Tons of explosives gone missing: whose fault?
In a story headlined "Bombshell for Bush," The Independent calls news that nearly 380 tons of explosives went missing from an Iraqi weapons base after the war "a massive pre-election embarrassment for the Bush administration."
The New York Times, which first reported the story late Sunday, wrote that the Al Qaqaa weapons facility (30 miles south of Baghdad) "was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday."
The Times said that "the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings."
The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people. The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it.The Associated Press reports that International Atomic Energy Association warned that Iraqi insurgents may have already obtained the explosives that "can be used in the kind of car bomb attacks that have targeted US-led coalition forces for months."
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei reported the disappearance to the UN Security Council on Monday, two weeks after he said Iraq told the nuclear agency that the explosives had vanished from the former Iraqi military installation as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security."
Salon quotes Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as saying: "This is thousands and thousands of potential terrorist attacks. ... It's like they knocked off the Fort Knox of explosives."
The Boston Globe quotes another expert on the significance of the Al Qaqaa site.
"This is not just any old warehouse in Iraq that happened to have explosives in it; this was a leading location for developing nuclear weapons before the first Gulf War," said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project, a nonprofit organization that has followed Iraq's attempts to procure weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade. "The fact that it had been left unsecured is very, very discouraging. It would be like invading the US in to order to get rid of [weapons of mass destruction] and not securing Los Alamos or [Lawrence] Livermore [National Laboratory]."Meanwhile, in the midst of the campaign spin one week before a hotly contested election, there are conflicting reports as to whether US troops arrived at the base at Al Qaqaa after the theft took place.
"UN and Iraqi officials indicated the explosives were lost while the country was under US occupation, reports The Washington Post. But, the Post writes, "US officials suggested that the munitions may have disappeared before the US-led forces established full control over the country."
The BBC points out two seemingly contradictory reports from NBC.
NBC television reported that one of its correspondents was embedded with the 101st Airborne Division which temporarily took control of the base on 10 April 2003 but did not find any of the explosives.The White House pointed to the NBC television report Monday as evidence the explosives may have disappeared before the war or before US troops arrived at the site, reports AP.However, other US outlets, including NBC's own news website, quoted Pentagon officials who said a search of the site after the US-led invasion had revealed the explosives to be intact.
The Washington Times cites a Pentagon statement as saying the explosives could have been moved before US troops arrived.
"Although some believe the Al Qaqaa facility may have been looted, there is no way to verify this." ... "Another explanation is that regime loyalists or others emptied the facility prior to coalition forces arriving in Baghdad in April."IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers. The same AP report points out that Ms. Fleming said inspectors visited the site again in March 2003, but didn't view the explosives because the seals were not broken.
In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Fleming said the IAEA made warnings at the time of the US-led invasion.
It was inspected frequently and often by the IAEA, and it was mentioned in several statements by Mr. ElBaradei to the Security Council. It was of concern directly after the invasion, when it was clear that the main nuclear site, Tuwaitha, was being looted. And so this was a site that we did alert the US to as one important to protect.When asked what the US response to the warnings was, Fleming responded: "It received this information, there's been ... there was no comment."
President Bush did not immediately respond to the news while campaigning Monday with former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani in Colorado. As The New York Times reports, Bush's aides "tried to explain why American forces had ignored warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency about the vulnerability of the huge stockpile of high explosives."
In several sessions with reporters, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, alternately insisted that Mr. Bush "wants to make sure that we get to the bottom of this" and tried to distance the president from knowledge of the issue, saying Mr. Bush was informed of the disappearance only within the last 10 days. White House officials said they could not explain why warnings from the international agency in May 2003 about the stockpile's vulnerability to looting never resulted in action. At one point, Mr. McClellan pointed out that "there were a number of priorities at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom."As to what the political fallout will be, the Independent report states: "It remains to be seen whether the episode is lost in the swirl of the campaign, or whether it becomes the 'October surprise' - the unexpected event dreaded by both parties, capable of tipping a close election to the other side."
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