Matt Drudge is reporting that the whole “missing 380 tons of explosives” story is all wrong, and if so, the implications are ominous, as I see it.
“Why is the U.N. nuclear agency suddenly warning now that insurgents in Iraq may have obtained nearly 400 tons of missing explosives—in early 2003?”, he asks.
It seems the bomb material was already missing when the U.S. troops arrived to secure that ammunitions depot—one day after they arrived in Baghdad. And yet the media—except NBC News—were reporting that it went missing after the troops arrived.
…But tonight, NBCNEWS reported: The 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were already missing back in April 10, 2003—when U.S. troops arrived at the installation south of Baghdad!
An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.
According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.
“The U.S. Army was at the site one day after the liberation and the weapons were already gone,” a top Republican blasted from Washington late Monday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers.
Dem vp hopeful John Edwards blasted Bush for not securing the explosives: “It is reckless and irresponsible to fail to protect and safeguard one of the largest weapons sites in the country. And by either ignoring these mistakes or being clueless about them, George Bush has failed. He has failed as our commander in chief; he has failed as president.”
A senior Bush official e-mailed DRUDGE late Monday: “Let me get this straight, are Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards now saying we did not go into Iraq soon enough? We should have invaded and liberated Iraq sooner?”
Top Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart fired back Monday night: “In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame. Instead of distorting John Kerry’s words, the Bush campaign is now falsely and deliberately twisting the reports of journalists. It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous.”
Why is the U.N. nuclear agency suddenly warning now that insurgents in Iraq may have obtained nearly 400 tons of missing explosives—in early 2003?
NBCNEWS Jim Miklaszewski quoted one official: “Recent disagreements between the administration and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency makes this announcement appear highly political.”
Developing…
And an update already:
As I fade away for another day, I noticed that CNN has picked up on this story now, saying “Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. According to NBC, troops from the 101st Airborne arrived the next day to find that the material was already gone.”
NBC was embedded with the troops as they arrived at the scene.
Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived
NBC News says its crew was embedded with soldiers at time
Tuesday, October 26, 2004 Posted: 1:45 AM EDT (0545 GMT)(CNN)—The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new twist, after a network embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion of Iraq reported that the material had already vanished by the time American troops arrived.
NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad.
While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional explosives, they did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that reportedly went missing, according to NBC.
…
And at the end of their mile-long story, this chuckler—particularly the last sentence of their story (I bolded):
But in the wake of the NBC report, the Bush campaign fired off a statement saying that Kerry’s criticism of the president over the missing material has “been proven false before the day is over.”
“John Kerry’s attacks today were baseless,” Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said. “He said American troops did not secure the explosives, when the explosives were already missing.”
Schmidt also said that Kerry “neglects to mention the 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that are either destroyed or in the process of being destroyed” in Iraq.
But Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart fired back with a statement of his own, accusing the Bush campaign of “distorting” the NBC News report.
“In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame,” Lockhart said. “It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous.”
Lockhart did not elaborate on how the Bush campaign was distorting the NBC report.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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