Redstate

By John Cole Posted in Elections — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Yesterday, the NY Times splashed a rather sensational piece all over the front page, claiming that the coalition (chiefly the United States) had failed to secure 380 tons of high-grade explosives, and that they have subsequently disappeared. Like any normal human being, I was pissed. Now, it is beginning to appear, not only did the NY Times not give us all the facts, but it appears that this may have been nothing more than a partisan hit piece containing little more than old news and bad reporting.

From the Kerry Spot:

NBC News: Miklaszewski: “April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qakaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing. The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon. In a letter this month, the Iraqi interim government told the International Atomic Energy Agency the high explosives were lost to theft and looting due to lack of security. Critics claim there were simply not enough U.S. troops to guard hundreds of weapons stockpiles, weapons now being used by insurgents and terrorists to wage a guerrilla war in Iraq.” (NBC’s “Nightly News,” 10/25/04)

Tucker Eskew's take:

NBC News reports tonight that one of their embedded crews was with the 101st when it entered the Al Qaqqaa facility reported to contain the 380 tons of weapons -- the weapons whose presence within Iraq would seem to confirm the nature of Saddam's threat, but whose disappearance was blamed solely by Kerry on the man in the Oval. Turns out, our troops (and NBC) took the facility the day after the liberation of Iraq on 4/9/03, and voila! The weapons weren't there when the military arrived.

Our troops were on top of the site from the start and the material in question wasn't there.

So, lesson seems to be, if you throw out your campaign playbook for the day because of one headline, better make sure it's gonna hold up.

Some perspective on the tonnage of weapons in question:

Although the world's attention has focused on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, scant attention has been paid to the mountains of weapons of conventional destruction unearthed in Iraq.

The bombs, rockets, grenades, cannon shells and bullets amount to the world's fourth-largest stockpile of weapons, Army Corps of Engineers officials say. An estimated 600,000 tons of munitions with markings from all over the world, including the United States, and some so old that the weapons that fired them are no longer made, were stashed in Saddam's innumerable caches.

To date, 110,000 tons have been destroyed. An additional 138,000 tons are stored behind protective barriers. Saddam seemed to hoard this cornucopia of death aimlessly. "There are no aisles to walk down. It's just heaped," he said. "It just blows your mind to see this stuff."

380 tons is 0.00005% of the known existing weapons. Kinda diminishes the hype, no?

At any rate, the NY Times shamelessly continues forward with their analysis of the 'breaking news:'

James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger reported in The Times yesterday that some 380 tons of the kinds of powerful explosives used to destroy airplanes, demolish buildings, make missile warheads and trigger nuclear weapons have disappeared from one of the many places in Iraq that the United States failed to secure. The United Nations inspectors disdained by the Bush administration had managed to monitor the explosives for years. But they vanished soon after the United States took over the job. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was so bent on proving his theory of lightning warfare that he ignored the generals who said an understaffed and underarmed invasion force could rush to Baghdad, but couldn't hold the rest of the country, much less guard things like the ammunition dump.

Iraqi and American officials cannot explain how some 760,000 pounds of explosives were spirited away from a well-known site just 30 miles from Baghdad. But they were warned. Within weeks of the invasion, international weapons inspectors told Washington that the explosives depot was in danger and that terrorists could help themselves "to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."

Well, there is the one little explanation the MSNBC embeds offer- they were not there when we got there. Notice also how the 380 tons becomes 760,000 lbs in the second paragraph. Shock value, anyone? Another explanation is this El Baradei memo to the United Nations:

"El Baradei told the United Nations in February 2003 that Iraq had declared that "HMX previously under IAEA seal had been transferred for use in the production of industrial explosives, primarily to cement plants as a booster for explosives used in quarrying.""

This is perhaps the best perspective on the issue that I have seen:

The Pentagon ordered US-led forces in Iraq and US arms inspectors to "look into the matter and investigate what was alleged to be missing and the possible circumstances for going missing", State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said.

"This is 350 tonnes from a total of over almost 400,000 tonnes that we have accounted for.

"It's important, it's significant, but let's put it in the proper perspective.

"We, from the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, did everything we could to secure arms caches throughout the country.

"But given the number of arms and the number of caches and the extent of militarisation of Iraq, it was impossible to provide 100 per cent security for 100 per cent of the sites, quite frankly."

The IAEA told the US government on October 15 that the explosives had disappeared, Mr Ereli said.

So, in closing, you may ask yourself, why is the NY Times leading their newspaper with a scary story based on faulty information that may be 19 months old, in essence, dictating the news cycle for the entire nation? You need look no farther than today's front page of the online edition of the NY Times:

Iraq Explosives Become Issue in Campaign

By DAVID E. SANGER

The White House sought to explain the missing explosives in Iraq; John Kerry said the president had put U.S. troops at risk.

Always with a keen eye on demagoguing an issue, the Kerry campaign quickly recognized the gift from the NY Times

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Everybody wants to know... how’s President Clinton doing?

JOHN KERRY, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Fabulous. Great. He’s really doing well...

He really was very concerned about this ammo dump thing that’s happened today. He thinks that—and I think that—represents the way in which this administration has miscalculated again and again and again in Iraq. And this is serious, because just a small amount, if only a few tons of it fell into the hands of terrorists, it’s more than enough to blow airplanes out of the sky, buildings to the ground, its deadly serious. And it’s so basic to what we should have been doing over there.

MATTHEWS: Is this the source of all these IEDs that have been blowing the legs off our guys?

KERRY: I can’t tell you that. I don’t know the answer to that. But I can tell you this, that there’s an awful lot of explosives and weaponry in the hands of insurgents that shouldn’t be, and its because we didn’t do the planning, we didn’t do—you know that this ammo dump was put in a second tier of category of protection, below the ministry of oil? Below other buildings in Iraq? And they didn’t do what was necessary to protect America and our troops, I think it’s deadly serious, and so does President Clinton.

MATTHEWS: Was this a failure of the high command, of the President himself, not to give specific orders to protect that ammo?

KERRY: I believe that all of those decisions—the president sits and leads the War Council. You sit at that table, and you ask your generals and you ask your Secretary of Defense: Have we made sure? What’s the order of priority? What are our lists? Do we have enough troops? The fact is, the Army Chief of Staff said you need several hundred thousand troops. He listened to Don Rumsfeld, who was wrong, he didn’t listen to the professional military. I think that’s a failure of a commander in chief.

"The NY Times- All the News That is Fit to Make Up."

I don't think my faith in the media has ever sunk this low before, but I simply am astonished by what has taken place over the last six months. I would call the mmedia prostitutes, but even call-girls have standards and prices. The NY Times is giving it away for free.