A Pile Of QaQaa

ABC News is reporting that that 380 tons of high explosive that was supposedly stolen was more like 3 tons, and much of it was likely moved before the war.

Iraqi officials may be overstating the amount of explosives reported to have disappeared from a weapons depot, documents obtained by ABC News show.

The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S. military control.

But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings” indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported.

The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on “declaration” from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.

But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency’s inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the start of the United States launched “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in March 2003.

Furthermore, it’s now being revealed that Russian forces may have helped spirit away some of the material before the war:

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.

I’m not sure how reliable this information is, although I’ve heard that Bret Baier of Fox News is reporting that his sources are confirming the story and indicated that we have satellite photos showing the operation in progress. If so, this story just got a whole lot more interesting.

I have a feeling that this attempted October surprise just badly misfired for Kerry’s propaganda organ the mainstream media. They seized on this story hoping to air it this weekend so that the Bush team would have no chance to respond – but it broke early, and now it’s clear that the Democratic talking points on this issue were completely and utterly wrong. The HE was taken before the war, and not by looters but by someone who knew exactly what they were looking for. The amount of material was vastly overstated by the Iraqis, and Mohammad al-Baradei is once again being a hack who has no business running the IAEA.

Furthermore, I think this story was leaked preemptively. As Wizbang notes, it was the blogosphere that leaked this story before the weekend where it could have really done harm. Why do I get the feeling there was something deliberate about that? It appears that our good friend Josh “ua Micah” Marshall has just been turned into Karl Rove’s bitch by leaking the story in such a way as to give the Bush Administration time to get ahead of it. If that’s so, it’s a plan of genius. Not only did the Bush team defuse what could have been a major bombshell before Election Day, but they may have used the rabid BDS of a major lefty blogger to do it.

Of course, this leads to larger questions than electoral politics as well. If Russia did help the Iraqis (which isn’t surprising), what repercussions will their be for Moscow? Can we trust the Russians as allies, even erstwhile ones? If the Russians helped to clean out al-Qaqaa, what else did they help the Iraqis stash away?

There’s a lot going on here, not only the evisceration of another CBS/NYT smear, but also a major geopolitical scandal. How this story develops will be of great interest not only in terms of the election, but in the larger war as well.

8 thoughts on “A Pile Of QaQaa

  1. More bad news for Bush…

    Quinnipiac Poll finds that among the early voters in Florida (16% of the overall registered voters), Kerry leads Bush by a commanding 56-39 margin. Thus, Bush probably already has a 100,000 vote or higher margin to overcome in the state.

  2. It won’t matter. Based on what I’ve heard, Florida is safely in the Bush column, outside the margin of error. Quinnipac’s own numbers show Bush up by 3 overall.

  3. Quinnipiac also shows Bush up by three in Pennsylvania, an unlikely eight-point swing to Bush in six days. I’ve said from the beginning that it’s advantage Bush in Florida, but I wouldn’t discount the intensity of the anti-Bush black vote down there. The LA Times Poll yesterday was a laughable outlier, but I do see Bush winning Florida narrowly

  4. “Can we trust the Russians as allies, even erstwhile ones?”

    You’re right Jay, the US shouldn’t consider russia as an ally. Whatever they did in the past (50 years till last week) was just aiming at arming your nation. They are always trying to get you into doing stupid things.

    BTW, Putin said he was more in favor of Bush…

    😉

  5. A:) There isn’t anywhere near 380 tons in those pictures. The 3 that was unaccounted for might be more likely.

    B:) The substance in those barrels could be regular gunpowder as well. HDX and RDX would be wetted, not powderized. Storing powderized high explosives in open barrels would be suicidal.

  6. Now that we’ve got videoing showing clearly that these weapons were stolen after the invasion, can we expect a retraction? An assessment of blame?

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