350 TONS of HIGH GRADE explosives vanish

[WindowSill]

If this is already in another thread, my bad, I dont pay attention...

Apparently the explosives were stolen during a "loot" of some sort... (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/25/iraq.explosives.ap/index.html)


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/metalsat666/JetSill.gif

I got an idea, an idea so smart my head would explode if I even began to know what I was talking about.

[mdr55]

Thank allah they didn't loot the Oil. We at least had enough troops for something.

Hafa Adai.

[Recyclerz]

Oh, it hasn't vanished; if fact, we're accounting for 20 or 30 lbs. of it at a clip - every time another car bomb goes off. :(

NY Times story (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25bomb.html?hp&ex=1098763200&en=fd35fdf4b6d46d61&ei=5094&partner=homepage)

The Times story has much more detail and context than the CNN link. "Best" quote:

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.


How much more evidence that this Administration is hopelessly, dangerously incompetent does this damn country need before we get the message?




<IMG SRC="http://www.hometown.aol.com/recyclerz/myhomepage/sigpic1.gif?mtbrand=AOL_US">
[b]There ain't no asylum here.
King Solomon he never lived 'round here.[b]

This message was edited by Recyclerz on 10-25-04 @ 11:16 AM

[FUNKMAN]

here are the top 3 news stories on Yahoo:



IAEA: 380 tons of Iraq explosives missing
 Bush: I'm best candidate to protect U.S.
 Iraq suspects infiltrators in massacre



Why don't this guy buy a fucking clue!




<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v53/monster6sixty6/guests/fm3_sig.jpg ">

[TooCute]

Bah. I am just so sick of it all.

<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/10/20041025-1.html">From here...</a>

Q But after Iraqi Freedom, there were those caches all around, wasn't the multinational force -- who was responsible for keeping track --

MR. McCLELLAN: At the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom there were a number of priorities. It was a priority to make sure that the oil fields were secure, so that there wasn't massive destruction of the oil fields, which we thought would occur. It was a priority to get the reconstruction office up and running. It was a priority to secure the various ministries, so that we could get those ministries working on their priorities, whether it was --

Q So it was the multinational force's responsibility --

MR. McCLELLAN: There were a number of -- well, the coalition forces, there were a number of priorities at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom.


So basically, while I agree that protecting oil fields and ministries is important... they were more of a priority than the 350 TONS of explosives? I think I read somewhere today that it took less than a POUND of the same explosive to bring down Pan-Am flight 103?

What the fuck?

<img src="http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/bans/toocute3.gif">

[GodsFavoriteMan]

How much more evidence that this Administration is hopelessly, dangerously incompetent does this damn country need before we get the message?

Short of going on national television and saying "Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm a fucking tool," I really don't know.

But then again, they may simply refuse to believe it. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57582-2004Oct23.html?sub=new)(registration req)

<img src="http://home.comcast.net/~stan_ferguson/goodluvin_copy.jpg">

[mdr55]

here are the top 3 news stories on Yahoo:



IAEA: 380 tons of Iraq explosives missing
 Bush: I'm best candidate to protect U.S.
 Iraq suspects infiltrators in massacre



Why don't this guy buy a fucking clue!



You guys are too funny. We all know that no matter what happens, it's always someone else's fault. Stop blaming the President!

Hafa Adai.

[Yerdaddy]

Like we needed more proof that we haven't had enough troops in Iraq to do the job FOR A YEAR AND A HALF now. What would be the rationalization of the Bush loyalists if Bush was just lining up American soldiers and shooting them in the head? That he's "resolute"?

The administration has lost this war already, and yet the piece of shit still has a good chance of getting re-elcted. I'm deeply ashamed of this country right now.

<img src="http://scripts.cgispy.com/image.cgi?u=bonedaddy5">
Fuck it from behind.

[Reephdweller]

If this (http://www.drudgereport.com/nbcw.htm) is true, then these were missing before the U.S. actually got there..



But tonight, NBCNEWS reported, once: The 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were already missing back in April 10, 2003 -- when U.S. troops arrived at the installation south of Baghdad!

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

It is not clear why the NYTIMES failed to report the cache had been missing for 18 months -- and was reportedly missing before troops even arrived.


btw I'm not saying this report is true or defending the administration, just adding this development into the mix.

<center><IMG SRC="http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/randomizer/random.php?uid=3">
Reefy's website... (http://www.osirusonline.com/)</center>
<font size="1" color="red">
<center>Check out The Ron and Fez Show Logs...UPDATED!!!!! (http://www.osirusonline.com/ronfez.htm)</center>
<marquee behavior=alternate bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Right now you could care less about me...
but soon enough you will care, by the time I'm done</marquee> </font>

[Yerdaddy]

NYT article sited above:
United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.
Why would the White House order an investigation if they were removed before the war?

<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933/" target="_blank">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933/</a>:
At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said U.S.-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact.

<img src="http://scripts.cgispy.com/image.cgi?u=bonedaddy5">
Fuck it from behind.

[Ndugu]

Why would the White House order an investigation if they were removed before the war?


your mom

is that you with that shit eatin grin in that sig, liberal whine bag has come to enlighten us



-=This My Signature=-

[TheMojoPin]

Way to take the level of discourse in here even lower, Ndugu.

You enter one of these threads with zero to offer except insults one more time and you're gone for a week.

Clear?

<img src="http://scripts.cgispy.com/image.cgi?u=TheMojoPin">
1979 << I love my drug buddy... >> "You can tell some lies about the good times we've had, but I've kissed your mother twice...and now I'm working on your dad..."

[HBox]

I haven't seen any TV news stories on this, so please enlighten me if you have: How do you pronounce "Al Qa Qaa," and please don't tell me it's pronounced, "Al Ka Ka."

I hate to link to blogs, but here's a great link for info on this story. (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/) NBC News reported that they had a team embedded with a division that searched the site and at that time there were no explosives there. That was the story Drudge was hyping. Problem is that that wasn't the first military group to search the site. It was searched a week before NBC got there, and the explosives were there at that point.

http://www.myimgs.com/random/hbox/sig

This message was edited by HBox on 10-26-04 @ 2:21 AM

[NewYorkDragons80]

[font=Century gothic][color=navy][size=2]I haven't seen any TV news stories on this, so please enlighten me if you have: How do you pronounce "Al Qa Qaa," and please don't tell me it's pronounced, "Al Ka Ka."
I am only familiar with Standard Arabic and not the Iraqi pronunciation, but based on the Arabic script, it's that simple; "Al-Kakah"

<marquee>
"To insist on strength is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering." -Senator Barry M. Goldwater "If gold should rust, what will iron do?" -Geoffrey Chaucer "Worship him, I beg you, in a way that is worthy of thinking beings.-Romans 12:1</marquee>
<img src=http://members.aol.com/cityhawk80/images/nydragonssig.bmp?mtbrand=AOL_US>

[Reephdweller]

I'm not exactly sure what the deal is with this story, at this point. I mean does this mean the New York Times got it wrong? Or does it mean that as far as the military is concerned that these explosives were missing before we even got there?

If that is the case, does that mean that Bush is to blame, or not? I only ask this because I really haven't looked too closely into this situation until really late last night and into today, but I really want to understand this more. I've read everything from above, as well as the NBC story, as well as the new thing from Drudge that 60 Minutes (http://www.drudgereport.com/nbcw6.htm) has now killed this piece from airing. Where do we stand on this. I mean Kerry and Edwards were slamming the president about this yesterday and if this is wrong than it would mean that they got it wrong as well and should retract their statements if that's the case.

What's the truth in all of this, or has it not yet been revealed?

<center><IMG SRC="http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/randomizer/random.php?uid=3">
Reefy's website... (http://www.osirusonline.com/)</center>
<font size="1" color="red">
<center>Check out The Ron and Fez Show Logs...UPDATED!!!!! (http://www.osirusonline.com/ronfez.htm)</center>
<marquee behavior=alternate bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Right now you could care less about me...
but soon enough you will care, by the time I'm done</marquee> </font>

[HBox]

60 Minutes has been killing off anti-Bush pieces since the Rather fiasco. What happened is still muddled. But here are the two NBC reports, the first from yesterday and the next from today:

"April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qakaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing. The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon. In a letter this month, the Iraqi interim government told the International Atomic Energy Agency the high explosives were lost to theft and looting due to lack of security. Critics claim there were simply not enough U.S. troops to guard hundreds of weapons stockpiles, weapons now being used by insurgents and terrorists to wage a guerrilla war in Iraq."

Following up on that story from last night, military officials tell NBC News that on April 10, 2003, when the Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne entered the Al QaQaa weapons facility, south of Baghdad, that those troops were actually on their way to Baghdad, that they were not actively involved in the search for any weapons, including the high explosives, HMX and RDX. The troops did observe stock piles of conventional weapons but no HMX or RDX. And because the Al Qaqaa facility is so huge, it's not clear that those troops from the 101st were actually anywhere near the bunkers that reportedly contained the HMX and RDX. Three months earlier, during an inspection of the Al Qaqaa compound, the International Atomic Energy Agency secured and sealed 350 metric tons of HMX and RDX. Then in March, shortly before the war began, the I.A.E.A. conducted another inspection and found that the HMX stockpile was still intact and still under seal. But inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound.

Pentagon officials say elements of the 101st airborne did conduct a thorough search of several facilities around the Al QaQaa compound for several weeks during the month of April in search of WMD. They found no WMD. And Pentagon officials say it's not clear at that time whether those other elements of the 101st actually searched the Al QaQaa compound.

Now, Pentagon officials say U.S. troops and members of the Iraq Survey Group did arrive at the Al QaQaa compound on May 27. And when they did, they found no HMX or RDX or any other weapons under seal at the time. Now, the Iraqi government is officially said that the high explosives were stolen by looters. Pentagon officials claim it's possible -- they're not sure, they say, but it's possible that Saddam Hussein himself ordered that these high explosives be removed and hidden before the war. What is clear is that the 350 metric tons of high explosives are still missing, and that the U.S. or Iraqi governments or international inspectors, for that matter, cannot say with any certainty where they are today.

[font=Century gothic][color=navy][size=2]The division that NBC News was with was not the first division to get to the site, and had neither the time nor the ability to inspect the huge complex. David Kay, the Iraqis, and anonymous Pentagon officials are all saying that they were probably removed after the fall of Baghdad. If so, its probably just another symptom of the lack of troops and misplaced priorities. Whether you want to blame Bush for that is up to you.

Another way you could look at it is that, before the war, we knew this was a huge weapons stockpile. And, apparently, we thought there were chemical weapons there. And if this huge amount of explosives was moved from the site, it would take a huge effort with lots of heavy trucks to get the stuff out of

[HBox]

And here's an NBC interview with a producer that was with the NBC News team that was in Al QaQaa:

Amy Robach: And it's still unclear exactly when those explosives disappeared. Here to help shed some light on that question is Lai Ling. She was part of an NBC news crew that traveled to that facility with the 101st Airborne Division back in April of 2003. Lai Ling, can you set the stage for us? What was the situation like when you went into the area?

Lai Ling Jew: When we went into the area, we were actually leaving Karbala and we were initially heading to Baghdad with the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. The situation in Baghdad, the Third Infantry Division had taken over Baghdad and so they were trying to carve up the area that the 101st Airborne Division would be in charge of. Um, as a result, they had trouble figuring out who was going to take up what piece of Baghdad. They sent us over to this area in Iskanderia. We didn't know it as the Qaqaa facility at that point but when they did bring us over there we stayed there for quite a while. Almost, we stayed overnight, almost 24 hours. And we walked around, we saw the bunkers that had been bombed, and that exposed all of the ordinances that just lied dormant on the desert.

AR: Was there a search at all underway or was, did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?

LLJ: No. There wasn't a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was - at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.

AR: And there was no talk of securing the area after you left. There was no discussion of that?

LLJ: Not for the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. They were -- once they were in Baghdad, it was all about Baghdad, you know, and then they ended up moving north to Mosul. Once we left the area, that was the last that the brigade had anything to do with the area.

AR: Well, Lai Ling Jew, thank you so much for shedding some light into that situation. We appreciate it.

http://www.myimgs.com/random/hbox/sig

[Yerdaddy]

Why is Drudge suddenly the Oracle of Delphi all of a sudden?

<img src="http://scripts.cgispy.com/image.cgi?u=bonedaddy5">
Fuck it from behind.

[Reephdweller]

http://www.romanceeverafter.com/images/The_Oracle_of_Delphi.JPG

This Oracle?

:)

<center><IMG SRC="http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/randomizer/random.php?uid=3">
Reefy's website... (http://www.osirusonline.com/)</center>
<font size="1" color="red">
<center>Check out The Ron and Fez Show Logs...UPDATED!!!!! (http://www.osirusonline.com/ronfez.htm)</center>
<marquee behavior=alternate bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Right now you could care less about me...
but soon enough you will care, by the time I'm done</marquee> </font>

[Yerdaddy]

http://www.romanceeverafter.com/images/The_Oracle_of_Delphi.JPG

This Oracle?

:)
No, the one I'm thinking of had two eyebrows.

<img src="http://scripts.cgispy.com/image.cgi?u=bonedaddy5">
Fuck it from behind.

[Reephdweller]

Oh, this one... (http://www.oracleofdelphi.com/)


http://images.loudnoises.net/bro-37.jpg

<center><IMG SRC="http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/randomizer/random.php?uid=3">
Reefy's website... (http://www.osirusonline.com/)</center>
<font size="1" color="red">
<center>Check out The Ron and Fez Show Logs...UPDATED!!!!! (http://www.osirusonline.com/ronfez.htm)</center>
<marquee behavior=alternate bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Right now you could care less about me...
but soon enough you will care, by the time I'm done</marquee> </font>

[Se7en]

60 Minutes has been killing off anti-Bush pieces since the Rather fiasco. What happened is still muddled. But here are the two NBC reports, the first from yesterday and the next from today:


Whoa, wait - so this was an event that likely happened months back, INSTEAD of a RECENT screw-up, as was so heavily implied by media sources like the New York Times?

Man, my world just got rocked.

<center><img border="0" src="http://se7enrfnet.homestead.com/files/7_sig.gif" width="300" height="100">
<br>
<br>
Don't blame me....I voted for Kodos.
I look forward to an orderly election that will eliminate the need for a violent bloodbath. </center>

[HBox]

Well, everyone just found out about it October 10. Besides, there's no statute of limitation on these kinds of fuckups.

EDIT: Let me correct that. Everyone outside our government found out about this October 10. They decided not to tell us, and this is what that tactic has wrought.

http://www.myimgs.com/random/hbox/sig

This message was edited by HBox on 10-26-04 @ 10:34 PM

[FUNKMAN]

does it really matter when they disappeared, the fact is they've disappeared and this Administration has not had any answers or explanations...

EDIT: looks like they may be planning on asking for 79 billion more soon. probably not before the election and they'll wait to see if they get re-elected. Like i've said before, they should use some of the 200 billion they're using for this war "so far" and some of the 7.8 trillion they used to build the deficit and buy a clue



<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v91/SatCam/sig_funkmanstill.jpg">

This message was edited by FUNKMAN on 10-26-04 @ 10:04 PM

[sr71blackbird]

So wait a minute...

High explosives are different from weapons of mass distruction in what way?

Oh, maybe Im thinking of stuff that just destroys a lot of other stuff..my bad

<center>
http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/randomizer/random.php?uid=8 </center>


<center><B>My Thanks to Just Jon, Reefdwella, ADF, Yerdaddy,Monsterone and Katylina for the sig-pic help and creation!</B></center>
<marquee behavior=alternate><font size=1>Which Witch Wished Which Wicked Wish?</marquee>

[mdr55]

does it really matter when they disappeared, the fact is they've disappeared and this Administration has not had any answers or explanations...


why does everyone always blame Bush and his cronies. We all know it's the terrorist fault that the stuff disappeared. BUSH could part the Red Sea and that wouldn't be enough for you guys---"Um.....you didn't part the Red Sea evenly". What more do you people want?? (besides 4 more years).

Hafa Adai.

[FUNKMAN]

why does everyone always blame Bush and his cronies. We all know it's the terrorist fault that the stuff disappeared. BUSH could part the Red Sea and that wouldn't be enough for you guys---"Um.....you didn't part the Red Sea evenly". What more do you people want?? (besides 4 more years).


watch it pal, you ain't gonna catch that ace everytime... and your analogies don't hold water, or part it!


<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v91/SatCam/sig_funkmanstill.jpg">

[Reephdweller]

EDIT: looks like they may be planning on asking for 79 billion more soon. probably not before the election and they'll wait to see if they get re-elected.



Yeah but it's not so much of a secret if we all know that. The fact that they're going to ask for more money is already out there. If the people don't like it or are fed up with this then they need to vote him out.

What gets me is how people will quickly forget this and after he gets re-elected will have a fit that he wants more money, when this info came out a week before the election.

<center><IMG SRC="http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/randomizer/random.php?uid=3">
Reefy's website... (http://www.osirusonline.com/)</center>
<font size="1" color="red">
<center>Check out The Ron and Fez Show Logs...UPDATED!!!!! (http://www.osirusonline.com/ronfez.htm)</center>
<marquee behavior=alternate bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Right now you could care less about me...
but soon enough you will care, by the time I'm done</marquee> </font>

[Yerdaddy]

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/iraq_us_explosives" target="_blank">Iraq says 'impossible' explosives taken before regime fall</a>

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A top Iraqi science official said it was impossible that 350 tonnes of high explosives could have been smuggled out of a military site south of Baghdad before the regime fell last year.

"It is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime's fall," said Mohammed al-Sharaa, who heads the science ministry's site monitoring department and previously worked with UN weapons inspectors under Saddam.

"The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall and I spoke to them about it and they even issued certified statements to this effect which the US-led coalition was aware of."

Sharaa also warned that other nearby sites with similar materials could have also been plundered.

"The Al-Milad Company in Iskandariyah and the Yarmouk and Hateen facilities contained explosive materials that could have also been taken out," the official told AFP in an interview.

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/politics/27bomb.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=" target="_blank">No Check of Bunker, Unit Commander Says</a>

White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell.

But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the site and had merely stopped there overnight.

The commander, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said he did not learn until this week that the site, Al Qaqaa, was considered sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited it before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.

Colonel Anderson, who is now the chief of staff for the division and who spoke by telephone from Fort Campbell, Ky., said his troops had been driving north toward Baghdad and had paused at Al Qaqaa to make plans for their next push.

"We happened to stumble on it,'' he said. "I didn't know what the place was supposed to be. We did not get involved in any of the bunkers. It was not our mission. It was not our focus. We were just stopping there on our way to Baghdad. The plan was to leave that very same day. The plan was not to go in there and start searching. It looked like all the other ammunition supply points we had seen already."

What had been, for the colonel and his troops, an unremarkable moment during the sweep to Baghdad took on new significance this week, after The New York Times, working with the CBS News program "60 Minutes," reported that the explosives at Al Qaqaa, mainly HMX and RDX, had disappeared since the invasion.

President Bush's aides told reporters that because the soldiers had found no trace of the missing explosives on April 10, they could have been removed before the invasion. They based their assertions on a report broadcast by NBC News on Monday night that showed video images of the 101st arriving at Al Qaqaa.

By yesterday afternoon Mr. Bush's aides had moderated their view, saying it was a "mystery" when the explosives disappeared and that Mr. Bush did not want to comment on the matter until the facts were known.

On Sunday, administration officials said that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. taskforce that hunted for unconventional weapons, had been ordered to look into the disappearance of the explosives. On Tuesday night, CBS News reported that Charles A. Duelfer, the head of the taskforce, denied receiving such an order.
[quote]The 101st Airborne Division arrived April 10 and left the next day. The next recorded v

[Reephdweller]

HMX: High melting explosives, as they are scientifically known, are among the most powerful in use by the world's militaries today. HMX, also known as octogen, is made from hexamine, ammonium nitrate, nitric acid and acetic acid. Because it detonates at high temperatures, it is used in various kinds of explosives, rocket fuels and burster chargers.
___

RDX: Also referred to as cyclonite or hexogen, RDX is a white crystalline solid usually used in mixtures with other explosives, oils or waxes. Rarely used alone, it has a high degree of stability in storage and is considered the most powerful of the high explosives used by militaries.
___

PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES: Experts say both HMX and RDX are key ingredients in plastic explosives such as Semtex and C-4, puttylike military substances that easily can be shaped. Libyan terrorists used just 1 pound of Semtex in 1988 to down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

C-4 or its main ingredients were used in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole (news - web sites) in Yemen that killed 17 U.S. sailors. Traces of RDX were found in an investigation of explosions that crippled two heavily fortified Israeli tanks, indicating Palestinian militants have obtained at least small quantities of the extremely potent material.

Just 5 pounds of either plastic explosive would be enough to blow up a dozen jetliners, experts say.
___

NUCLEAR USE: Experts say HMX can be used to create a highly powerful explosion with enough intensity to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.


So none of these things would be considered WMD's?

Again I'm not saying this to say "See Bush was right" or anything like that. I'm just saying that when I read what these explosives do they sound a lot like things used for WMDs.

<center><IMG SRC="http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/randomizer/random.php?uid=3">
Reefy's website... (http://www.osirusonline.com/)</center>
<font size="1" color="red">
<center>Check out The Ron and Fez Show Logs...UPDATED!!!!! (http://www.osirusonline.com/ronfez.htm)</center>
<marquee behavior=alternate bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Right now you could care less about me...
but soon enough you will care, by the time I'm done</marquee> </font>

[TheMojoPin]

They're not WMD's.

I don't understand the point of this questioning.

These are munitions that basically every nation on Earth has.

<img src="http://scripts.cgispy.com/image.cgi?u=TheMojoPin">
1979 << I love my drug buddy... >> "You can tell some lies about the good times we've had, but I've kissed your mother twice...and now I'm working on your dad..."

[Reephdweller]

sheesh, heaven forbid i ask a question. i don't know this stuff.

<center><IMG SRC="http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/randomizer/random.php?uid=3">
Reefy's website... (http://www.osirusonline.com/)</center>
<font size="1" color="red">
<center>Check out The Ron and Fez Show Logs...UPDATED!!!!! (http://www.osirusonline.com/ronfez.htm)</center>
<marquee behavior=alternate bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Right now you could care less about me...
but soon enough you will care, by the time I'm done</marquee> </font>

[DarkHippie]

sheesh, heaven forbid i ask a question. i don't know this stuff.
It's odd, even though they're weapons that cause mass destruction, they're not "weapons of mass destruction."

<IMG SRC=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v124/Canofsoup15/Sigs/HippieRat.jpg>
<marquee> Check out DarkHippie's latest story, "Keeper", at http://home.pcisys.net/~drmforge/dftoc2.htm </marquee>

[Reephdweller]

HMX: High melting explosives, as they are scientifically known, are among the most powerful in use by the world's militaries today. HMX, also known as octogen, is made from hexamine, ammonium nitrate, nitric acid and acetic acid. Because it detonates at high temperatures, it is used in various kinds of explosives, rocket fuels and burster chargers.

NUCLEAR USE: Experts say HMX can be used to create a highly powerful explosion with enough intensity to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.


What I'm saying is, where is the line between being a munition and a WMD?

If this stuff that YD listed is capable of the destruction he listed, and it actually happened wouldn't it be a mass destruction?

As I always understood it WMDs are defined as chemical, biological, or neuclear weapons, but aren't we really just getting into symantics with this?

<center><IMG SRC="http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/randomizer/random.php?uid=3">
Reefy's website... (http://www.osirusonline.com/)</center>
<font size="1" color="red">
<center>Check out The Ron and Fez Show Logs...UPDATED!!!!! (http://www.osirusonline.com/ronfez.htm)</center>
<marquee behavior=alternate bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Right now you could care less about me...
but soon enough you will care, by the time I'm done</marquee> </font>

[HBox]

http://www.digitalleisure.com/dw/Explosion%204.jpg

Weapon of destruction.

http://www.oricom.ca/devcon/nuclear_explosion.jpg

Weapon of Mass Destruction.

http://www.myimgs.com/random/hbox/sig

This message was edited by HBox on 10-27-04 @ 4:45 PM

[mdr55]

When did the term "weapons of mass destruction" start being used?? The only time that I can actually think I've ever heard it used regularly has been since Bush has been in office. I don't recall Clinton, Bush1, Reagan, Carter using the term as much.

Hafa Adai.

[mdr55]

http://www.oricom.ca/devcon/nuclear_explosion.jpg



THANK God Bush doesn't invade the U.S. cuz I think we got tons of WMD's. And we actually used them on Japan. (but that was a good thing cuz it ended WWII right?).

Hafa Adai.

[Reephdweller]

So if a 1000 people die of a weapon of destruction or a 1000 people die of a weapon of mass destruction what's the difference?

How many people dying define a "mass"?

Is "mass" the amount of people who die, or the amount of geographical areas that are destroyed?

<center><IMG SRC="http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/randomizer/random.php?uid=3">
Reefy's website... (http://www.osirusonline.com/)</center>
<font size="1" color="red">
<center>Check out The Ron and Fez Show Logs...UPDATED!!!!! (http://www.osirusonline.com/ronfez.htm)</center>
<marquee behavior=alternate bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Right now you could care less about me...
but soon enough you will care, by the time I'm done</marquee> </font>

[HBox]

As I always understood it WMDs are defined as chemical, biological, or neuclear weapons, but aren't we really just getting into symantics with this?

No. A Nuclear Weapon can kill hundreds of thousands of people. A biological weapon has the potential to cause a worldwide epidemic. A chemical weapons can silently kill thousands of people in a instant.

Conventional explosives are not capable of inflicting this kind of death. There is a VERY CLEAR distinction to be draw; hence, "weapons of mass destruction."

http://www.myimgs.com/random/hbox/sig

[mdr55]

So if we got a group of let's say 100 people and they all farted at the same time.....would that be a WMD????

Hafa Adai.

[keithy_19]

Make sure its a SBD. That way, no one will see it comming!

http://64.177.177.182/katylina/tarasig.jpg

[Yerdaddy]

No. These are not WMD - in the sense of the banned materials that were the rationale for the invasion. However, these are as bad as most kinds of WMD for our soldiers in that they are among the most powerful kinds of explosives known, as the definitions of them you quoted show. Today Bush said in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/politics/campaign/27text-bush.html" target="_blank">speech</a>, attacking Kerry for his own failures: "We have seized or destroyed more than 400,000 tons of munitions, including explosives, at more than -- thousands of different sites, and we're continuing to round up more weapons every day." But what he's ignoring is that this is the raw materials for the most deadly of those munitions. This is the stuff that is strong enough to detonate tons of munitions at once. This is the stuff that you only need a pound of to blow up a Humvee! Bush is obfuscating to cover up his own fucked up administration.

So, no this is not WMD. This is just the stuff that: <a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=1&u=/ap/20041026/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_weapons_at_risk_1" target="_blank">could produce hundreds of thousands of bombs - more than enough to "fuel an insurgency literally for years," said Shannon Kyle, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.</a>
and
"Our greatest concern from both a proliferation standpoint and from a standpoint of danger to human beings was Al-Qaqaa," the IAEA's Fleming said.

[edit]:
As I always understood it WMDs are defined as chemical, biological, or neuclear weapons, but aren't we really just getting into symantics with this?
Exactly. "WMD" is a stupid term that professionals in the field hate. Many conventional weapons, such as these kinds of explosive materials, are much more deadly than many kinds, (most?), of materials labeled "WMD". In terms of the stuff that Saddam was banned from possessing, "WMD" was a set of materials strictly defined in the UN Security Council Resolutions that set the terms of the cease-fire after the first Gulf War. Whether this stuff was allowed under those terms as dual-use, I don't know. But the IAEA had been monitoring them closely for years because of the danger they posed, as is expressed in the statement of the IAEA official in my previous post.

But the term "WMD" is in almost no way a reflection of the amount of destructive power they possess compared to "conventional" weapons. In our own arsenal, "Daisy-cutters" "cluster bombs" and the much celebrated "MOAB" are probably more destructive than some of the smaller tactical nuclear weapons we also have but don't use because of the polical repurcussion of using them.

<img src="http://scripts.cgispy.com/image.cgi?u=bonedaddy5">
Fuck it from behind.

This message was edited by Yerdaddy on 10-27-04 @ 5:34 PM

[sr71blackbird]

I read THIS (http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041028-122637-6257r.htm) article and while it seems that Russia may have ferried out these high explosives prior to the war starting, I see that they also removed chemicals for making chemical weapons!
This is very odd...

<center>
http://www.chaoticconcepts.com/randomizer/random.php?uid=8 </center>


<center><B>My Thanks to Just Jon, Reefdwella, ADF, Yerdaddy,Monsterone and Katylina for the sig-pic help and creation!</B></center>
<marquee behavior=alternate><font size=1>Which Witch Wished Which Wicked Wish?</marquee>

[furie]

*edit* Sorry, I didn't see SR71's post.

Do you think people will stop using this as ammo against Bush now?


<img src="http://homepage.mac.com/furie1335/.Pictures/rfsigs/SimpPulp.jpg">

<a href="http://fallingtowardsapotheosis.blogspot.com/">mental vomit</a>



This message was edited by furie on 10-28-04 @ 6:21 PM

[Mike Teacher]

Conventional weapons, by definition arent WMDs; but when Tokyo's number came up; we firebombed them; 100,000 dead. Dresden's number came up too; 80,000 dead I believe, as told by Vonnegut who at the time was a POW being held in... a Slaughterhouse.

These were military targets only in that the cities happened to contain factories; we knew it was mostly civilians, the call was made, and for good reason [another rant entirely], and we bombed the fuck out of them.

=

Why is it that every time I see "350 TONS of HIGH GRADE..." my mind puts either 'Cocaine" or "Marijuana" as the next word?

=

But to compare conventional to WMD; I'll steal from Carl Sagan, as Ive done a few 1000 times:

The conventional weapons of WW2; if you count up every bomb and bullet and make the calculation, was about 2 million tons of explosives. Every blockbuster, firebomb, mortar; 2 million tons aka 2 Megatons.

Today 2 Megatons is the yield of a single nuclear device [there are weaker; Hiroshima was *only* 16 kilotons for comparison; we have 50 Megaton Nukes and up I think]. So today we have single missles that sit in silos, and each large Nuke has a greater explosive potential then all of the munitions used in the second world war.

Todays arsenals amount to something like a blockbuster per family, a bomb dubbed such that it could destroy a city block for every family on the planet.

Not sure of the numbers now, but between the USA and the USSR, the number of nukes is mind boggling. In a full exchange, the release of energy, in a full-out empty the silos exchange amounts to the energy potential of something like a WW2 every second for the length of an afternoon.

I forget who said it, but it was something like; if we fight WW3 with these weapons, WW4 will be fought with stones.



<IMG SRC="http://members.aol.com/miketeachr/esig">

This message was edited by Mike Teacher on 10-28-04 @ 6:39 PM

[HBox]

I just saw a report about that Russia story on CNN. NO ONE at the Pentagon is backing up his story. Even Rumsfeld was on the radio saying that there was no intelligence and no evidence to back up that guy's claims. And, of course, the Russains deny it. But, CNN did just show some satellite photos from 3 days before the war showing some activity at the site, but the Pentagon officials acknowledge that even these photos don't prove anything. So, at the moment, nobody really knows what happened there, but I think we can safely call crap on that Russia story.

However, and I don't have a link at the moment, but there was a report from a local news station that had a news crew with one of the military divisions that stopped at Al QaQaa. They said they might have photos of munitions with IAEA seals intact, which would prove that the explosives in question were there after the war. But, until those photos are released, its still a mystery.

EDIT:Here's the story with photos of the intact IAEA seals. (http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3741.html?cat=1)

Another story from the same news station. (http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1)

http://kstp.com/kstpimages/IAEA-seal_011.jpg

http://www.myimgs.com/random/hbox/sig

This message was edited by HBox on 10-28-04 @ 6:43 PM

[Yerdaddy]

The CNN Pentagon correspondent just reported that Pentagon spokespeople said they have no evidence that Russians removed any weapons from Iraq, and that they don't understand the basis of those claims by John A. Shaw in the Washington Times article.

Seriously. The idea that Russia was able to make off with this shit and other materials from other sites, including WMD!!, according to this guy, while we had 300,000 troops on the border preparing for the invasion and we didn't know it, and the Iraq Survey Group, (David Kay and at least 5 US WMD investigative groups), had no clue about it is absurd. This guy needs tolose his job. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Back to reality.

It's important to recognize in this story that the problem with the missing explosives isn't just about this one large stockpile that was never secured. It's that this is just a small fraction of the critical sites that had to be secured during and after the invasion of Iraq but weren't. It's a tiny fraction of the overall ammunition and weapons caches spread across Iraq. The military has destroyed around 400,000 tons of the stuff like the administration is saying. But there is also hundreds of times the quantities from al Qaqaa still unaccounted for, a fact they aren't mentioning, oddly enough. <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/05/iraq/main552369.shtml" target="_blank">Iraq's main nuclear site - the Tuwaitha facility - was still being looted six weeks into the war.</a> That site contained various forms of uranium that could still turn up in a dirty bomb used against our troops, or elsewhere.

The shortage of troops hampered the search and study of the primary reason for the invasion - WMD.

According to the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) on Iraq's WMD, the final report of the Iraq Survey Group provided by Charles Duelfer:

Work in Iraq was very diffi cult. Contrary to expectations, ISG's ability to gather information was in most ways more limited than was that of United Nations inspectors. First, many sites had been reduced to rubble either by the war or subsequent looting. The coalition did not have the manpower to secure the various sites thought to be associated with WMD. Hence, as a military unit moved through an area, possible WMD sites might have been examined, but they were left soon after. Looters often destroyed the sites once they were abandoned.

Moreover, many locations associated with the previous WMD programs and sites under monitoring by the United Nations have been completely looted. In fact, the sites that fi lled the database of monitored locations are radically different postwar. Equipment and material in the majority of locations have been removed or ruined. Often there is nothing but a concrete slab at locations where once stood plants or laboratories.

<a href="http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2003/david_kay_10022003.html" target="_blank">David Kay (previous head of the ISG) testimony to Congress on progress of the search for WMD in Iraq, October 2, 2003:</a>

[quote]Why are we having such difficulty in finding weapons or in reaching a confident conclusion that they do not exist or that they once existed but have been removed? Our search efforts are being hindered by six principal factors:

1. From birth all of Iraq's WMD activities were highly compartmentalized within a regime that ruled and kept its secrets through fear and terror and with deception and denial built into each program;

2. Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans-to-post conflict;

3. Post-OIF looting destroyed or dispersed important and easily collectable material and forensic evidence concerning Iraq's WMD program. As the report covers in detail, significant elements of this looting were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner, with the clear aim of concealing pre-OIF activities of Saddam's regime;

4. Some WMD perso

[Yerdaddy]

Let me also clarify, (too late?): the story is naturally going to play out in gross oversimplifications and there's a question that had to be posed to the administration if it is shown that these explosives were removed before the war: why not hit the stuff with missiles? Apparently two of the eight bunkers that contained the stuff were, but why not the rest? Do a bomb damage assessment and keep trying, if you're not going to send in the troops to secure it. The same goes for the rest of the known conventional sites we knew about before the war.

<img src="http://scripts.cgispy.com/image.cgi?u=bonedaddy5">
Fuck it from behind.

[HBox]

I'm guessing only me and yerdaddy care at this point, but here is an interview with David Kay from Newsnight on CNN:

[quote]Aaron Brown: We saw at the top of the program there is new information to factor in. Pretty conclusive to our eye. So we'll sort through this now. Take the politics out of it and try and deal with facts with former head UN weapons inspector, US weapons inspector, David Kay. David, it's nice to see you.

David Kay: Good to be with you, Aaron.

AB: I don't know how better to do this than to show you some pictures have you explain to me what they are or are not. Okay? First what I'll just call the seal. And tell me if this is an IAEA seal on that bunker at that munitions dump?

DK: Aaron, about as certain as I can be looking at a picture, not physically holding it which, obviously, I would have preferred to have been there, that is an IAEA seal. I've never seen anything else in Iraq in about 15 years of being in Iraq and around Iraq that was other than an IAEA seal of that shape.

AB: Was there anything else at the facility that would have been under IAEA seal?

DK: Absolutely nothing. It was the HMX, RDX, the two high explosives.

AB: OK now, I'll take a look at barrels here for a second. You can tell me what they tell you. They, obviously, to us just show us a bunch of barrels. You'll see it somewhat differently.

DK: Well, it's interesting. There were three foreign suppliers to Iraq of this explosive in the 1980s. One of them used barrels like this, and inside the barrels a bag. HMX is in powder form because you actually use it to shape a spherical lens that is used to create the triggering device for nuclear weapons. And particularly on the videotape, which is actually better than the still photos, as the soldier dips into it, that's either HMX or RDX. I don't know of anything else in al Qaqaa that was in that form.

AB: Let me ask you then, David, the question I asked Jamie. In regard to the dispute about whether that stuff was there when the Americans arrived, is it game, set, match? Is that part of the argument now over?

DK: Well, at least with regard to this one bunker, and the film shows one seal, one bunker, one group of soldiers going through, and there were others there that were sealed. With this one, I think it is game, set, and match. There was HMX, RDX in there. The seal was broken. And quite frankly, to me the most frightening thing is not only was the seal broken, lock broken, but the soldiers left after opening it up. I mean, to rephrase the so-called pottery barn rule. If you open an arms bunker, you own it. You have to provide security.

AB: I'm -- that raises a number of questions. Let me throw out one. It suggests that maybe they just didn't know what they had?

DK: I think you're quite likely they didn't know they had HMX, which speaks to lack of intelligence given troops moving through that area, but they certainly knew they had explosives. And to put this in context, I think it's important, this loss of 360 tons, but Iraq is awash with tens of thousands of tons of explosives right now in the hands of insurgents because we did not provide the security when we took over the country.

AB: Could you -- I'm trying to stay out of the realm of politics. I'm not sure you can.

DK: So am I.

AB: I know. It's a little tricky here. But, is there any -- is there any reason not to have anticipated the fact that there would be bunkers like this, explosives like this, and a need to secure them?

DK: Absolutely not. For example, al Qaqaa was a site of Gerald Bull's super gun project. It was a team of mine that discovered the HMX originally in 1991. That was one of the most well-documented explosive sites in all of Iraq. The other 80 or so major ammunition storage points were also well documented. Iraq had, and it's a frightening number, two-thirds of the total conventional explosives that the US has in its entire inventory. The country was an armed camp.

AB: David, as quickly as you can, becaus

[FUNKMAN]

is there really a need to beat a dead horse here... the reality is and everyone agrees upon is "IT WAS THERE" and "NOW IT'S GONE" and it's just another situation under this Administration where they do not have a clue where it went. There is no arguing that the Administration knew of these explosives back in 2003. Did they not keep track of there whereabouts? Did they not know that they were missing? They dropped the ball...

so what's Bush saying: We don't have all the facts yet and criticizes Kerry. What he doesn't realize is just by him saying "They don't have all the facts" is admitting they fucked up and dropped the ball being they knew of these weapons well over a year ago...



"Let me see where to start here. First, the National Journal named Senator Kennedy the most liberal senator of all." -George W. Bush, referring to Sen. Kerry, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004


<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v91/SatCam/sig_funkmanstill.jpg">