ElBaradei: Al-Qaqaa Issue Not Political

ElBaradei: Al-Qaqaa Issue Not Political
Saturday, October 30, 2004

NEW YORK - The release of a U.N. agency report that said 377 tons of high explosives were missing from an Iraqi military facility has roiled the presidential campaign, but the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said the report was not politically motivated.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who has had a testy relationship with Washington since the run-up to the U.S.-led war against Iraq, insists that his agency was not trying to drop a political bomb on President Bush.

"Absolutely not," he told FOX News, when asked if the IAEA's report was deliberately timed to coincide with the election. ElBaradei went on to insist that his agency has no dog in next week's presidential contest.

Earlier this month, a senior Iraqi official alerted the IAEA that the explosives had disappeared from the Al-Qaqaa arms storage facility. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice was also reportedly notified earlier this month.

The IAEA says it has warned the Bush administration since before the war that a Saddam-free Iraq could become a weapons free-for-all.

While U.S. officials did not publicly confirm the explosives had gone missing until after a New York Times report on Monday, the IAEA has had the letter from the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology for nearly three weeks. ElBaredei made a report to the U.N. Security Council on the matter Monday.

ElBaradei dismissed the notion that his agency purposely sat on the information until closer to the election, saying that he had in fact wanted to "give the U.S. government a chance to retrieve the explosives before the issue was public."

The IAEA chief also denied he was embarrassed to be caught in the middle of the firestorm that has since erupted between the president and Sen. John Kerry.

"It's unfortunate [there is] such political hype, which is their own choosing," he told FOX News.

Before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, ElBaradei and his U.N. colleague Hans Blix took few pains to disguise their anger at the Bush administration for its perceived impatience with the weapons inspections process. In turn, Washington accused ElBaradei of working sluggishly in Iraq when he failed to turn up nuclear material.

The last time the IAEA knew with certainty the contents of the Al-Qaqaa bunkers was in January of 2003, when its inspectors logged all the explosives there. The IAEA action report, which was obtained by FOX News, placed the inventory of HMX and RDX explosives at Al-Qaqaa at 221 tons - not 377 tons, as the IAEA reported Monday.

To read the IAEA action report, click here (11 pages, pdf).

The IAEA believes the explosives were taken after Saddam Hussein was driven from power, possibly by looters or terrorists, but U.S. officials maintain the explosives were already gone before U.S. troops arrived at Al-Qaqaa shortly before Saddam's defeat.

The Bush administration may have recently gotten support for their claim. Maj. Austin Pearson on Friday announced that a team from his 3rd Infantry Division had destroyed about 250 tons of munitions and other material from the Al-Qaqaa facility after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

While the Pentagon acknowledges it still has not solved the mystery of the missing explosives, it believes Pearson's testimony helps explain what happened to them.

FOX News' Jonathan Hunt contributed to this report.

Mohamed ElBaradei
Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

Hans Blix
Former UN Weapons Inspector, Chairman of the International Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction

I haven't trusted either one of these men since first introduced to them when the United Nations discussions about Iraq began before the war.

I sincerely believe the Oil-For-Food rape has permeated every nook and cranny of the UN. These two are on the take equally with Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Putin.

The arguments they presented before the UN were weak and incoherent and I still am in disbelief they were taken seriously.

I was outraged the US "let them get away with it" and didn't hold their feet to the fire.

The US has been too politically correct in all of this. We need to let our big, fat, hairy ones drop again and get these goons.

The quality of people now in the UN and the teams investigating them are substandard. No one is taking this seriously.

How can we allow the UN to investigate itself? This is outrageous! Every member of the UN should have been barred from the building the moment this scandal was realized. We've given them time to hide, shred, burn, and otherwise destroy incriminating documents.

It's US money that keeps the UN afloat. Not the nations within it. The UN needs a complete overhaul. Background checks (personal and financial) on every member. No exceptions. If they don't pass the mustard, they're "evicted" and sent back to where they came from. The UN is out-of-hand and has gone out-of-control. Their obvious and overt attempt to destroy the United States has been discovered and they're doing and saying anything (huh... kinda like John Kerry) to stay in place.

I believe Kerry, with his wife complicit, has something to do with Dan Rather, 60 Minutes, and CBS. Too much money floating around for me to have any comfort level with how he has run his campaign. the "information" he has received illegally (Sandy Berger) and released to the the media as his "personal" knowledge with the most incredibly miraculous timing. it's the stuff of movies, not real life. planned. scheduled. produced. released. facts twisted and colored to his whim, half-truths, a political Three's Company-type set-up. You hear one thing, but something wholly different is actually happening. It's too pat. Too given.

After Bush is comfortably back in The White House, I believe the CIA, the FBI, and any other investigative body should rake John and Teresa Heinz Kerry's financial situation; personally, individually, and the entire campaign, over the coals. Something is rotten in the good ol' USA. Soros? Rich? C'mon! And now this aparent collusion with ElBaradei in having received this information from CBS and The New York Times before it was released to anyone else. Rumor? I don't think so. His past and the Sandy Berger port inspection documents peg him rather neatly. History repeats itself? Can't teach and old dog new tricks? A leopard doesn't change it's spots. A fool can find money for mischief when he can find none for bread?

The United Nations, and by that I mean Kofi Annan, is doing everything to backpedal out of being caught with hands in Saddam's bottomless cookie jar. It's time for the United Nations to pay for their agregious mistakes. Laws have been broken. International laws. We need to begin with France, Russia, China, and Germany. United States citizens and their companies and/or personal involvement should be held to the exact scrutiny. No exceptions. It's a war crime. Calculated. Discussed. Reasoned. Confirmed. Used. There is no doubt. No matter which way you look at it, bribes were taken, in agreement by the guilty nations, that the destruction of the United States would be by Saddam Hussein's hand supplied with arms and weapons from those countries. A do-it-yourself-destroy-the-United-States-Kit bought and paid for by Europe and Asia for Saddam to put together and use. That's what the bribes were buying. VETOs against the United States. Their friend. That adds even more insult to the war crimes they have committed against the United States.

See? I said there would be conspiratorial fun and folly!