Al Qa'qaa high explosives controversy
Although Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not come forward with documentation that explains how it arrived at the figure of 377 tons of missing explosives.
The explosives, considered dangerous by the IAEA, were certified by UN weapons inspectors to be inside facilities whose doors were fastened with chains and the United Nations' seal, at the Al Qa'qaa industrial complex in Iraq in 2003.
The Bush administration asserted before the 2004 U.S. election that the explosives were either removed by Iraq before invaders captured the facility, or properly accounted for by US forces,[1] even while White House and Pentagon officials acknowledged that they had vanished after the invasion.
[2] MSNBC wrote:[3] Whether Saddam Hussein's forces removed the explosives before U.S. forces arrived April 3, 2003, or whether they fell into the hands of looters and insurgents afterward — because the site was not guarded by U.S. troops — has become a key issue in the campaign.Time magazine reported the sequence of events: "In late April IAEA's chief weapons inspector for Iraq warned the U.S. of the vulnerability of the site, and in May 2003, an internal IAEA memo warned that terrorists could be looting "the greatest explosives bonanza in history."
Seventeen months later, on October 10, in response to a long-standing request from the IAEA to account for sensitive materials, the interim Iraqi government notified the agency that Al Qaqaa had been stripped clean.
[5] Frank Rich editorialized in The New York Times (May 15, 2005): It's also because of incompetent Pentagon planning that other troops may now be victims of weapons looted from Saddam's munitions depots after the fall of Baghdad.
Yet when The New York Times reported one such looting incident, in Al Qaqaa, before the election, the administration and many in the blogosphere reflexively branded the story fraudulent.
It was later corroborated not only by United States Army reservists and national guardsmen who spoke to The Los Angeles Times but also by Iraq's own deputy minister of industry, who told The New York Times two months ago that Al Qaqaa was only one of many such weapon caches hijacked on America's undermanned post-invasion watch.For a timeline of events resulting in the storage and subsequent loss of the high explosives, please see Al Qa'qaa high explosives timeline.
He witnessed U.S. troops standing outside Baghdad's Disease Center as looters attacked the complex on 16 April 2003, "taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials."
"[7] Former counterterrorism directors for the National Security Council Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon noted the danger of these nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists as a result of the U.S. invasion: "Another potential consequence of the invasion is the spread of weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda or other terrorists ... [T]he International Atomic Energy Agency certified that there were highly radioactive materials at the al-Tuwaitha facilities, including partially enriched—though not weapons-grade—uranium.
Unsecured arms depots and storage sites, in addition to open and black market availability of weapons and ammunition, eliminate the need for the [insurgents] to maintain a formidable arsenal.
"[10] Montgomery McFate of the Human Terrain Team program noted in 2005: The insurgency's ability to construct IEDs depends on the availability of bombmaking materials, particularly explosives.
Currently, approximately 80 tons of powerful conventional explosives (mainly HMX and RDX) are missing from the former Iraqi military base at Al Qaqaa.
The director of the Iraqi police unit that defuses and investigates IEDs notes: "One of the coalition's fatal mistakes was to allow the terrorists into army storerooms. ...
The Times reported that "the kinds of machinery at the various sites included equipment that could be used to make missile parts, chemical weapons or centrifuges essential for enriching uranium for atom bombs."
[13] The Al Qa'qaa complex was occupied for two days by the United States Army's 3rd Infantry Division following a brief battle on April 3, 2003, shortly before the fall of Baghdad.
He estimated that his team, "Task Force Bullet", removed 250 tons of material including TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords and munitions.
"The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al Qaqaa", David A. Kay, who directed the hunt in Iraq for WMD and visited the site, told The New York Times.
"[24] The situation did not become publicly known for over a year afterwards, but IAEA officials reportedly warned as early as May 2003 that looting at Al Qa'qaa could be "the greatest explosives bonanza in history."
Although IAEA inspectors were unable to inspect the site themselves due to the US ban on their presence, they were able to obtain commercial satellite imagery in late 2003 that showed severe damage to the facility.
[25] On October 10, 2004, Dr. Mohammed J. Abbas of the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology wrote to the IAEA to say that the Qa'qaa stockpile had been lost after April 9, 2003, because of the "theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."
On October 29, 2004, The New York Times reported the existence of a videotape made by a KSTP-TV St. Paul, Minnesota television crew embedded with U.S. 101st Airborne Division troops on April 18, 2003, nine days after Hussein's fall.
