Faux News Alert: Soldier to say he removed 200 tons of AlQaqaa explosives

[maddezmom]

Pentagon to hold a news conference at 12pm EST. Perfect timing...

Yes I was watching cuz, Kerry was speaking and no one else was covering



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=942525&mesg_id=942525

earler thread in LBN...my apologies to the mods. :)

[Shopaholic]

1. Just saw it up at Sludge

Claims his unit was ordered to remove it and that they removed 200 tons to Baghdad per Sludge. Wonder how much $$$ they had to pay this guy to come forward?

[Oilwellian]

11. They drove truckloads of explosives into Baghdad?

What kind of sense does that make? Why didn't they destroy it where it was located? Why didn't they let the IAEA know these explosives were destroyed? Why didn't they even KNOW these explosives were destroyed before saying Saddam removed them; the Russians took them; it was the troops fault; or we're just at a loss for words as to what happened to them. Also, this was supposedly done on April 13th, 5 days before the now famous film that proves the explosives were there on April 18th.

[Terran]

2. Oh, this should be interesting...

200 tons...and no one else in the military knew...

[wtmusic]

3. Whew! I *knew* there was a good explanation for this...

:eyes:

[trotsky]

4. Okey dokey...

so where are these 200 tons now?

Anyone? Bueller?

[calico1]

6. Under his bed? n/t

[maddezmom]

5. soldier is going to report...THEY HAD A PLAN

LOL

[maddezmom]

8. and removed the explosives on 4/13th??

[TacticalPeek]

7. The Faux disinformationist just gave a 5 min heads up.

The room looks bare for the press conf, so reporters must know this one is overbilled.

My guess is this ain't about the HMX etc., but normal EOD for lots of rusty bombs and shells like they have been showing in news clips. In other words, the "good news" about all that has been destroyed.

Plus, the bad guys are fast using up the stuff they looted, so soon they will run out. /sarcasm off

:evilgrin:

[oneighty]

15. The speaker is EOD?

180

[TacticalPeek]

24. Nope.

A storage site manager who wants his 15 minutes of national press.

:evilgrin:

[oneighty]

26. Looks like EOD patch

Paratrooper?? I cannot get a good look.

He does not have "Definitive" information. This is BS.

Civilian is correcting the Major and/or covering for him.

180..ex EOD.

[demosincebirth]

9. One soldier moved 200 tons of explosives...himself?

Gives us a break!

[dweller]

10. he just finished yesterday, give him a break!

:eyes:


dp

[Fovea]

16. Like I said in another thread

The last guy to move 16 tons of anything by themselves was Tennesse Ernie Ford.

[Fleshdancer]

12. This raises more questions than it answers

1. OK, say the soldier moved the explosives, where are they now? Where were they moved to? Are they secure?

2. If our soldiers moved the explosives, then why did the Admin release photos implying they were moved before our forces arrived in Iraq? Why didn't Bush know? After all, we're talking about an enormous amount of explosives here, not just a couple caches of guns. Certainly Rumsfield should have known if our soldiers moved 200 tons of explosives, right?

[punpirate]

13. I would very much like to see his medical records...

... because there has to be some indication in them of surgery for a double hernia.... :)

[Puglover]

14. LOL....okay then...

where is it now? Let's see it?

[TahitiNut]

17. What do you get when you mix a clusterfuck with disinformation?

Watch it live from the Pentagon. This is complete and utter hogwash.

[MostlyLurks]

20. A disclustinforfuck. n/t

[TacticalPeek]

18. I hope a reporter has the sense to ask the obvious question.

How much if any HMX did he secure and/or destroy?

[TacticalPeek]

21. I ain't believing my ears.

This turkey ain't even EOD! He's a suit! In charge of "managing" storage sites! Does not know if he destroyed HMX!

Initially, he said he heard the NBC report on TV earlier and called up the brass to get his RW talking points out!

Nothing here. Nada,

BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

[Historic NY]

19. ammunition is not explosives, it is bullets.

They removed ammunition no explosives - ammunition means bullets no explosives. He never mentioned explosives only ammunition.

The Major was only responsible for conventional ordinance, he said only TNT, phospherous, DET Cord, some plastic. He said he didn't know the difference of the different expolsives. Didn't see any IAEA seals.

After all the gobbly gook they can't even say this is the same stuff that the IAEA tagged.

My question is why not blow the stuff up in place?
This is the question that need to be asked.

He used nine trucks.

[Junkdrawer]

22. Pentagon to US Public: "Who ya going to believe, us or your lying eyes?"

"Oh, and did I tell you about all the other munitions we destroyed?"

[seemslikeadream]

23. Oregonian says he told military about looting of weapons

from LBN
hnsez (14 posts) Fri Oct-29-04 11:31 AM
Response to Reply #32

39. here it is

Oregonian says he told military about looting of weapons

08:48 AM PDT on Friday, October 29, 2004

Associated Press

Two U.S. aid workers, including one from Oregon, said they reported the looting of an Iraqi weapons depot to U.S. military officials in October, 2003, but were told that there were not enough troops to seal off the facility, The Oregonian reported in its Friday editions.


"We were outraged," said Wes Hare, city manager of La Grande, who was working in Iraq as part of a rebuilding program. A colleague, Jerry Kuhaida, told the newspaper it appeared that the explosives at the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area had found their way to insurgents targeting U.S. forces. "There's no question in my mind that the stuff in Ukhaider was used by terrorists," Kuhaida said from his home in Tennessee.


The men said they informed Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, but were told that the United States lacked the troops to guard the facility, which had more than 60 bunkers packed with munitions.
The issue of whether U.S. forces did enough to keep Iraqi munitions from insurgents has become an issue in the presidential campaign. Reports this week indicated that about 380 tons of highly powerful explosives had disappeared from a weapons depot in Al-Qaqaa after the arrival of U.S. forces.


Al Qaqaa is about 50 miles northeast of the Ukhaider site, which was used to store artillery shells and small-arms ammunition.
A Pentagon official told The Oregonian Thursday that the United States had been forced to leave many ammunition dumps in Iraq unguarded. The official, who declined to be identified, said the U.S. military had identified about 900 sensitive weapons sites in Iraq but had assigned only "a brigade-sized force" to deal with them. A brigade typically has about 3,500 soldiers.


The official said he could not speak to how Sanchez had handled the report about Ukhaider. The aid workers were in Iraq as employees of the International City/County Management Association. They said they found the depot on Oct. 10, 2003, while on a recreational trip.


The area appeared to be guarded by a half-dozen people in their teens and early 20s who had perhaps one rifle among them, and no vehicle to patrol the complex's hundreds of acres, according to the newspaper's report. Kuhaida said it wasn't clear whether the people were working for the military, the insurgents or someone else.
The guards told Kuhaida and Hare that they regularly heard trucks coming and going at night. The men were shown an intruder's truck that was blown up one night, apparently by an errant explosive.

more
http://www.kgw.com/iraq/stories/kgw_102904_news_iraq_we...

[seemslikeadream]

25. more

"The big concern we had was that something had to be done," Kuhaida said. "It was all fresh ammunition and gunpowder." So Kuhaida pledged to try to contact Sanchez, who was commanding U.S. forces in Iraq at the time. He found Sanchez's e-mail address on the Internet and sent a message saying he wanted to pass along some information.


When one of the general's aides replied, Kuhaida sent a list of munitions found at the depot, along with coordinates of its location. And he urged the military to secure the site.


The aide sent an immediate reply that said "they were taking action," Kuhaida said.


But when Kuhaida met the aide face to face in Baghdad a month later and asked about the depot, the aide told him the military simply didn't have enough troops to guard the site.


"There's no question in my mind that these guys were sincere about it," he said of their desire to keep munitions from falling into the wrong hands. "They just didn't have the resources."


U.S. military and intelligence officials were well-aware of the facility. Declassified documents from the first Persian Gulf War show that it was bombed in 1991, as a suspected storage site for biological weapons. On Jan. 16, 2003, before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, U.N. inspectors said they found 11 empty chemical warheads at Ukhaider. They said at the time the complex consisted of a series of bunkers built in the late 1990s.

more
http://www.kgw.com/iraq/stories/kgw_102904_news_iraq_we...