Summary of explosives issue

[jfern]

Borrowed from here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/29/13056/484

The Republicans are doing their level best to muddy the waters on the explosives issue. That means that part of our job has to be to get out a clear, well documented and referenced narrative to counter their noise machine. I hesitated to create yet another diary on this subject but what I want to do here is to consolidate all the great info that's being ferreted by the whole team here and organize it neatly so we have all the facts right at hand.

The second job then is to get it out to everyone. The latest Republican spin is: "this helps us" - not sure how they justify that but we need to counter it by drawing the next conclusion: lost explosives show how incompetent the Bush team is.

Another new dimension to this story which is emerging is the "this is just the tip of the iceberg" storyline.

To sumarize:

1. Al-Qaqaa explosives looted on Bush's watch
2. Bush ordered the oil ministry guarded, NOT the arms depots - shows both incompetence and true motivations.
3. This is just the tip of the iceberg for missing arms
4. MOST important: Bush needs to take responsibility for the fiasco



Diaries :: storme's diary ::

List of Media Outlets
Help the media get the story right - take a few minutes to push this. Especially helpful is to point out how they are lying: the misleading Pentagon photos and the Shaw lies. Shows that they are desperate and trying to weasel out of taking responsibility.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/1/183955/602

The explosives were at Al-Qaqaa when the 101st Airborne Division arrived

1. KSTP footage show explosives in Al-Qaqaa bunkers during invasion.
http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1

2. KSTP footage shows SEALED bunkers with IAEA tag
http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3741.html?cat=1

3. ABC Video shows explosives at Al Qaqaa on April 18th as reported by the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/politics/29bomb.html?hp&ex=1099022400&en=3386d85551d694e2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

4. ABC News reports that the seals indicate HMX was in bunker
"The seal's critical," Albright said. "The fact that there's a photo of what looks like an IAEA seal means that what's behind those doors is HMX. They only sealed bunkers that had HMX in them."
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=206847

5. NY Times reports Al-Qaqaa looted after Americans left: 4 eyewitnesses
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28bomb.html?hp&ex=1099022400&en=b 50b42da5ffd60de&ei=5094&partner=homepage

6. UK Independent News eyewitness reports explosives looted after US left.
"Al-Qaqa'a, the Iraqi military complex from which 350 tons of explosives disappeared, was looted after US troops left the area refusing requests to protect the site, Iraqi witnesses say." http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=577148

7. David Kay on ABC tells Aaron Brown: "That is an IAEA seal" and "Those are barrels of HMX"
Transcript: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0410/28/asb.01.html

The explosives were NOT removed by US troops
1. ABC Video shows explosives at Al Qaqaa on April 18th as reported by the NY Times: NY Times story

2. The Pentagon press conference Friday AM failed to show that the equipment the soldier spoke of removing was in any way connected to the missing HMX and later photos show the explosives still present on April 18th. The Pentagon is providing political damage control for Bush - why is the Pentagon misleading the American public?

Other Ammo depots abandoned and looted

1. U.S. left ammo site unguarded reports the Oregonian
"Six months after the fall of Baghdad, a vast Iraqi weapons depot with tens of thousands of artillery rounds and other explosives remained unguarded, according to two U.S. aid workers who say they reported looting of the site to U.S. military officials."
http://oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/1099052619177610.xml

2. The looting of Iraq's arsenal - Salon reports looting of another arms depot
"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."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/29/anaconda/index.html


Pentagon photos of trucks at Al-Qaqaa are deliberately misleading

1. ** The trucks pictured in the Pentagon satellite photos are NOT at any of the nine bunkers identified by the IAEA as containing the missing explosive stockpiles. Is the pentagon trying to mislead the press? **

"a comparison of features in the DoD-released imagery with available commercial satellite imagery, combined with the use of an IAEA map showing the location of bunkers used to store the HMX explosives, reveals that the trucks pictured on the DoD image are not at any of the nine bunkers indentified by the IAEA as containing the missing explosive stockpiles. "

Source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/al_qa_qaa-imagery4.htm


"The Russians took explosives" story is a lie - Did the Bush campaign ask Shaw to lie?

1. The Russian foreign ministry refutes the story: "Vyacheslav Sedov, the head of the Russian Defence Ministry's press service, quoted by Interfax news agency, said "one cannot regard such reports as other than far-fetched and ridiculous."
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/10/28/iraqrefute.shtml

2 continued. John Shaw, the source of the Russia story is a liar and a fraud:
"A senior Defense Department official conducted unauthorized investigations of Iraq reconstruction efforts and used their results to push for lucrative contracts for friends and their business clients, according to current and former Pentagon officials and documents.

John A. "Jack" Shaw, deputy undersecretary for international technology security, represented himself as an agent of the Pentagon's inspector general in conducting the investigations, sources said.

In one case, Shaw disguised himself as an employee of Halliburton Co. and gained access to a port in southern Iraq after he was denied entry by the U.S. military, the sources said. "
Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6441.htm