Ka-Boom

[Black Dog]

High explosives left for looters

One need only look to the West Bank or al Qaida operations around the world to see that terrorists or insurgents don't need access to 350 tons of military-grade explosives to be able to pull off terrorist operations. But that quantity of material would clearly constitute an almost limitless supply for the insurgents now targetting US military personnel in Iraq. And it seems that these materials constitute at least a major source of the stuff now being used against US troops, not to mention Iraqi military personnel, policemen and civilians.

"Thousands and thousands of potential terrorist attacks"

It's even more apparent that the Bush administration's conduct of the invasion of Iraq was poorly planned, poorly executed and, overall, a monumental cock-up.

[Guest eureka]

What is becoming a matter of interest and of potential political play is that it now appears that this material had been known to the UN inspectors.

It was secured by the Inspectors and unsecured by the American troops through the assault on Bagdhad. Another nail in Dubbya's coffin if the knowledge is properly used.

[Slavik44]

So if this was stolen by terroists, could bush now claim Iraq is assisting terroists?

[Black Dog]

The Bushites need to get their story straight.

First, they claimed that the explosives went missing before the war, after an NBC reporter embedded with American troops when they visited the site the day after Baghdad fell said she did not see any explosives.

But the unit's commander has come out to say that his troops did not search the facility and merely stopped there on the way to Baghdad.

But a video taken by a news crew shows troops from the 101 Airborne visiting bunkers bearing IAEA stickers and handling boxes marked with the name "Al Qaqaa". According to the crew, the opened bunkers were left unsecure, something confirmed by Iraqi eyewitnesses.

Former weapons inspector David Kay has confirmed the bunkers in the video were the one's containing the explosives.

BROWN: 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, OK? First, I'll just call it the seal and tell me if this is an IAEA seal on that bunker at that munitions dump.

KAY: Aaron, as 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's 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.

BROWN: And was there anything else at the facility that would have been under IAEA seal?

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

BROWN: OK. Now, I want to take a look at the barrels here for a second and 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.

KAY: 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 barrel is a bag. HMX is in powdered 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 Qa Qaa that was in that form.

BROWN: 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?

KAY: 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 is the seal broken and the lock broken but the soldiers left after opening it up. I mean to rephrase the so-called (UNINTELLIGIBLE) rule if you open an arms bunker, you own it. You have to provide security.

BROWN: That raises a number of questions. Let me throw out one. It suggests that maybe they just didn't know what they had.

KAY: I think quite likely they didn't know they had HMX, which speaks to the 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.

BROWN: Could you -- I'm trying to stay out of the realm of politics.

KAY: So am I. BROWN: I'm not sure you can necessarily. I know. It's a little tricky here but 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?

KAY: Absolutely not. For example, al Qa Qaa was a site of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 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 U.S. has in its entire inventory. The country was an armed camp.

BROWN: David, as quickly as you can because this just came up in the last hour, as dangerous as this stuff is, this would not be described as a WMD, correct?

KAY: Oh, absolutely not.

BROWN: Thank you.

KAY: And, in fact, the loss of it is not a proliferation issue.

BROWN: OK. It's just dangerous and it's out there and by your thinking it should have been secured.

KAY: Well, look, it was used to bring the Pan Am flight down. It's a very dangerous explosive, particularly in the hands of terrorists.

Whew. I think this is a big deal because its an incident the perfectly encapsulates both the invasion as a whole and Bush's policies: poor planning, poor execution and, in the end, people are a lot less safe as a result.

[Big Blue Machine]

Well, whoever stole the explosives are having fun now.

[Slavik44]

Well, whoever stole the explosives are having fun now.

I suppose they could blow up a few pumpkins tonight with that stuf eh?

[Big Blue Machine]

They like playing with explosives obviously.

[Tawasakm]

Well, whoever stole the explosives are having fun now.

It was probably George Clooney...

[Black Dog]

Oops! they did it again!

More missiles for terrorists?

They are cheap, easily concealed, small enough to hoist on a shoulder and can shoot a passenger jet out of the sky. And now, it appears, terrorists may have access to another 4,000 of them.

The government found that number of shoulder-fired missiles missing from Iraq's inventory, according to weekend news reports. If the number is confirmed, it would triple the previous U.S. intelligence estimate of the number of such missiles outside the control of any government.

Thank goodness the world has given Bush four more years to protect them from the terrorists he created and armed.