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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ish who wrote (149154)	10/26/2004 4:54:31 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

abc.net.au news.bbc.co.uk boston.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ElBaradei told the council the IAEA had been trying to give the U.S.-led multinational force and Iraq's interim government ``an opportunity to attempt to recover the explosives before this matter was put into the public domain.'' But since the disappearance was reported in the media, he said he wanted the Security Council to have the letter dated Oct. 10 that he received from Mohammed J. Abbas, a senior official at Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology, reporting the theft of the explosives. The materials were lost through ``the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security,'' the letter said. The letter from Abbas informed the IAEA that since Sept. 4, 2003, looting at the Al-Qaqaa installation south of Baghdad had resulted in the loss of 214.67 tons of HMX, 155.68 tons of RDX and 6.39 tons of PETN explosives. HMX and RDX can be used to demolish buildings, down jetliners, produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weapons. HMX and RDX are key ingredients in plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex - substances so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just 1 pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people. ElBaradei's cover letter to the council said the HMX had been under IAEA seal and the RDX and PETN were ``both subject to regular monitoring of stock levels.'' ``The presence of these amounts was verified by the IAEA in January 2003,'' he said. startribune.com “At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said U.S.-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. Thereafter, the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.”

To: Ish who wrote (149154)	10/26/2004 4:55:54 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

////Guarding would have been nice but we don't know why they left. It could have been to save other soldiers.//// You should be embarrassed.

To: Ish who wrote (149154)	10/26/2004 5:09:10 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

760,000 pounds of high explosives "were" the chickens. This stuff is under tight control. You try to buy a few ounces of it at home and you'll have the FBI at your door. Now there is enough of this on the loose - equivalent in weight to the Statue of Liberty. With this massive amount of high explosive you can manufacture anything: - 380 "crude implosion type" nuclear bombs of WWII era - millions of terrorist-friendly anti-personnel / civilian terror devices. - Or blow up almost 100,000 trains. - Or Every airliner in the world. - Power generation facilities.... the list goes on. Or just start shipping bombs with random timers, everywhere in the world. Leaving them in taxis. Lobbing them into crowds. Etc. Explosives, not ordinance, is far more useful, would you not say, to terrorists in raw form than encased in a heavy 250 pound metal casing... Terrorists don't need no stinkin' tank, especially not an Iraqi tank. Message 20686824