* Disappeared Weapons * Iraqi WMDs

Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________

4:30 p.m. ET -- Thursday, October 28, 2004

* Disappeared Weapons * Iraqi WMDs

The 380 tons of high explosives missing from al Qaqaa in Iraq have
become an issue in the waning days of the presidential campaign. The New
York Times reports the explosives were there when U.S. soldiers arrived,
but when local Iraqis asked the soldiers to guard them, they "were told
this was not the soldiers' responsibility." KSTP-TV in Minneapolis/St. Paul
reports that one of its film crews "in Iraq shortly after the fall of
Saddam Hussein was in the area where tons of explosives disappeared, and
may have videotaped some of those weapons." [See:
]

IMAD KHADDURI, imad.khadduri@rogers.com, http://www.iraqsnuclearmirage.com
A former nuclear scientist with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission,
Khadduri wrote the new book "Iraq's Nuclear Mirage." Starting before the
invasion of Iraq, he wrote a series of articles questioning the Bush
administration's assertions regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
capacity. He said today: "I am familiar with the facility at al Qaqaa. I
dealt with people there when Iraq still had a nuclear program in the late
1980s. Iraq had no nuclear program after the Gulf War and it's ridiculous
that the Bush administration got away with claiming that it did. Some are
claiming that this shows that Iraq did in fact have weapons of mass
destruction, but these explosives are conventional and are quite easily
available on the global market. They are quite likely being used as
explosives by the resistance. All this highlights that disarmament was
hardly driving U.S. actions, contrary to the rhetoric we hear. This
facility was being monitored by the IAEA before the invasion -- since these
conventional weapons could be useful in building nuclear weapons -- and
doors had IAEA seals on them which were apparently broken by U.S. forces.
The U.S. ignored IAEA warnings about this facility. This also ominously
occurred at another nuclear site, at the Nuclear Research Center at
Tuwaitha, 20 km east of Baghdad. There were nuclear burial mounds there
that contained hundreds of tons of yellow cake, unprocessed natural
uranium, and other nuclear waste accumulated over 30 years of research and
development. The U.S. military broke open the IAEA-locked mounds, probably
got some of the U.S. soldiers contaminated, and then left the mound open to
looters. That facility was in fact looted by villagers of three or four
surrounding villages who needed the barrels that contained the yellow cake
and caused serious radioactive contamination in these villages, which is
harmful to civilians. But since they are Iraqi, and not American, the issue
did not warrant that much attention, then."

STEVEN KULL, skull@pipa.org, http://www.pipa.org
Kull is director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which
just released a study of public attitudes on Iraq. Kull said today: "There
is now a consensus among the American public that if Iraq did not have WMD
and was not providing substantial support to al Qaeda, the U.S. should not
have gone to war with Iraq. Seventy-four percent overall have this view,
including 58 percent of Bush supporters and 92 percent of Kerry supporters.
A majority also rejects the argument that the U.S. should have gone to war
with Iraq because Saddam Hussein had the intention to acquire WMD. Overall,
support for the decision to go to war has eroded slightly since August, so
that a majority of 51 percent now says that it was the wrong decision, and
46 percent say it was the right decision. It may seem contradictory that
three-quarters of Americans say that the U.S. should not have gone to war
if Iraq did not have WMD or was not providing support to al Qaeda, while
nearly half still say the war was the right decision. However, support for
the decision is sustained by persisting beliefs among half of Americans
that Iraq provided substantial support to al Qaeda, and had WMD, or at
least a major WMD program. Despite the widely-publicized conclusions of the
Duelfer report, 49 percent of Americans continue to believe Iraq had actual
WMD (27 percent) or a major WMD program (22 percent), and 52 percent
believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda."

JONATHAN SCHWARZ, Jonathan_Schwarz@sbcglobal.net,
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000213.html
Author of the article "What We Think About When We Think About Iraq: How So
Many Americans Can Be So Wrong About WMD," Schwarz said today: "Given the
continuing dishonesty of the Bush administration and others, it's no wonder
many Americans continue to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The latest distortion is that the al Qaqaa explosives were WMD. Although
highly dangerous, they were not. In the election season, it's vital that
citizens get accurate information about this issue."

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167