October 27, 2004

Russian Bombshell

11:25 PM - All of the major media outlets (along with a gleeful Kerry campaign) have been hammering away at Bush over the "missing explosives" in Iraq. It's pretty much the only thing that they could come up with to try to get at Bush in the final week before the election.

Well, if you bring up a story (especially an older story in an attempt to smear a sitting President), expect to cover it when the answers are finally revealed.

CNN - Nothing
CBS - Nothing
ABC - Nothing
NBC - Nothing
FOX - Nothing
NYTimes - Nothing

Washington Times:

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.

"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."

You'd better read the ENTIRE article.

And some people thought it was crazy to think that countries like France..or Russia might have had something to hide. And weapons going to Syria? Impossible.

The other big media outlets will eventually pick this up...but only after those crazy people on the Internet force them to.

Now let's sit back and watch them scramble (including Kerry's campaign).

Update 10/28 7:00 AM: Still nothing from the major media outlets listed above. Some have, however, removed stories about the "missing explosives," but there have been no updates.

Update 2: Not only is this story blowing up in the media's (and Kerry's) face, the amount of explosives missing stolen moved by the Russians was overstated. Original claim - 377 tons. Correct claim - 3 tons. Story here. (via Instapundit)

Comments:

Please Note! Failure to abide by the following may result in your comments being edited or deleted: Remain on topic. Foul language and/or personal attacks are not permitted. Excessive links (more than three per thread) must be approved first. If you do include a link in your comment, make sure it is a short link (go to tinyurl.com if it is too long). Try to keep comments to 125 words or less. Thank you.

Once again, Patton was right - we should have taken care of those bastards when we had the chance.

Posted by: Big Daddy at October 28, 2004 09:00 AM

blake u are becoming quite the crybaby excuse-maker. one person at the wash. times quotes and unnamed source as saying the (always blameable) russians took the weapons and that's it for you? that's all the convincing it takes? curiously, where is your outrage at the bush administration using bogus documents about Niger as a pretext for war?

Posted by: jakec at October 28, 2004 10:15 AM

like the cbs forged documents?

by the way, those "forged" documents werent used as the pretext. even if they were wrong about the uranium they didnt use the forged documents

http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html

they came after the "16 words"

"Both the Butler report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report make clear that Bush's 16 words weren't based on the fake documents. The British didn't even see them until after issuing the reports -- based on other sources -- that Bush quoted in his 16 words. But discovery of the Italian fraud did trigger a belated reassessment of the Iraq/Niger story by the CIA."

Posted by: Ripper at October 28, 2004 10:39 AM

nice try - cheney and powell both refered to the documents - period. undeniable. curiously, when is the bush administration going to out the person who revealed the identity of joseph wilson's wife? and yes - those documents were forged. and yes bush himself refered to them outside of the state of the union address - period. undeniable.

Posted by: jakec at October 28, 2004 10:59 AM

hmm - where is the "bulletproof evidence" (again, his words, not mine) that dick cheney spoke of in regards to Iraqi MWD as a pretext for war? 300 million tons of chemical weapons that never existed - doesn't sound so "bulletproof" ...

Posted by: jakec at October 28, 2004 12:15 PM

look what the IAEA has to say about it:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=5&u=/ap/20041028/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_weapons_iaea

the following items are undeniable:

1)regardless of when the explosives were moved, the site was never secured by the US, despite warnings to do so (never secured means never inspected).

2)Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted in April 2003 - which doesn't lend much credibility to the US on this issue (why not secure a nuke facility).

3) very few known weapons/munitions depots were or have been secured. weapons have been slowly removed and then destroyed at safe locations by the US and were still being looted by iraqis as recently as 2 weeks ago (from the last item i read on the subject - but stands to reason it could have been done since that time, as well).

this is mismanagement - period. rumsfeld admitted recently the didn't plan for post-war iraq - is anyone surprised by this? if president bush wins the election and rumsfeld keeps his job - i would be completely shocked.

Posted by: jakec at October 28, 2004 01:29 PM

regardless of when they were moved? if the major explosives were gone before they got there which it was then why would they try to secure it? especially in the middle of a major military operation. for that much to be removed it would have required dozens of trucks which would have been impossible after us forces were there. the pentagon is in the process of declassifying pictures showing those trucks at the facility before the war started. the only item that cant be denied here is that this is an old story being brought up a week before an election.

Posted by: Ripper at October 28, 2004 02:39 PM

and how often has bill gertz been off the mark?

Posted by: Ripper at October 28, 2004 02:40 PM

u missed my point completely - i say "regardless" only because we may never know, since they failed to secure it (after ebing warned). wouldn't it have been worth investigating or was the oil ministry the only item of importance?

Posted by: jakec at October 28, 2004 05:23 PM

it's no differnet than the WMD - by any estimate, moving them would be a major chore and i think we can all agree that Iraq was no more heavily surveilled than before the war. where is the evidence of russian complicity? also (see above), they failed to secure nuke facilities and major munitions caches - why should this be any different? and if not this one then there were plenty of other sites. if your contention is that john kerry put all his eggs in one basket - fine - no argument here. but i taint john kerry - this is such a mismanaged fucktard of a job it's almost comical - except the end result is dead american soldiers and iraqi civilians ...

Posted by: jakec at October 28, 2004 05:28 PM

also, ripper it seems like maybe you didn't read the article about the IAEA stance on the subject, so i will lift a salient passage for you:

"ABC News, citing IAEA inspection documents, reported Wednesday night that the Iraqis had declared 141 tons of RDX explosives at Al-Qaqaa in July 2002, but that the site held only three tons when it was checked in January 2003.

The network said that could suggest that 138 tons were removed from the facility long before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

But Fleming said most of the RDX — about 125 tons — was kept at Al-Mahaweel, a storage site under Al-Qaqaa's jurisdiction located outside the main Al-Qaqaa site. She also said about 10 tons already had been reported by Iraq as having been used for non-prohibited purposes between July 2002 and January 2003."

and then this ...

"IAEA inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers. Inspectors visited the site again in March 2003, but didn't view the explosives because the seals were not broken, she said."

the supposed movement captured could have been from bunker to bunker - if you believe the IAEA (not really in the business of lying, as far as i know) ...

Posted by: jakec at October 28, 2004 05:38 PM

how often bill gertz been off the mark? not sure. but the total just went up by ine:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041029/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq_weapons_19

Posted by: jakec at October 29, 2004 10:31 AM

"one" that should say ...

Posted by: jakec at October 29, 2004 10:32 AM

here ya go ripper - here is your surveillance:

"The Pentagon also declassified and released a single image, taken by reconnaissance aircraft or satellite just days before the war, showing two trucks outside one of the dozens of storage bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa munitions base.

The particular bunker is not one known to have contained any of the missing explosives, and Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita said the image only shows that there was some Iraqi activity at the base when it was taken, on March 17. Di Rita said the image says nothing about what happened to the explosives. "

Posted by: jakec at October 29, 2004 10:35 AM