The same month Al Qaqaa was being stripped of high explosives, I warned my military intelligence unit of another weapons facility that was being cleaned out. But nothing was done.By David DeBatto
About the writer
David DeBatto is an author and former U.S. Army counterintelligence agent who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Oct. 29, 2004 | When I read last Sunday's New York Times story of the missing explosives from the Iraqi weapons storage facility south of Baghdad at Al Qaqaa, it brought back memories from my time with the Army National Guard's 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion in Iraq last year. Bad memories. In the Times story, Iraqi scientists who worked at Al Qaqaa described how the facility was looted of almost 400 tons of high explosives right after the American troops swept through the area in April 2003 and failed to secure the site.
But Al Qaqaa is not the whole story. The same month it was being looted, I learned of another major weapons and ammunition storage facility, near my battalion's base at Camp Anaconda, that was unguarded and targeted by looters. But despite my repeated warnings -- and those of other U.S. intelligence agents -- nothing was done to secure this facility, as it was systematically stripped of enough weapons and explosives to equip anti-U.S. insurgents with enough roadside improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, for years to come.
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While working on this story, I called another member of the unit who served in Iraq with me at Anaconda, Sgt. Greg Ford. Ford was also a counterintelligence agent and is now retired from the National Guard and lives in California. Ford also remembers the vast weapons stockpiles lying open to looters just outside Anaconda. He advised me that he had also filed at least one written report about the problem and verbally advised Lt. Col. Ryan as well. Ford told me, "No one seemed too interested in what I said about that stuff. I went out there several times after I told them and the place was still unguarded. The more times I went out there, the more stuff was missing. It really sucked." Ford went on to say that his sources had also told him that local insurgents, ex-Baath party members as they were known then, were going to use the weapons as roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs). In fact, Ford told me, one of his sources in Samarra, a tribal sheik, told him that an Iraqi expatriate living in Syria had been sending drivers across the porous border between the two countries and systematically looting weapons storage facilities, including Al Qaqaa, for material to be used in making IEDs. Until that time, late spring of 2003, IEDs were virtually unknown in Iraq. But beginning around June, they became a common threat to U.S. forces around Anaconda and elsewhere.
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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/29/anaconda/index.html
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