Aid worker says military failed secure Iraqi weapons

[Proud2BAmurkin]

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A former U.S. aid worker in Iraq said Friday he told American military commanders about finding a huge weapons depot six months after the fall of Baghdad but no effort was made to secure the munitions and he fears the explosives reached insurgent hands.

"They didn't have the manpower," Jerry Kuhaida said he was told by an aide to Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then-commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

"Being in Iraq, the problems that were over there were so numerous that there were plenty of other things to do, and that sort of got lost in the shuffle," said Kuhaida, a former mayor of Oak Ridge, Tenn.

But Kuhaida's account has surfaced now as the presidential campaigns focus on whether some 377 tons of explosives at another Iraq depot at Al-Qaqaa were looted after the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

One of Kuhaida's colleagues — Wes Hare, city manager of La Grande, Ore. — gave a similar account to The Oregonian newspaper published Friday.

"We were outraged," Hare, now on a mission to Croatia, told the newspaper.

Kuhaida and Hare were in Iraq from September 2003 until this March working for the International City/County Management Association. Their mission was to help restore government services.

http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1099090469248880.xml&storylist=orlocal