So my loveable wingnut dad actually forwarded me Ed Gillespie's latest RNC memo, 'Subject: It's October, but it's no surprise'. This is the memo where Gillespie repeats the meme that the NYT piece about the missing Al Qaqaa explosives is a 'flawed article' and that NBC Nightly News reported that on April 10, 2003, their embedded reporter was at Al Qaqaa and 'found no such weapons.'
Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad...
I had to respond, of course. Major points of my e-mail are right here:
- The explosives cache at Al Qaqaa was well known prior to the invasion.
- The explosives were STILL THERE when we invaded.
- Officials at the White House have known about the missing explosives for a while.
- The explosives could have been taken any time between the last IAEA presence on March 15th, 2003 and May 27th, 2003.
- The explosives that are missing are the kinds that have been used in the region to create IEDs.
- IEDs are killing and wounding our troops.
My entire e-mail debunking of RNC memo is below the fold:
Update [2004-10-27 2:48:54 by sheba]:By request, here's Gillespie's odious e-mail:
Dear [ Wingnut Dad ],
- It's October, but it's no surprise. Remember last week, when I highlighted a quote by Newsweek editor Evan Thomas that the media's desire to see John Kerry elected may be worth five-to-twenty million votes, and urged you to be on the look-out for evidence of that desire in articles and news programs?
- Well, yesterday the front page of New York Times featured a flawed article asserting, "The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives -- used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons -- are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations. The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, 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."
- CBS News' "60 Minutes" admitted today they were saving the same story to air the Sunday before the election.
- John Kerry seized on the New York Times headline to launch a political attack on President Bush, saying U.S. troops "failed to guard those stockpiles" and that is "one of the great blunders" of the war.
- Senator Kerry and the New York Times leave the impression that these weapons went missing recently and U.S. troops were derilict in their duty to guard the stockpile--neither of which is true.
- Network and cable news programs repeated the incomplete report and Sen. Kerry's attacks more than 100 times on Monday.
- But last night NBC "Nightly News" reported that on April 10, 2003, one day after Baghdad fell, U.S. troops entered Al Qaqaa, accompanied by an embedded reporter from NBC, and found no such weapons.
- It also turns out that our troops have found and destroyed or are destroying 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives.
- There was no mention of either one of these facts in today's New York Times front page story, which regurgitated yesterday's charges and Senator Kerry's attacks based on them.
- Liberal groups like MoveOn.org have already blasted out e-mails repeating the discredited report and urging people to vote against President Bush based on the flawed coverage.
- We can not count on the media to set the story straight. We have to get the truth out to our friends and neighbors ourselves.
- We are counting on YOU to set the record straight. Please forward this e-mail and the attached fact sheet to family and friends, call your local network, call talk radio, write letters to the editor, and post facts on blogs.
- I suspect you'll be hearing from me again in the course of the next seven days as Mr. Thomas's prediction proves true again.
Sincerely,
Ed Gillespie
Chairman, Republican National Committee
Here's my e-mail response in its entirety:
Dad,
Sorry, but I had to respond to the e-mail that you sent from Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee.
I have been tracking the story about the 380 tons of missing explosives, primarily HMX and RDX, since it broke on the internet the other night. Remember, less than one pound of RDX was enough to rip flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland; and we're talking 760,000 pounds of explosives that have gone missing.
I have not relied on talking points from either political committee in this response; I have done my own homework here because it is SO important to get the facts right. I have looked carefully at sources and have come to the following conclusions. I'll lay them out briefly; then I will footnote each assertion. Please bear with me! My conclusions are as follows:
- The explosives cache at Al Qaqaa was well known prior to the invasion.
- The explosives were STILL THERE when we invaded.
- Officials at the White House have known about the missing explosives for a while.
- The explosives could have been taken any time between the last IAEA presence on March 15th, 2003 and May 27th, 2003.
- The explosives that are missing are the kinds that have been used in the region to create IEDs.
- IEDs are killing and wounding our troops.
Here's what I have found:
(1) The cache at Al Qaqaa was well known prior to the invasion.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had known about the explosives at the Al Qaqaa site for some time, and when the IAEA was in charge of inspections, it had the explosives under seal, meaning that they knew that the stuff was still there. Here's a reference from a December 14, 2002 inspection, one of the many conducted by the IAEA prior to the invasion.
(2) The explosives were STILL THERE when we invaded.
§ At The Jerusalem Post, an Associated Press story cites a Pentagon official for verification that the explosives were there when we invaded:
"At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity."
§ But wait, you ask. What about that reporter from NBC Nightly News? Did you actually listen to it?
I listened to it at MSNBC.com.
Here's what it actually said:
The last visit from the IAEA was on March 15th, and the seals that they examined were still intact. The HMX was still intact, although they hadn't verified the RDX on that 3/15 visit. (The report didn't mention the last date that the RDX explosives were intact; perhaps the December date I cited above, perhaps on another date.)
The first troops from the U.S. Military (3rd Infantry) actually arrived there on April 4th, TWO WEEKS AFTER THE INVASION STARTED, WITH LOOTERS EVERYWHERE, carrying out what they could on their backs. Six days later, troops from the 101st arrived to use the location as a staging area. Neither group was there to look for weapons. And given that the complex has more than 1,000 buildings, they might easily have missed them.
The first time that the U.S. sent weapons inspectors was actually on May 27th, when the Iraq Survey Group arrived to find that the explosives were gone. Yes, that's May 27th, 2003.
§ Want another source? How about straight from David Kay, the guy the Bush administration picked to head up the ISG to look for WMD? According to the Los Angeles Times,
"David Kay, the CIA's former chief weapons hunter in Iraq, believes that the material was looted in the immediate aftermath of the war.
"He said he saw the facility in May 2003, `and it was heavily looted at that time. Sometime between April and May, most of the stuff was carried off. The site was in total disarray, just like a lot of the Iraqi sites.'"
"Kay said that HMX and RDX were `superb explosives for terrorists' because they were stable compounds that could be transported safely and used for large-scale attacks.
"Both types of material `would be good for a car bomb or a truck bomb,' Kay said. `Just pack it together with a detonator.'"
(3) Officials at the White House have known about the missing explosives for a while.
The New York Times notes that the White House (whoever he is) confirms that one person, at least, in the administration, was informed before the weekend's story hit the papers.
"The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing."
There are unnamed sources who claim that the Defense Department has known about the missing explosives for far longer, but since the reporter doesn't have even a citation like "a Pentagon official" or "The White House" to whom to attribute, I'll not share that here, even though I find the reporter generally quite credible.
And according to the report on NBC Nightly News, the Iraq Survey Group knew about the missing explosives for over a year. (That agrees with David Kay's quote above.)
(4) NOTHING cited above indicates precisely * when * the explosives were taken.
They could have been taken any time between the last IAEA presence in March 2003 and May 27th, 2003. Then why is it breaking now? Because, even though the U.S.-formed Iraq Survey Group might have known about the missing cache for some time, it's only in the last month that the Iraqi provisional government informed the IAEA that the explosives were missing. My source here is the Los Angeles Times:
"Iraqi officials told the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the U.N. monitoring group -- earlier this month that the explosives were looted after April 9, 2003, when U.S. forces entered Baghdad. IAEA officials verified that the explosives were still at the site and under seal in January 2003, the last time the inspectors were there."
"David Kay, the CIA's former chief weapons hunter in Iraq, believes that the material was looted in the immediate aftermath of the war."
(5) The explosives that are missing are the kinds that have been used in the region to create IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, of the kind used in the Kashmir region, and of the kind used in Iraq to kill and/or maim our soldiers.
Here are a couple of sources I've found for this information:
RDX and IEDs: the Deadly Duet
"RDX has a high explosive potential, is light, and is also malleable which allows its transport without suspicion. Though RDX is a military explosive and cannot be procured commercially, the external support to various militant groups in Kashmir makes it easy for them to obtain it. Almost all the militant-related IED incidents in Kashmir have used RDX. The combination of RDX-IED in Kashmir increased during the second half of the 1990s. Reliance on RDX will continue and is certain to become a major strategy for the militants. In fact, militants groups in the North East seem to be shifting to RDX, instead of other explosives.
"Given the easy availability of explosives and, appreciating the external involvement in providing RDX to militant and criminal groups, and the simple process involved in making an IED, the RDX-IED combination will be the real problem in the coming years; more so than the AK-47s in the hands of the militants."
House Armed Services Committee Report, June 2, 2004
(from a raid on a weapons cache in Al Tarmiyah, about 20 miles north of Baghdad and, as near as I can figure from the map, about 40ish miles from Al Qaqaa):
"The find amounted to a staggering payload of terrorist and insurgent warfare materiel that included, in addition to mountains of small arms and ammunition, huge quantities of Russian-made rockets, SA-7 surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, Sagger missiles, TNT, RDX-type explosives, hand grenades, mortars, machineguns, sniper rifles, artillery shells, machinegun ammunition, plastique-type explosive materials, TOW missiles, launch tubes, fuses, maps and reams of other various demolition and improvised explosive device materials and triggering and detonation components. The rocket haul alone netted nearly 270 rounds and the find included, as well, some thirteen 55-gallon barrels of an RDX-type explosive material similar to TNT.
...
"'There were weapons everywhere and we knew that these were the weapons that had killed many people in towns like Karbala, Najaf and Fallujah,' said the commander. `And they didn't want to stop. They just wanted to find more and more.'
...
"'A lot of the ammunition that was found," he continued, `would be used to produce IEDs and to detonate IEDs.'"
(6) IEDs are the second biggest cause of fatalities in Iraq (222 US military deaths so far), second only to hostile fire (262).
Source: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (I used the pull-down menus to get the figures for IED fatalities)
It's harder to know how many of the over 7,000 wounded US soldiers were wounded by IEDs, so I won't attempt a guess.
So, to recap:
- The explosives cache at Al Qaqaa was well known prior to the invasion.
- The explosives were STILL THERE when we invaded.
- Officials at the White House have known about the missing explosives for a while.
- The explosives could have been taken any time between the last IAEA presence on March 15th, 2003 and May 27th, 2003.
- The explosives that are missing are the kinds that have been used in the region to create IEDs.
- IEDs are killing and wounding our troops.
Why do these conclusions matter?
Because you have told me that you believe that "Bush is doing a magnificent job" and that the war on terror is of primary importance to you this election season. I have to say that this particular incident is by no means the only large mistake for which this administration is responsible; but it is emblematic of an administration which cannot be trusted with our security. For heaven's sake, 760,000 pounds of explosives are missing? And I'm supposed to believe that this administration is the one which will ensure that America is safer?
Dad, I implore you to read these words knowing that I worked hard to pull together only credible sources, on my own precious time, because I just can't bear to read, unanswered, another unsubstantiated talking points memo from a political flack whose job it is to obfuscate. I appreciate that you're still willing to engage in the discussion with me by sending me information that you must believe is important enough for me to read. I read Mr. Gillespie's e-mail, checked out the facts, and responded with my own research. I respectfully ask that you do the same for me.
Thanks for continuing the conversation,
-s-
Update [2004-10-27 2:28:52 by sheba]:Wow, dad sent back a quick response already...
I an stunned by the amount of time you spent on this, only because I know how little time you have, not because I don't think it was worth the effort. Thank you. My own impression from what they and you write is that 380 tons of anything is a lot, and that much high explosive is certainly something the invading forces should have kept track of. I have no idea why it wasn't done, whether they weren't told, they were told but the info didn't get down the line fast enough, there were even higher priorities at the time (like saving lives), someone was assigned to cover it and didn't, or what.
In short, yes, a screwup, or at the very least a bad result of good choices, but not one I'd use to decide whom to elect as our next president.