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

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (149336)	10/28/2004 4:05:24 AM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

This kind of non-causality black and white analysis may work on a few undergraduate students. But that's about it. With that kind of linear thinking, I suppose Bush could be blamed for the recent Hurricanes in Florida as well.

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (149336)	10/28/2004 6:14:15 AM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

This report is interesting. I suppose you can believe in the ideologues at the N.Y. Times, or you can believe in the G.I.s of the armed services. Of course, since army polls indicate G.I's are going to vote over 75% for Bush, it could be a "right wing conspiracy". ;) I wonder how much support the armed services are going to give Kerry after calling them incompetent over and over. If he does win, we may need a draft, because, so many will get out instead of serving for John Kerry who obviously thinks they are complete fools. 101st Airborne Vet: 'No Way' Explosives Were at Al-Qaqaa Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004 1:26 a.m. EDT A former GI with the 101st Airborne Division who was among the first Americans on the scene at Saddam Hussein's Al-Qaqaa weapons depot said Wednesday there was no way the bunkers he inspected housed 380 tons of high explosives as reported by the New York Times. "When we walked into the bunkers that apparently nobody [else] went into, there is no way there were 380 tons of explosives in those bunkers," 101st Airborne veteran Ken Dixon told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" Wednesday night. Story Continues Below Instead, said Dixon, the weapons that were left behind at Al-Qaqaa were "regular RPGs, rockets and hand grenades." Dixon did say, however, that he saw evidence that something had been removed before U.S. forces arrived on the scene. "You had tire tracks in dried-up mud," he told Sean Hannity. "Large tire tracks from big trucks. And you had boot prints going in and out of these bunkers." But as far as individual looters of the sort claimed by the New York Times, Dixon said he saw "no sign" of that at all. The Iraq War vet was critical of Sen. John Kerry for using the Times report to bash President Bush, telling Hannity on his radio show, "It definitely undermines the work we're trying to do in Iraq." Dixon's revelations on "Hannity & Colmes" capped a day that began on Nashville radio station WTN, where he detailed what he saw at Al-Qaqaa to host Steve Gill. When the 101st arrived on April 10, 2003, the Al-Qaqaa bunkers were "wide open," he told Gill, as if somebody had already been there and broken the seals placed on the high explosives by the U.N. "There was me and two other guys who were the only ones who actually went in the bunkers," he recalled. "What drew us there - they had these big metal doors and they were already open. So we thought people had already gone in there - we wanted to take a look." While there were a few boxes inside the bunkers, Dixon told the Nashville host, "There was nowhere near what they're saying that came up missing that was inside those bunkers." The crates that were left behind, however, had some interesting markings. "We pretty much knew that they contained explosives from the symbols that were on the crates themselves," Dixon said. "There was nothing we could actually read because the majority of it was written in French." And he had an interesting observation for those in the press who dismiss pre-war Iraq as a major player in global terrorism, noting that prior to stopping off at Al-Qaqaa, his unit has cleaned out a terrorist training camp. "There were terrorist training camps all over [Iraq]," he told Gill. Editor's note: newsmax.com

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (149336)	10/28/2004 8:53:11 AM
From: jlallen	Respond to of 281500

Yes...it is a lie....over 35 tons of explosives were already gone when the inspectors returned and the rest were gone when the troops arrived.......... JLA

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (149336)	10/28/2004 12:39:15 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Michael, you're wonderful, but they love Bush so much that the situation in Iraq looks actually good to them, and they have convinced themselves that we're better off with many (not just one) caches of explosives and guns and biochemical weapons in the hands of insurgents and available to terrorists (because, incompetently, we hadn't planned security for them after the invasion) than we were when they were in warehouses under security, being monitored. I believe I just saw JLA say something about "penalizing" those expressing an opposing viewpoint. Penalize this, JLA: Iraq says 'impossible' explosives taken before regime fall AFP: 10/27/2004 BAGHDAD, Oct 27 (AFP) - A top Iraqi science official said Wednesday it was impossible that 350 tonnes of high explosives could have been smuggled out of a military site south of Baghdad before the regime fell last year. He warned that explosives from nearby sites could have also been looted. The UN nuclear watchdog this week said the explosives went missing from a weapons dump some time after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled in April 2003 by the US-led invasion . But as the issue took centre stage in the final days of the US presidential campaign, some US officials have suggested the explosives had gone before the US-led forces moved on Baghdad. The Pentagon has said it did not know when the explosives went missing. Mohammed al-Sharaa, who heads the science ministry's site monitoring department and worked with UN weapons inspectors under Saddam, said "it is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime's fall." He said he and other officials had been ordered a month earlier to insure that "not even a shred of paper left the sites." "The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall and I spoke to them about it and they even issued certified statements to this effect which the US-led coalition was aware of." He said officials at Al-Qaqaa, including its general director, whom he refused to name, made contact with US troops before the fall in an effort to get them to provide security for the site. The regime's fall triggered a wave of looting of government and private property, which US-led troops struggled to contain as they were busy securing their own positions. Sharaa warned that other sites close to Al-Qaqaa with similar materials could have also been plundered. "The Al-Milad Company in Iskandariyah and the Yarmuk and Hateen facilities contained explosive materials that could have also been taken out," he told AFP. Al-Qaqaa is near latifiyah, 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Baghdad. The bulk of materials in question include HMX (high melting point explosive) and RDX (rapid detonation explosive), which can be used in major bombing attacks, making missile warheads and detonating nuclear weapons. The area in Babil province, which includes the towns of Iskandariyah and Mahmudiyah, used to be the centre of Saddam's military-industrial complex. It is now one of the most dangerous parts of the country, and is rife with crime, kidnappings and attacks. "It may be already too late to salvage many of these sites, which are controlled by bandits and beyond the control of Iraqi forces," warned Sharaa. Science Minister Omar Rashad sent a letter on October 10 to the International Atomic Energy Agency sounding the alarm about the explosives in Al-Qaqaa. Sharaa said the letter was sent after repeated warnings and inquiries by the IAEA over the disappearance of so-called duel-use nuclear material, which could be used for either conventional or nuclear means. "Normally we should be overseeing all sites but these responsibilities were stripped away from us under the coalition authority," he said. The ministry was only handed oversight responsiblities of two site -- Al-Tuwaitha and Al-Wardiya -- after authority was transferred from the coalition to the interim government in June. Sharaa refused to put a number on the sites with dangerous materials but said that many include hospitals, schools and factories that are now under the control of various ministries. Some Iraqi officials have estimated the number at 200. "It is very serious if these materials fall into the wrong hands, because they will be used to kill Iraqis," Muwaffaq al-Rubaiye, a special advisor to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government, warned Tuesday Rubaiye, formerly national security advisor, warned in July that materials to make so-called dirty bombs might already be in the hands of militant groups like that of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, believed to be Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq. 10/27/2004 13:56 GMT - AFP