Reporter Saw Insurgents Loot Qaqaa Arms Depot

[RebelYell]

Reporter saw insurgents loot Qaqaa arms depot

By Katrin Bennhold
International Herald Tribune Saturday, October 30, 2004

PARIS - A French journalist who visited the Qaqaa munitions depot south of Baghdad in November last year said she witnessed Islamic insurgents looting vast supplies of explosives more than six months after the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime. The account of Sara Daniel, which will be published Wednesday in the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, lends further weight to allegations that American occupying forces in Iraq failed to protect hundreds of tons of munitions from extremists plotting attacks against their own troops.

Much of the controversy has centered around the disappearance of about 380 tons of the powerful HMX explosive. The material, which had been monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency before the war and subsequently sealed in bunkers by its inspectors, was reported missing by Iraqi officials earlier this month. Daniel, who spent nearly two hours at Qaqaa with a group that has since become known as the Islamic Army of Iraq, could not confirm seeing buildings that carried the agency's seal or explosives that were marked to be of the HMX variety. But her report is one of terrorists having easy access to a vast weapons inventory.

"I was utterly stupefied to see that a place like that was pretty much unguarded and that insurgents could help themselves for months on end," Daniel said on Friday. "We were there for a long time and no one disturbed the group while they were loading their truck."

A man who identified himself as Abu Abdallah and led the group Daniel was with, told her that his men and numerous other insurgent groups had rushed to Qaqaa after U.S.-led troops captured Baghdad on April 9 last year. The groups stole truck-loads of material from what used to be the biggest explosive factory in the Middle East in the expectation that coalition forces would move quickly to seal it off, Daniel was told.

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/29/news/explode.html

Edited typo in title

[Dufaeth]

1. Too bad she is French

They'll have an easy time spinning it with their supporters.

[RebelYell]

2. That crossed my mind too n/t

[Piperay]

9. Yeah, that was the first

thought that I had, no one here will pay any attention or give it any credibility because she is French and they hate France. :-(

[Democat]

3. "Will be published Wednesday"?

Great timing. :(

[baby_bear]

8. Yeah, what's with that publication date?

I guess we can only hope the report of the report suffices....

s_m

[TheWebHead]

4. did she take any photos?

hope so.

[OnceAndFutureTruth]

5. That is BIG, but I am having problems with that link. Is it me?

I'd like to find a good link so I can post about this elsewhere. Can anyone help?

[RebelYell]

7. Link works for me

http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/29/news/explode.html

[NNN0LHI]

6. Bush had the troops busy tearing down Saddam statues while this happened

Shit for brains.

Don

[TacticalPeek]

10. Likewise, and from a red-blooded American and former ambassador:

PETER W. GALBRAITH
Eyewitness to a failure in Iraq

By Peter W. Galbraith | October 27, 2004

IN 2003 I went to tell Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz what I had seen in Baghdad in the days following Saddam Hussein's overthrow. For nearly an hour, I described the catastrophic aftermath of the invasion -- the unchecked looting of every public institution in Baghdad, the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was letting this happen.

I also described two particularly disturbing incidents -- one I had witnessed and the other I had heard about. On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.

When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere.

There was nothing secret about the Disease Center or the Tuwaitha warehouses. Inspectors had repeatedly visited the center looking for evidence of a biological weapons program. The Tuwaitha warehouses included materials from Iraq's nuclear program, which had been dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War. The United Nations had sealed the materials, and they remained untouched until the US troops arrived.

more
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/10/27/eyewitness_to_a_failure_in_iraq

[JP Belgium]

11. Link to the original article

hope this helps...

original (french) : http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/etranger/20041029.OBS0285.html

translated :
http://nouvelobs.reverso.net/url/obsResult.asp?directions=65544&template=Default&autotranslate=1&url=http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/etranger/20041029.OBS0285.html

[RebelYell]

12. Excellent and thank you

The deposit(warehouse) of explosives
Was plundered for at least one year

NOUVELOBS.COM ¦ 30.10.04 ¦ 09:36

It is a city of explosives, the paradise of the insurgents. Al Qaqaa's site where disappeared 350 tons of explosives according to the IAEA served much later the fall of the regime to provide the groups of Iraqi insurgents. When I worked on cells of the guerrilla warfare which revolved around Lattifiya in November, 2003, I had followed the group which some days later after our visit to al Qaqaa was going to commit the attack(attempt) against the plane of the DHL. Abou Abdallah and his(her) comrades-in-arms had come steal of the TNT and explosives. The spectacle(entertainment) offered by this city of bombs(sprays), Aladdin's cave of the terrorist which extended over dozens kilometres was stunning. To make there, the group of the attack(attempt) of the DHL knew all the roads of crossbar, the small not tarred roads which the American soldiers do not borrow(take) because they are too much risked. To listen to them, after the fall of the regime, they had moved weapons and stocks of TNT by whole trucks thinking that the Americans would buckle(curl) this too attractive reserve of weapons. They had shown us their arsenal.

Rocket launchers, pomegranates(grenades) of the tinkered missiles of helicopter buried in fields of yellow zucchinis. But very fast, they had realized that it is the whole army that the Americans should have mobilized for keeping(guarding) the ancient(former) factory of al Qaqaa's weapons. Then they did not any more make the effort to store the TNT in the garden of their small farmhouses. In the gigantic sheds, covered with earth(ground), tumulus of explosives, they just had to use. Thanks to the invaluable red powder, the group of Abou Abdallah had assured(insured) me to have blown up a convoy on the road between al Asoua and the highway of Bassora.

~~~~~~~~

http://nouvelobs.reverso.net/url/obsResult.asp?directions=65544&template=Default&autotranslate=1&url=http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/etranger/20041029.OBS0285.html

[PassingFair]

13. Hey JP

i LOVE that photo...