Since we were enforcing the no fly zone....I see that as being in control....Bush pushed the Imperialism BUTTON and INVADED....and now doing a lousy job....THREE MORE AMERICANS KILLED TODAY...Blood on Bush's hands
At Iraqi Depot, Missiles Galore and No Guards
October 17, 2003
By RAYMOND BONNER and IAN FISHER
MUSAYYIB, Iraq, Oct. 16 - It weighs more than a thousand
pounds, so carting it away could present a few logistical
problems for the average looter. But the fact remains that
there is a very nice 15-foot-long missile, in mint
condition, there for the taking, at one of Saddam Hussein's
defense factories a few miles west of here.
The missile, along with a dozen ready-to-fire
107-millimeter antitank rounds, just a few feet away, is
part of a problem that the American military has only begun
to grapple with: as much as one million tons of ammunition
is scattered around Iraq, much of it unguarded - like the
armaments here - simply because the United States does not
have the personnel to keep watch.
On Thursday in Baghdad, an American brigadier general,
Robert L. Davis, acknowledged the scope of the problem,
saying that there are 105 large ammunition dumps as well as
scores of smaller sites, not all of them guarded regularly.
But General Davis, who is overseeing the cleanup, sought to
give assurances that the Pentagon is working as fast as
possible.
In the past three weeks alone, he said, recently deployed
private civilian contractors have destroyed more than 2.5
million pounds of ammunition, whereas American soldiers
were able to destroy only a million pounds in the last six
months.
"It's a very high priority," General Davis told reporters.
But on Thursday, not a single soldier or guard was to be
seen at this compound in the desert 40 miles south of
Baghdad. A few Iraqis wandered about, and vehicles drove on
the roads in the compound; one man drove off on his
three-wheeled motorcycle with a bounty of long sections of
pipe.
Evidently, American soldiers were here during the war.
Their graffiti attests to that - "Saddam Free Zone," "Go
Team USA #1." Apparently, they left before thoroughly
searching the site, or perhaps they simply lacked the time
or expertise to clean it up.
The compound - part factory, part warehouse, with several
reinforced bunkers sprinkled about the grounds - is rubble
now, demolished by American bombs. But missiles are
everywhere. There is a 30-foot missile with Russian
markings, still on its trolley, on a sidewalk. The
propellant appears to have been removed, but the nose cone
is intact.
Two Exocet missiles - clearly labeled as such and stamped
"AEROSPATIALE" - lie on the ground several hundred yards
away. They seem to have been rendered largely useless by
the bombing, but parts may be of some value.
The best-preserved missile, the 15-footer, appeared to be
another Exocet, though because of the container's position
against the wall, only the cone could be seen. The writing
on the shipping tube, in French and English, was
inconclusive.
Outside in the rubble was a shoulder-fired SA-7, a
Russian-made surface-to-air missile, caked with dirt.
It is impossible to know how much has been looted from this
factory. In the desert about five miles away is the shell
of a truck. Bedouins said the truck had belonged to looters
who were captured several weeks ago by Americans.
The desert sand around where the truck was found is
littered with mounds of mortar and artillery shells. Most
of them appeared to have been defused, but a few live,
small rockets, as well as several hundred live large
caliber rounds, were found among the litter. It is not
clear how the munitions got here.
The issue of unguarded Iraqi ammunition dumps has taken on
greater urgency recently as the pace of bomb attacks
against American forces and other targets has increased.
Military officials say much of the explosives being used in
the attacks come from ammunition sites like this one, which
had once belonged to Mr. Hussein's army.
As if to underscore the threat, six rockets were fired on
Wednesday into the green zone in Baghdad, the heavily
guarded cocoon that protects senior American officials,
including L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian
administrator. No one was hurt. It was the second such
attack.
After American troops took over in Iraq, they were
confronted with an astonishing number of obvious weapons
caches: in schools and mosques, and in houses in
neighborhoods where the residents had apparently been moved
out before the war.
Sometimes those dumps exploded, killing and wounding people
and stoking Iraqis' anger against the Americans.
Soldiers are finding more dumps every day. General Davis
said that in one military zone in northern Iraq, commanders
first reported 730 weapons caches. More recently, the
number climbed to 1,089, though General Davis said all but
12 had been destroyed.
General Davis said the military had not ignored the
problem. He said that the Pentagon had hired private
contractors, but that they had only been working about
three weeks and were still not here in full force.
"I don't think we've been slow to recognize the problem,"
he said. "You can already see the difference in what we
could do in about a six-month period and what they can do
in a three-week period at partial mobilization."
While he said the job of guarding the dumps was not under
his command, he said many of them were either protected by
American soldiers or at least patrolled regularly.
But he conceded that some were not. "I don't know why we
could not guard them all," General Davis said.
Another military official said that 6,000 American soldiers
had been assigned to manning the dumps, but that more were
needed.
General Davis said $285 million had been allocated in the
next year to clean up the ammunition, a job that he said
would take several years.
Right now, there are 160 civilian contractors from four
private companies, with another 120 in Kuwait. In total
there will be 430 people dedicated to destroying the
ammunition when the the operation is at full capacity in
December, he said.
Raymond Bonner reported for this article from Musayyib and
Ian Fisher from Baghdad.
nytimes.com |
