Will Lying Journalists Apologize for Knowingly Publishing Misinformation

An example from today's Chicago Tribune

Misleading Us To The End
Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate
Molly Ivins is a syndicated columnist based in Austin, Texas
Published October 28, 2004

ST. LOUIS -- Oh, you sweet, innocent, carefree citizens in non-swing states. You have no idea how much fun and slime you are missing.

In the swingers, wolves stalk us mercilessly (as the pro-wolf lobby points out indignantly, no one has ever been killed by wolves on U.S. soil, but try arguing that in the face of the relentless new TV ad campaign). Breaking news everywhere--380 tons of high explosives in Iraq left unattended, stock market down to year's low, leading economic indicators down, more tragedy in Iraq, the Swift Boat Liars are back, more Halliburton scandal, George Tenet says the war in Iraq is "wrong"--it feels like you're dodging meteorites here in the Final Days.

Actually, the best evidence suggests we need to slow way down and go way back, because far from being able to take in anything new, it turns out many of our fellow citizens, especially Bush supporters, are stuck like bugs in amber in some early misperceptions that have never been cleared up.

It seems the majority of Bush supporters, according to recent polls, still believe Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and even to Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United States found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Many of you are asking how that could possibly be, since everybody knows ...

But everybody doesn't know. There it is. And if you are wondering why everybody doesn't know, you can either blame it on the media, always a shrewd move, or take notice that the Bush administration still is spreading this same misinformation.

Both President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have publicly acknowledged there is no evidence of any links between Hussein and Al Qaeda. However, as Vice President Dick Cheney campaigns, a standard part of his stump speech is the accusation that Saddam Hussein "had a relationship" with Al Qaeda or "has long-established ties to Al Qaeda." He makes this claim up to the present day. The commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, however, found that there was "no collaborative relationship" between the two.

Cheney, of course, also has never given up his touching faith that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, recently referring to a "nuclear" program that had been abandoned shortly after the first Gulf war. Bush and Cheney misled the country into war using these two false premises, and it turns out an enormous number of our fellow citizens still believe both of them to be true. It's not because they're stupid, but because an administration they trust is still telling them both phony propositions are true.

Normally, when you get a situation like that--where people are simply not acknowledging reality--it is considered a cult, a form of groupthink based on irrational beliefs propagated by what is normally a charismatic leader. So those volunteers for Sen. John Kerry earnestly engaging Bush supporters on the latest outrage are way off base. They need to go all the way back to the Two Great Lies that got us into this: Many American soldiers marching into Iraq believed it was "payback for 9-11."

A third slightly blinding fact (to me) is that more people now think Kerry behaved shamefully in regard to Vietnam than did Bush.

Incredible what brazen lying will do, isn't it?

A friend of Bush's dad got him into the "champagne unit" of the Texas Air National Guard, a unit packed with the sons of the privileged trying to stay out of Vietnam. Kerry is a genuine, bona fide war hero. The men who served on his swift boat are supporting him for president, but those who didn't serve with him, who weren't there, who don't know what happened, have been given more credence. Wolves will get you!

In further unhappy evidence of how ill-informed the American people are (blame the media), the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes found Bush supporters are consistently ill-informed about Bush's stands on the issues (Kerry-ans, by contrast, are overwhelmingly right about his positions). Eighty-seven percent of Bush supporters think he favors putting labor and environmental standards into international trade agreements. Eighty percent of Bush supporters believe Bush wants to participate in the treaty banning land mines. Seventy-six percent of Bush supporters believe Bush wants to participate in the treaty banning nuclear weapons testing. Sixty-two percent believe Bush would participate in the International Criminal Court. Sixty-one percent believe Bush wants to participate in the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Fifty-three percent do not believe Bush is building a missile defense system, also known as "Star Wars."

The only two Bush stands that the majority of his supporters got right were on increasing defense spending and who should write the new Iraqi constitution.

Kerry supporters, by contrast, know their man on seven out of eight issues, with only 43 percent understanding he wants to keep defense spending the same but change how the money is spent and 57 percent believing he wants to up it.

So what's going on here? I do not think Kerry people are smarter than Bush people, so why are they better informed? Maybe a small percentage of ideological right-wingers doesn't believe anything the establishment media say, but I don't think this is a matter of not believing what they hear, but of not hearing what's factual.

The great triumph of the political right in this country has been the creation of a network of alternative media. There are people who listen to radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh for more hours every day than the Branch Davidians listened to sect leader David Koresh. Watch Fox News Channel, read the Washington Times--hey, that's what the Bush administration does, according to its own words.

But it's not just the right-wing media purveying lies--they are quoting the administration. The misinformation comes directly from the Bush administration, still, over and over.

E-mail: info@creators.com

Molly Ivins should immediately apologize for the misinformation she has spewed in this article. There is verifiable proof which has surfaced over the course of the campaign and in the last few days (regarding the "missing weapons") refuting every "lie" she's told. If the readers of this article took the time to do the research, they'd see this article for what it is. A load of partisan, Leftist bullshit. This is a blatant attempt to sway opinion to Kerry and, just like Kerry, is rife with lies, twists, turns, spin, half-truths, and distortions. A "say anything" approach to journalism hiding behind the guise of free speech.

People disrespecting that right should have it taken away (no more publishing).

U.S. Military Checks Satellite Images for Clues About Missing Explosives

U.S. Military Checks Satellite Images for Clues About Missing Explosives
Thursday, October 28, 2004

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department is analyzing satellite photos of an Iraqi military facility taken before the U.S.-led war in 2003 to determine what happened to tons of explosives.

The photos show “large truck activity” at the Al-Qaqaa installation south of Baghdad, according to military officials, who hope to have the images declassified so they can be released.

What the images show could become an important part to the mystery of when the nearly 380 tons of explosives were taken. The munitions included HMX and RDX, key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in bomb attacks.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which reported the disappearance to the United Nations on Monday, believes they were taken after Saddam Hussein was driven from power but Bush administration officials maintain the explosives were already gone when U.S. troops got to the base.

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).

On Thursday, an IAEA spokesman said another 150 tons of RDX was stored at a facility known as Al-Mahaweel, a storage site under Al-Qaqaa's jurisdiction located outside the main Al-Qaqaa site. Al-Mahaweel was controlled by the same Iraqi administrators who ran Al-Qaqaa.

The January 2003 IAEA action report noted that the explosives were stored in nine different bunkers at Al-Qaqaa. Each of the bunkers was locked and marked with IAEA tags and seals on them.

But the report also included a warning. "Of note was that the sealing on the bunkers was only partially effective because each bunker had ventilation shafts on the sides of the buildings. These shafts were not sealed, and could provide removal routes for the HMX while leaving the front door locked,” it said.

The IAEA said Thursday it warned the United States about the vulnerability of explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa after another facility -- Iraq's main nuclear complex -- was looted in April 2003.

IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told The Associated Press that U.S. officials were cautioned directly about what was stored at Al-Qaqaa and its vulnerability after the Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted.

"It is also important to note that this was the main high explosives storage facility in Iraq, and it was well-known through IAEA reports to the Security Council," Fleming said.

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.

Agency inspectors who have returned twice to Iraq since the war focused only on Tuwaitha, a sprawling nuclear complex 12 miles south of Baghdad.

Powell and Rice Urge Caution

Two of President Bush's top policy advisers on Thursday said the issue of the missing explosives in Iraq is being overplayed and urged caution in coming to any conclusions before the issue is fully investigated.

"I think we're going to have to wait until the Iraqi Survey Group, the group that looks into these kinds of things, can actually get to the facts," Powell told Bill Bennett on his "Morning in America" radio show, "The facts are really kind of muddled right now and we are just going to have to try to do the best we can in the very near future to get the ground truth out."

Powell said there are suggestions that there might not have been that much of explosives missing in the first place and he questioned when the explosives went missing. Powell also said it's an extremely small amount compared to the amount that the United States has been able to bring under control.

Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, sat down with FOX News' Brian Kilmeade on Thursday to talk about Iraq and the missing ammo issue, among other things.

"It is a complicated issue. What we need to do is find out the facts before we jump to conclusions, we need to find out the facts," Rice said during the interview, which aired Thursday morning. The second installation will air Friday morning. "It's not clear if the explosives were there when our troops got there or not … we'll get to the bottom of it, we'll ask the tough questions ... but we shouldn't jump to conclusions."

"Iraq was a place awash in weapons," Rice added, noting that U.S. troops have already destroyed thousands of munitions. "That process is well underway and continues to this day."

L. Paul Bremer, who served as the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, told FOX News' Brit Hume that there was a four-week time frame before U.S. troops arrived in the area in question when Saddam Hussein could have moved the munitions.

"It seems to me very irresponsible to assert that one knows what happened here," right now, he said.

A Russian Connection?

In another new development, The Washington Times reported Thursday that 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.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, told the Times 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," 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."

Senior Defense officials urged caution over the Times report because they don't know the substance of the report to be true at this time. A similar report appears on the Financial Times Web site, with the following response from Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita: "I am unaware of any particular information on that point."

Senior sources told FOX News that Shaw actually works in a defense building away from the Pentagon, and it isn't clear how this person has the authority or the knowledge to speak on such a matter.

FOX News' Bret Baier, Ian McCaleb and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Joe Lockhart and Other Things

OH MY GOD!!!!!

I cannot believe what Joe Lockhart just said on "The Big Story" with John Gibson (FoxNews).

Joe Lockhart, the Kerry Campaign Senior Advisor said, in effect:

The "missing" weapons should have been secured by US troops before war was declared.

WTF!!!??? Who is this guy kidding? Where does he come up with this outlandish and completely illegal comment? Where does he get off denigrating the US troops, the President, and the intelligence of the viewing audience?

His whole spiel, per the Kerry campaign, is President Bush is responsible for not securing the weapons after the IAEA left Iraq. Well, Joe, who the hell was in Iraq after the IAEA left? NO ONE but Iraqis and the Russian Secret Service!

Scientific technology is good, but we do not yet have transporters, a la Star Trek to beam us to a location instantaneously, you fucking moron! It takes time to get someplace; especially when you're in a HMV, driving on narrow roads, being shot at every kilometer of the way, enduring blinding sandstorms, etc.

After the war began, we got down to brass tacks, you IDIOT! al-Qaqaa was inspected at least five times by three different outfits ALL coming up with the same result. No weapons there other than conventional.

This is how desperate the Kerry campaign has gotten. Vicious attacks of the President's integrity and character abound. They will say ANYTHING to win the election. ANYTHING.

Turns out CBS and the UN Nuclear Watchdog, ElBaradei, gave the "missing weapons" story to exclusively to John Kerry and CBS so they'd have some ammo against President Bush in a last-ditch effort to destroy him.

This ties, in my eyes, John Kerry directly to the UN Oil-For-Food rape. Why else would a UN employee be giving "false" information to John Kerry and CBS? I also believe, maybe, kinda, sorta, in a way, John Kerry (through his wife's money) has purchased CBS and Dan Rather.

Kerry is an egotistical megalomaniac and is very, very dangerous.

Kerry is jumping to conclusions if he believes he will win this election.

Kerry said today of President Bush, "...shifting explanations and blaming anyone but himself..." No, John Kerry. That would be you talking to yourself in the mirror from which you cannot tear your eyes away.

Pathetic!

Bret Baier (FoxNews, Pentagon correspondent) is now showing satellite photos on FoxNews showing two trucks, two days prior to the beginning of the war, moving out of the al-Qaqaa bunker site. Is it the Russian Secret Service? Is it Saddam's soldiers? Who is moving the weapons out of al-Qaqaa?

Saddam Hussein was known for moving weapons and weapons systems around Iraq when trouble was brewing. Hussein was adept at "hiding" things.

The last time IAEA was positive the "missing" weapons were in the bunker was January 2003. When they returned in March, the IAEA DID NOT inspect al-Qaqaa. Their own 14 January 2003, Action Report states a warning, in effect: ...of note was that the sealing of the bunkers was only partially effective because each bunker has ventilation shafts through which explosives could be looted...

Hmmmmmmmmm, looks like the IAEA is responsible, doesn't it? A group of people in collusion with Saddam Hussein through the Oil-For-Food rape.

Gee, John. Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. You've sunk the final nail in your own coffin.

Brit Hume is on FoxNews now. He's been speaking with the usual panelists. Juan Williams was so in the Kerry mind-set, he came close to saying what Joe Lockhart did until Brit Hume corrected him and explained about the satellite photos, the IAEA report indicating looting possible through the ventilations shafts, and no seals being present when US troops arrived. Juan looked very embarrassed and his facial expression and sheepish smile was one of RoseanneRoseannadana's "nevermind".

Is John Kerry getting ALL of his campaign information from The New York Times? Why is he holding up this admittedly Leftist publication, that had NO PROOF of the "missing weapons" story, as fact? How silly and inane is that? How desperate?

There are but a few days left before the election, five to be precise. I hope the American public wises up to the flim-flam of John Kerry's entire campaign and votes for the honest, steadfast, and sure leadership of President Bush.

Iraq War Opponents Fill Oil-for-Food 'Vouchers' List

Iraq War Opponents Fill Oil-for-Food 'Vouchers' List
By David R. Sands
28 October 2004
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Companies, politicians and pro-Saddam Hussein activists from countries that opposed the war in Iraq figure heavily in a list of about 270 recipients of suspected oil bribes from Iraq under the scandal-plagued United Nations oil-for-food program, investigators say.

The Russian government, a former French ambassador to the United Nations, the son of Syria's defense minister and the U.N. undersecretary charged with running the oil-for-food program were included on the list compiled by Iraq's state oil ministry under Saddam and published by a Baghdad newspaper in late January.

The discovery of the list has sparked an international debate over the run-up to the Iraq war and a round of global finger-pointing over the extent of mismanagement and corruption in the program.

The secret payments "provided Saddam Hussein and his corrupt regime with a convenient vehicle through which he bought support internationally by bribing political parties, companies, journalists and other individuals of influence," Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a consultant retained by the Iraqi Governing Council to investigate the scandal, told a House hearing last month.

"This secured the cooperation and support of countries that included members of the Security Council of the United Nations — the very body that received over $1 billion in fees to administer the program," he said.

Lawyer John Fawcett helped write a 2002 report by the Washington-based Coalition for International Justice that detailed Saddam's ability to flout international sanctions in the decade after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, using illegal oil sales, bribes and kickbacks on food and aid shipments.

Although investigators caution that the Baghdad list has not been verified and contains at least a few questionable entries, "what's in there pretty much bears out things we already knew," Mr. Fawcett said.

"It's long been clear from the record that Iraq was openly using the oil-for-food program to reward its friends and buy new ones," he added. "It was the French, it was the Russians, it was maybe a hundred countries that were involved."

The list includes a former French ambassador to the United Nations, Jean-Bernard Merimee, who is named twice. It also includes Farras Mustapha Tlass, the son of Syrian Defense Minister Mustapha Tlass.

In addition, it names U.N. Undersecretary General Benon Sevan, a close aide to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The program, begun in 1996, was designed to address a growing humanitarian crisis in Iraq that Saddam's government blamed on the sanctions. The U.N.-run program was supposed to allow Iraq to use money from oil sales to acquire food, medicine and other aid from a tightly restricted list.

From 1997 to 2002, Iraq sold $67 billion in oil and bought $38 billion in commodities under the program.

But a new General Accounting Office study estimates that Saddam's regime was able to siphon off about $10.1 billion in illegal revenues, through clandestine oil sales ($5.7 billion) and special charges and kickbacks on oil and commodity deals ($4.4 billion).

The leaked Iraqi list of about 270 recipients covers just one year — 1999 — and relates to just one facet of the overall fraud: That is "vouchers" that could be sold by the bearers to legitimate oil brokers and shippers, who then would have the right to purchase and market the Iraqi crude.

Russia, which ardently opposed the war, has by far the most entries on the list, including 1.366 billion barrels allotted to the Russian government alone.

A score of giant Russian oil firms, several Kremlin ministries and even the Russian Orthodox Church are listed as having received the vouchers. The church and many of the companies in question have denied wrongdoing.

Just 10 French organizations and officials are on the oil-for-food list, but they include a top adviser to President Jacques Chirac and France's ambassador to the United Nations in 1999.

French denials of wrongdoing in the scandal have been particularly heated.

Jean-David Levitte, France's ambassador to the United States, rejects the idea that there was an oil-for-food "scandal" and has blamed conservative critics of France and the United Nations for publicizing the list.

In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News last month, he noted that the United States imported far more oil from Iraq than France during the sanction years and that the United States had the right to review every contract approved under the oil-for-food program.

"It is important to understand that nothing regarding Iraq could have been done without the approval of the United States," he argued.

Several questions surround the list.

It is not clear, for example, whether those named actually received the secret vouchers or were simply targeted for bribery. And oil companies that received the vouchers might not have profited directly, but kicked back the money to Saddam and his allies as one more price of doing business with a corrupt regime.

Pro-Iraqi activists in the United States, Britain and other countries that backed the war also showed up on the list.

Antiwar British legislator George Galloway, who already has pressed one successful suit against press charges that he was bribed by Saddam, denied obtaining the vouchers good for 19 million barrels of oil he reportedly was given.

"In my own case, I have never owned, bought or sold oil, or rights to oil, nor has anyone on my behalf," Mr. Galloway wrote in the London Guardian, accusing the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Congress led by Ahmed Chalabi and Republicans in U.S. Congress of pushing false stories.

Mr. Fawcett said the extraordinary range of suspected recipients showed the breadth of Saddam's corruption and his willingness to work with — and pay off — anyone who could advance his cause.

The voucher list includes sympathetic Arab journalists; leading Palestinian militant groups; Communist parties in Russia, Belarus and Slovakia; an adviser to Pope John Paul II; and recipients from 52 countries ranging from Algeria and Austria to Yemen and Yugoslavia.

"One big thing about this list is that it gives the lie to the argument that Saddam was a secular leader who wouldn't work with fundamentalist terrorists like al Qaeda," said Mr. Fawcett.

"Saddam would work with anybody he thought could help him."

The scandal has spawned a number of probes, including one commissioned by Mr. Annan with former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker at the helm. Three congressional committees held hearings on the oil-for-food program last month, and the new Iraqi authority in Baghdad is promising more sensational revelations as Saddam's secret files come to light.

Mr. Annan, yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press," said any U.N. staff member found to have participated in corruption "will be dealt with severely."

"Their privileges and immunities will be lifted so that, if necessary, they will be brought before the court of law and dealt with, in addition to being dismissed," he said.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, Michigan Republican, told a House International Relations Committee hearing last week that the U.N. oil-for-food scandal reminded him of down-home political influence-buying and corruption in his Wayne County district.

"In many ways, we are seeing a political machine that is accused of doing something wrong and the tactics that the machine uses to defend itself are quite similar," he said.

"There will be confusion, distraction and an internal investigation controlled by the machine, the results of which may or may not be for public consumption. And it is all to defend the institution."

Russian Troops Removed Explosives

Russian Troops Removed Explosives
October 28 2004 at 09:12AM

Washington - Russian special forces "almost certainly" removed the explosives missing from a military base south of Baghdad before the March 2003 United States invasion and sent them to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran, The Washington Times daily said on Thursday quoting a US official.

"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units. Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis," deputy undersecretary of defence for international technology security John Shaw told the daily in an interview.

The official said he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high explosive material that went missing from the al-Qaqaa military facility south of Baghdad.

The missing 380 tons of explosives over which the International Atomic Energy Agency raised the alert earlier this month have become fodder in the US presidential election campaign, with Democratic challenger John Kerry accusing incumbent Republican President George Bush of incompetence in his handling of post-invasion Iraq.

It is not clear whether the material - which are used in plastic explosives and could also be used in a trigger for a nuclear device - were removed from the site before or after the US-led invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The Washington Times' source is the first to give a clear indication of when the explosives were removed.

Shaw, who was in charge of cataloguing the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal programme from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

He said Iraq's most powerful weapons were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran.

The al-Qaqaa facility, he added, was closely guarded, making it unlikely the explosives could have been stolen.

"That was such a pivotal location, number 1, that the mere fact of special explosives disappearing was impossible," he said. "And number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."

Separately, The New York Times - which broke the story of the missing explosives on Monday - said on Thursday that looters stormed al-Qaqaa after the US-led invasion.

Citing three witnesses, the daily said some of the looters came in trucks to haul off munitions, dismantled heavy machinery and office furniture.

The New York Times said that while the accounts did not address the question of when the 380 tons of explosives went missing, they "make clear that what set off much if not all of the looting was the arrival and swift departure of American troops, who did not secure the site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it".

US Army Colonel David Perkins, who commanded the brigade that first entered the al-Qaqaa site in March 2003 said on Wednesday his men only conducted a cursory search of the facility because their priority was to continue the march on Baghdad.

"The main focus was not go back and do a very precise inventory of how many shells and things like that because it was just not the threat at the time," he told reporters. - Sapa-AFP

IAEA Says It Warned U.S. on Iraq Ammo

IAEA Says It Warned U.S. on Iraq Ammo
Thursday, October 28, 2004

WASHINGTON — The U.N. nuclear agency said Thursday it warned the United States about the vulnerability of explosives stored at Iraq's Al-Qaqaa military installation after another facility — Iraq's main nuclear complex — was looted in April 2003.

Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency , told The Associated Press that U.S. officials were cautioned directly about what was stored at Al-Qaqaa, the main high explosives facility in Iraq.

Some 377 tons of high explosives are now missing from the facility, said by Iraqi officials to have been taken amid looting. Questions have arisen about what the United States knew about Al-Qaqaa and what it did to secure the site.

Fleming did not say which officials were notified or exactly when, but she said the IAEA — which had put storage bunkers at the site under seal just before the war — alerted the United States after the Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted.

"After we heard reports of looting at the Tuwaitha site in April 2003, the agency's chief Iraq inspectors alerted American officials that we were concerned about the security of the high explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa," she told the AP.

"It is also important to note that this was the main high explosives storage facility in Iraq, and it was well-known through IAEA reports to the Security Council," Fleming said.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei informed the United Nations in February 2003, and again in April of that year, that he was concerned about HMX explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa.

The explosives' disappearance has become a flashpoint in the final week of the U.S. presidential campaign, with Democratic hopeful John Kerry accusing the Bush administration of ignoring the threat and the White House. The Pentagon has suggested that Saddam Hussein's regime may have removed the explosives before the war began.

IAEA inspectors reportedly last confirmed that the agency's seals on the explosives were in place and intact on March 15, five days before the invasion began.

The IAEA sought Thursday to clarify reports that the amount of missing explosives may have been far less than what the Iraqis said in an Oct. 10 report to the nuclear agency.

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.

"IAEA inspectors visited Al-Mahaweel on Jan. 15, 2003, and verified the RDX inventory by weighing sampling," Fleming said. She said the RDX at Al-Mahaweel was not under seal but was subject to IAEA monitoring.

"IAEA inspectors were in the process of verifying this statement ... and would have proceeded later had they stayed in Iraq," Fleming said. The nuclear agency's inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the U.S.-led invasion and have not been allowed to return for general inspections despite ElBaradei's requests that they be allowed to finish their work.

The agency became involved at Al-Qaqaa because of the presence of 214 tons of HMX, which — like RDX — is a key component in plastic explosives but also can be used as an ignitor on a nuclear weapon. Fleming said it was the HMX that was the agency's main focus.

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.

Agency inspectors who have returned twice to Iraq since the war focused only on Tuwaitha, a sprawling nuclear complex 12 miles south of Baghdad.

In June 2003, inspectors investigated reports of widespread looting of storage rooms at Tuwaitha, and they returned in August 2003 to take inventory of several tons of natural uranium that had been stored there. They have not been allowed back to Al-Qaqaa.

Additional Personal Commentary: According to the IAEA's final report on al-Qaqaa, they said that while the doors had been secured with seals, the windows and ventilations systems still allowed for looters to enter the bunkers and they did nothing to preclude that entry. It is also speculated the Russian Secret Service were the entity which moved the weapons at the order of Putin who wanted to eliminate any evidence of Russia assisting Iraq.

Russia Tied To Iraq's Missing Arms

Russia Tied To Iraq's Missing Arms
By Bill Gertz
28 October 2004
THE 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."

Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.

The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.

The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.

Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.

The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material.

Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said.

"That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."

The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.

A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.

The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.

"The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.

The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime.

According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken.

It is not known whether the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.

A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.

The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not persuade Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.

A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.

However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said.

The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.

Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.

The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said.

Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.

The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said.

Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said.

"Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said.

Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.

The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.

Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.

The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.

Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing.

The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.

Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.