October Surprise -- Kerry's Latest Lie

Well, the headline doesn't do it justice.

Let's start with yesterday's report regarding the missing explosives in Iraq, courtesy of the left-wing dishrag. Front page stuff, apparently. It's such a big story that the Kerry campaign rushed out an ad in response.

Of course, NBC News (no right-wing news outlet there) managed to debunk the story, in a report by Jim 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)

Oh, wait, the IAEA is claiming NBC's report is wrong...

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, told the U.N. Security Council that the IAEA had kept the theft quiet since learning of it from Iraqi authorities Oct. 10 to give the U.S.-led multinational force and Iraq’s interim government “an opportunity to attempt to recover the explosives before this matter was put into the public domain.”

But since the disappearance was reported Monday by The New York Times, he said, he wanted the Security Council to have the letter that he received from Mohammed J. Abbas, a senior official at Iraq’s Ministry of Science and Technology, reporting the theft of the explosives.

The materials were lost through “the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security,” the letter said.

The letter informed the IAEA that since Sept. 4, 2003, looting at Al-Qaqaa had resulted in the loss of 214.67 tons of HMX, 155.68 tons of RDX and 6.39 tons of PETN explosives. It was not clear how Iraqi authorities arrived at that date.

ElBaradei’s cover letter to the council said that the HMX had been under IAEA seal and that the RDX and PETN were “both subject to regular monitoring of stock levels.”

“The presence of these amounts was verified by the IAEA in January 2003,” he said.

Perhaps we shouldn't be suspicious of the motives of El Baradei. He wouldn't have any reason to lie, would he? Oh, wait, perhaps he does...

A new board of governors of the UN nuclear watchdog met in Vienna Monday to draw up procedures for electing a new director general, with current chief Mohamed ElBaradei seeking a third term despite US opposition.

ElBaradei put his hat into the ring for a third term as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) earlier this month despite opposition from the United States and possibly other top UN funding states.

His current four-year term expires on November 30 next year, and US officials have said the United States, the largest contributor to the United Nations, supports the position of the Geneva group of top 10 contributors that heads of international organizations should not serve more than two terms.

"This policy has nothing to do with the director general's qualifications. The United States thinks that he's done a very good job leading the agency at a very difficult time, but it's simply a matter of principle and good governance," a Western official familiar with the US position said.

Might the two be related? Jim Geraghty makes a pretty good case...

In late September the U.S. says no third term for ElBaradei, and Oct. 1 he writes to Iraq demanding answers about this old weapons depot!

Then, in a memo that appears to be dated Oct. 10, the Iraqis respond that the explosives are missing… and it just happens to show up on the front page of the New York Times eight days before Election Day. An article that quotes a European diplomat as saying “Dr. ElBaradei is "extremely concerned" about the potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.”

I’ll bet he is! He’s so concerned, he felt a need to make this issue that he’s been quiet about since spring 2003 and press the Iraqi government for an immediate answer that he knows will make the Bush administration look bad!

One has to wonder - has John Kerry or a member of his staff indicated they would keep ElBaradei around for another term? We know ElBaradei wants a change in U.S. policy on his third term.

ElBaradei is doing everything he can to help Kerry. What’s in it for ElBaradei?

Hey, far be it from us to allege that there's anything untoward happening at an international agency. Then again, let's find out when the explosives in question disappeared...

But senior Defense Department officials told FOX News they’re not sure whether looters made off with the explosives or whether Saddam moved them before the war began. NBC News reported Monday night that one of its reporters was embedded with the 101st Airborne. She watched the troops conduct what can be described as a "cursory search" of the premises on April 10, and found a great deal of conventional ordnance, but no RDX or HMX.

The embedded reporter, Lai Ling Jew, told cable news partner MSNBC on Tuesday that she stopped with the Second Brigade at the Al-Qaqaa facility, 30 miles south of Baghdad, and stayed there for 24 hours.

"The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us," she said. "And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was — at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there."

Read that last sentance -- looters would have had trouble getting near the facility to loot the place. The likely explanation is that Saddam and friends moved the explosives before the war began. Could looters have taken the explosives? Well, as Geraghty points out, there's reason to be skeptical...

But the alternative is that Iraqi looters walked/drove away with 350 tons of this stuff after the Coalition was in the neighborhood. You don’t just walk away with 350 tons with it tucked in your shirt one handful at a time. Or, alternatively, one has to believe that the Coalition troops just ignored a 40 truck convoy leaving an Iraqi arms depot. Imagine that road checkpoint:

“Say, Abdul, what do you have in the truck and the 39 behind you?”

“Baby milk, sir.”

“Ah. Okay. You can go about your business. Move along. Move along.”

An AP Timeline says that the IAEA last visited the site in “March 2003.” It also says that the war in Iraq began in “March 2003.” (Marshall indicates the last inspection was March 8.) More specific answers would help shed better light on this material. The war began on March 19, 2003. That means anywhere from 18 days to one day passed between the final IAEA check and the beginning of hostilities.

An earlier report suggests the first U.S. troops arrived April 4.

Would it be easier to smuggle this stuff out when U.S. troops were rumbling through the country and tanks were on every street corner? Would you want to be driving a truck with ten tons of high-grade explosives through a country with hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, armed to the teeth and with itchy trigger fingers? And all that satellite and aerial reconnaissance that was in place before the war - it just disappeared after April 4?

Is that plausible? Or is it more likely that the stuff was moved when the Hussein regime controlled the site, when there was a ton of trucks running around the country preparing for war, when the U.S. wasn’t going to risk starting a war before the deadline, during that window between the IAEA check and the troops arriving?

Perhaps our so-called allies, by forcing Bush to wait on U.N. approval that never arrived, allowed Saddam time to move the explosives. Wretchard makes an important pair of points at the Belmont Club...

In this context, the loss of 380 tons of RDX is similar to worrying about a toothache after being diagnosed with AIDS and Ebola. Some 600,000 tons of explosive are said to have been dispersed throughout Iraq prior to the conclusion of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The loss of the RDX is serious, but in the overall scheme of things, one of the least worries. But it provides indirect confirmation of the preemptive dispersal of war materiel by the Saddam regime while the US was trying to negotiate UN permission to topple him for six months, compounded by Turkey's refusal to allow the 4ID to attack south into the Sunni Triangle.

The account above shows that the RDX explosive was already gone by the time US forces arrived. Although one may retrospectively find some fault with OIF order of battle, most of the damage had already been inflicted by the dilatory tactics of America's allies which allowed Saddam the time and space -- nearly half a year and undisturbed access to Syria -- necessary to prepare his resistance, transfer money abroad and disperse explosives (as confirmed first hand by reporters). Although it is both desirable and necessary to criticize the mistakes attendant to OIF, much of the really "criminal" neglect may be laid on the diplomatic failure which gave the wily enemy this invaluable opportunity. The price of passing the "Global Test" was very high; and having been gypped once, there are some who are still eager to be taken to the cleaners again.

A few military folks who were there have already taken to cyberspace...

I can tell you what happened at my squad level. When we arrived there, humvees with Mark-19's and other mounted weapons immediately secured the parameter with appropriate manpower backup. On the foot level we broke up into squads and went building to building and cleared them; mind you, we couldn't do them all. But we found what had been typical finds, caches of AK-47's, artillery rounds and bullets. There was absolutely no talk of a big find, and what I could sense no worries of anything that should have been there. Of course, we were still worried about the possibilities of chemical weapons but they never panned out.

I am a little perturbed at the gross mischaracterization of what went on there. From what I remember of the NBC crew, they did not go out with us, and they may have in fact been asked to not to go on the search with us, due to the dangers that may have possibily come up. Now this part is my opinion, but don't you think that if they had gone out with us they would have video?

There's more here...

You are correct in your bottom line conclusion. Here is a second follow up.

I was serving as a [identifying information removed by the Kerry Spot] staff member during the time in question. The Commander on the site had complete real time intelligence on what to expect and possibly find at the Al-QaQaa depot. The ordinance in question was not found when teams were sent in to inspect and secure the area. When this information was relayed, Operational plans were adjusted and the unit moved forward. Had the ordinance in question been discovered, a security team would have been left in place.

The Bush team has responded, with Dick Cheney leading the way. Meanwhile, the Kerry campaign is running into some problems. They want to blame Bush, but senior advisor Richard Hobrooke admitted that he and the Kerry campaign "didn't know what happened." And John Edwards was quoted as saying:

"These are exactly the kind of explosives terrorists want. They're the dangerous weapons we wanted to keep from falling in the hands of terrorists. And now these explosives are out there, and we have no idea who's got them. Dick Cheney calls that a remarkable success."

Wait, there were dangerous weapons in Iraq? I thought the Kerry campaign didn't think there were any dangerous weapons in Iraq.

Maybe it's time for an ad, comparing the Times to CBS News. And tearing apart Kerry. We like the Mad Parson's idea...

I think the best way to do this is to insinuate the MSM while blasting the Kerry campaign. Something like a voice-over reiterating the DNC's "Fortunate Son" ad while showing the falsified documents; then the voice-over would say that those documents turned out unreliable. With a nod to Mr Reagan's famous "There you go again", the voice-over would reiterate Mr Kerry's "Obligation" ad and then tie them to the debunked UN letter (which would seriously piss of the UNers, but they're already pissed off, so what have we got to lose?). The MSM would never be mentioned, but the ad would excoriate recent 'reporting'. It would also, by implication, reinforce why Mr Kerry's lust over the UN is so dangerous. AND, it would betray the Left as so desperate to win that they will say anything.

Geraghty has some strong language as well...

“Kerry is playing Monday Morning Quarterback with the 101st Airborne’s performance in Iraq. In 1971, John Kerry smeared our troops as rapists and butchers then... He’s smearing them as incompetent now. This Nov. 2, show John Kerry what you think of his attacks on our troops."

Of course, maybe we should be wondering how Kerry managed to get an ad out that quickly. The New York Times didn't tell him in advance, did they? Oh, wait, maybe CBS did...