[The Bear is everywhere with another great round-up. But the stuff below is good, too. These vexing time management decisions...]
[We will put this WaPo editorial up at the top. They note the IAEA media manipulation, but fail to note the specific point that the US is opposing ElBaradei's bid for a third term as head of the IAEA. This was reported days prior to the IAEA letter of Oct. 1 that triggered this story.]
Bill Gertz of the Washington Times interviews John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security:
Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.
John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.
John Shaw has had legal troubles, but has also been at least partially cleared - we await the smear, although Winds of Change tells us he is an anti-neocon hero.
In a related development, more Pentagon push-back from Army Col. David Perkins - we controlled the roads, if not the facility, so nobody could have moved that much stuff after we arrived:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2004 – The chances that enemy forces moved 377 tons of heavy ordnance out of the Al Qaqaa arms facility after U.S. forces arrived in the area are nearly impossible, said Army Col. David Perkins, who commanded the American troops who took the area during major combat operations in Iraq in 2003.
...Perkins, now assigned to the Joint Staff, said it is "highly improbable" that the enemy was able to take the explosives out any time after U.S. forces arrived in the area. It would require "that the enemy sneaks a convoy of 10-ton trucks in and loads them up in the dark of night and infiltrates them in your convoy and moves out," he said. "That's kind of a stretch too far."
Finally, the NY Times rowback now looks like an effort by the Harvard Heavyweight Eight - if the Times rows back any faster, they will become airborne:
The missing explosives were first reported Monday by The New York Times and CBS News, and since then the issue and the possibility that American troops in Iraq let the explosives slip into terrorist hands have dominated the presidential campaign.
...The exact timing of the disappearance of the explosives is critical to the political arguments of each campaign. Mr. Kerry's contention that the administration did not adequately secure the country and was unprepared for the war's aftermath presumes that the explosives disappeared after the fall of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, as officials of the interim Iraqi government say.
If the explosives disappeared before Mr. Hussein fell, as Mr. Bush now says is possible, that would undercut Mr. Kerry's argument and bolster Mr. Bush's contention that his opponent is making charges without all the facts.
...The last time that international inspectors saw the explosives was in early March 2003, days before the American-led invasion. It is possible, inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency say, that Saddam Hussein's forces may have tried to move the material out of the 10 huge bunkers at the Al Qaqaa facility where it was stored to save it if the facility was bombed.
If so, that would partly support Mr. Bush's contention that the Iraqis could have moved 380 tons of material very far without being detected.
Yes, that was hidden in the original story, as we noted. Too bad Kerry missed it, while the Times now clings to it like a liferaft.
The Times also notes a Kerry rowback:
...he softened the assertion he made the day before that the explosives had already been used in attacks against American troops, saying instead that they "could very likely be in the hands of terrorists and insurgents, who are actually attacking our forces now 80 times a day on average."
NBC News reported the apparent non-use of the explosives, so this could be the Miklasevski Effect. Or a Bear Bite.
Now, serious question. Kerry's basic position is, "Omigod, terrorists got 380 tonnes of high explosives, vote Bush out now". Bush's basic position is, there are several hundered thousand tonnes of explosives in Iraq, bad people had access to them before, they still do, we don't know the facts, but we do know that Kerry will say anything.
Is Kerry exhibiting the tempermant of a sound, thoughtful leader, or does he sound like he would say anything? Look, if this is opportunistic late-election screaming, fine. But does anyone think he is serious? And are they worried if he is? Does he really believe everything he reads in the Times?
And are the Bush bashers really, cross your heart, telling me that these explosives are so special, and the facts are so clear, that this is a clear example of a Bush screw-up? Has anyone figured out how much HMX or RDX was in Iraq but not at Al QaQaa, where it was singled out as a dual use item? Has anyone figured out how much RDX floats around the world, available in Chechnya or Lebanon, or wherever bad guys operate? Has Kerry or his staff addressed this? Has anyone attempted to establish any perspective at all on this?
Oh, tell me next Wednesday.
UPDATE: OH, WTF is it now? ABC News was unrelenting in debunking the CBS-Killian forgeries, and they seem to be stirring themselves now:
Oct. 27, 2004 — Iraqi officials may be overstating the amount of explosives reported to have disappeared from a weapons depot, documents obtained by ABC News show.
The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S. military control.
But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported.
The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.
But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.
The IAEA documents from January 2003 found no discrepancy in the amount of the more dangerous HMX explosives thought to be stored at Al-Qaqaa, but they do raise another disturbing possibility.
The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.
Can we revisit the "no confidence in the IAEA" theme?
MORE: Old time CB fans, get out your C.W. McCall single - looks like we got us a convoy. If the ABC story means that we have no idea what was at Al QaQaa, this USA Today piece comes into play:
One year before President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, a U.S. spy satellite over the western Iraqi desert photographed trailer trucks lined up beside a military bunker. Canvas shrouded the trucks' cargo.
Through a system of relays, the satellite beamed digitized images to Fort Belvoir in Virginia, south of Washington. Within hours, analysts a few miles away at CIA headquarters had the pictures on high-definition computer screens. The photos would play a critical role in an assessment that now appears to have been wrong — that Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.
The way analysts interpreted the truck convoy photographed on March 17, 2002 — and seven others like it spotted over the next two months — is perhaps the single most important example of how U.S. intelligence went astray in its assessment of Saddam Hussein's arsenal. Analysts made logical interpretations of the evidence but based their conclusions more on supposition than fact.
...The eight convoys stood out from normal Iraqi military movements. They appeared to have extra security provided by Saddam's most trusted officers, and they were accompanied by what analysts identified as tankers for decontaminating people and equipment exposed to chemical agents.
But the CIA had a problem: Once-a-day snapshots from the KH-11 spy satellite didn't show where the convoys were going. "We couldn't get a destination," a top intelligence official recalled. "We tried and tried and tried. We never could figure that out."
As far as U.S. intelligence was concerned, the convoys may as well have disappeared, like a mirage, into the Iraqi desert. Nearly a year after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Saddam's supposed arsenal remains a mirage.
...The eight suspicious convoys bore a striking resemblance to known chemical-weapons convoys that had been picked up by spy satellite photos in 1988. Briefing top officials at CIA headquarters, analysts placed examples of the old and new photos side by side on poster board. They also contrasted the eight suspicious convoys with more than 100 conventional Iraqi military shipments also photographed during the spring of 2002. They showed them on posters labeled "Normal Activity" and "Unusual Activity."
...What were the convoys doing if they weren't moving chemical weapons? The tanker trucks might have been carrying water in case munitions exploded, or fuel to keep a long-distance convoy moving. The trailer trucks might have been loaded with conventional rockets or shells, which would be hard to distinguish from chemical munitions. U.S. intelligence did not know for sure, and still does not know, where the convoys were going or what they were carrying.
The timing does not square with the Gertz story, where the stuff was moved "weeks before". And the Gertz story does not fully square with the ABC story, which opens the possibility that there was no stuff to move. But as to the initial Times account, fully embraced and endorsed by John Kerry, questions have been raised.
As to the tactical and strategic benefits of the rapid movement of troops across Iraq during the invasion - yes, it was a trial of our modern military concepts. Here is what the President said about it in his famous "Mission Accomplished" speech:
In the images of falling statues, we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. For a hundred of years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever-growing scale. In defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Allied forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation.
Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war; yet it is a great moral advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent. (Applause.)
An insurgency requires men, motivation, and weapons. The concept of the rapid liberation (as contrasted with advancing mile by mile and securing everything discovered) was that we would minimize civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. One might hope that this would make it easier for a new government to take over, and for the US to be viewed as liberators rather than oppressors.
So far, not so good. But to say that this approach could not possibly have worked, and that the entire strategy of the war efort was wrong, is (a) hindsight; and (b) not what Kerry is saying.
At the time, according to Kerry, "everyone knew" we would win. And the quick blitz was pretty much what everyone expected.
MORE: Put this KTSP News story in the mix. it certainly documents what we have already been told - there were unsecured ammo dumps in Iraq. Were these the dumps with the HMX / RDX, and was this all of the explosive? Who knows?
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