the whole invasion--can they even find the pelet guns?
too busy sending troops to guard that "sweet crude" and the oil ministry.

[harpo]

60. don't protect the weapons...just the OIL...my precious