Enlarge The War

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Sun, 31 Oct 2004 14:53

Enlarge The War

 

 

Enlarge The War

 

When something happens throughout a command it is not an accident it

is policy. It is no secret that George Bush wants to enlarge the war

throughout the middle east.

 

 

Date:Fri, 30 Oct 2004 14:44:23 +1000 (EST)

 

Bush Want's To Enlarge The War

 

 

The looting of Iraq's arsenal

 

The same month AlQaqaa was being stripped of high

explosives, I warned my military intelligence unit of

another weapons facility that was being cleaned out.

But nothing was done.

 

 

-- - - - - - - - - - -

By DavidDeBatto

 

Oct. 29,2004 | When I read last Sunday's New York

Times story of the missing explosives from the

Iraqi weapons storage facility south of Baghdad at Al

Qaqaa, it brought back memories from my time with the

Army National Guard's 223rd Military Intelligence

Battalion in Iraq last year. Bad memories. In the

Timesstory, Iraqi scientists who worked at Al Qaqaa

described how the facility was looted of almost 400

tons of high explosives right after the American troops

swept through the area in April 2003 and failed

to secure the site.

 

But Al Qaqaa is not the whole story. The same month it

was being looted, I learned of another major weapons

and ammunition storage facility, near my battalion's

base at Camp Anaconda, that was unguarded and targeted

by looters. But despite my repeated warnings -- and

those of other U.S.intelligence agents -- nothing was

done to secure this facility, as it was systematically

stripped of enough weapons and explosives to

equip anti-U.S. insurgents with enough roadside

improvised explosive devices,or IEDs, for years to

come.

 

Camp Anaconda, where I was stationed with the 223rd

from April through October, 2003,is a sprawling

logistical supply base located 50 miles north of

Baghdad which once served as one of Saddam's largest

air force bases. It is now home to over 22,000 U.S.

troops, mostly Army but some Air Force personnel as

well, and serves as the main supply point for

American forces throughout Iraq. Hundreds of heavy

trucks in long convoys enter and leave the two main

gates every day, 24 hours a day, hauling

every conceivable item that an army at war might need.

 

When I first arrived at Anaconda in late April of 2003

however, the base was a barren, desolate outpost. There

were only about 200 soldiers on the base when we first

arrived with our wartime convoy of California

and Massachusetts National Guard troops up from Kuwait.

The base had been vacated by Iraqi forces just days

before our arrival. The signs of battle were

everywhere, starting with the charred remains of the

guardshack at the main gate and continuing all over

the base in the form of bomb craters, bullet holes and

wrecked vehicles. With a total area of about 15 square

miles within the base to defend, and with just a

couple hundred soldiers to do it, security was our main

concern. The war was still going on and the base was

located right in the middle of the hotzone known as

the Sunni Triangle. We all took turns standing watch

on one of the many guard towers that ringed the base.

 

As a counterintelligence agent, one of my main jobs

was to talk to local Iraqis and gather information on

any possible threats to the security of the Army. This

is called " force protection. " In order to do that,

we recruit and train local people to act as informants

to provide us with needed information on the location

and intention of the bad guys and their weapons. This

is also known as " human intelligence " and is the area

most lacking in our war on terrorism thus far.

 

During the period just after we arrived at Anaconda,

the Iraqi people were actually very supportive of our

presence and would line up at the entrances to the base

in order to bring us information on all manner

of things and also to ask for assistance with their

medical or other needs. Those bringing us information

were referred to as " walk-ins. " Some of the best

intelligence I obtained during my tour in Iraq

came from walk-ins.

 

Sometime in early May 2003, several local walk-ins

came to the base and told me that there was a large

weapons storage facility located about two or three

kilometers to the south that was abandoned after the

Iraqi forces fled the area following the collapse of

the Saddam regime on April 9,2003. The facility, they

said, was still unguarded. The Iraqi guards had simply

deserted their posts and disappeared. The storage

facility,I was told, was an annex to the main base at

Anaconda and was used bythe Iraqi Air Force to store

bombs, missiles and other ordnance. These same people

said that they were concerned that their children

might pick up some of the explosives or landmines that

were stored there and blow themselves up. I was also

told that local " Ali Babbas " or thieves were looting

the site daily and word in the local communities was

that they were selling the weapons and explosives to

ex-Baath party members for use in attacking U.S forces.

 

 

My team and I immediately went out to the location,

finding a huge facility perhaps 5square miles or more

in size. It was composed of dozens of both underground

bunkers and above-ground storage buildings. I was

stunned to see vast amounts of weapons simply lying

around on the ground littering the base. Some of these

weapons included surface-to-air and air-to-air

missiles, land mines, rocket-propelled grenades, small

arms ammunition, hand grenades, detonator caps, plastic

explosives and other assorted ammunition and weaponry.

It was quite a frightening sight.

 

My team took pictures of the site and all of the

weapons and ammunition and filed a report immediately

after returning to Anaconda. I also verbally briefed my

battalion commander, Lt. Col. Timothy Ryan, as was the

policy with any significant event such as this. Upon

hearing my report, Lt. Col.Ryan requested that I take

him back out to the site the next day, which I did.

Ryan toured the facility just as I had done and saw

all of the unsecured weaponry and ammunition. Ryan told

me that he would talk to EOD (explosive ordinance

disposal) and " have the stuff removed. "

 

It should benoted that after U.S forces moved into

Iraq and the Saddam regime fell, the responsibility for

securing and disposing weapons and explosives at the

many storage sites scattered across Iraq became the

instant responsibility of the U.S military. The Iraqi

police, or any other local public authority that could

have taken responsibility, simply no longer existed.

 

I do not know whether Ryan relayed my reports about

the storage site to the appropriate military officials.

I placed calls to his office on Thursday for comment,

but received no replies. In all fairness to him,Ryan

did not have the authority to either remove the

material or to post guards. He would have had to

request such action through his chain of command, in

this case, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the

205thM.I. Battalion of Abu Ghraib fame. But in any

event, no action was taken.

 

For the next several weeks I continued to receive

reports from my sources in the community that the

weapons were still at the storage facility, there were

still no guards, and the looting was continuing. I

made three or four more trips to the site between May

and August and confirmed that the facility was in fact

unsecured and that weapons and ammunition were still

exposed. On one such visit I actually saw some Iraqis

in the distance driving a pickup truck and stopping at

bunkers inside the storage facility, no doubt helping

themselves. During one visit that summer, I took note

of some land mines that were stored in an above-ground

building at the site. The next time I visited the

site, the land mines were gone.

 

After each visit, I filed reports to the 223rd OMT

(Operations Management Team) on the exposed weaponry

and the risk to coalition forces. The Iraqi villagers

kept coming and telling me of the dangerous situation

and asking me why the Americans could not place guards

at the facility or haul the stuff away. I had no answer

for them.

 

It isinteresting to me to note now, as I recall these

incidents, that my brigade commander from July 1 onward

at Anaconda was Col. Pappas, who I remember making

trips to Abu Ghraib several times a week. Although

I did not report on the unguarded site directly to

Pappas, he undoubtedly received all of my reports.

 

While working on this story, I called another member

of the unit who served in Iraq with me at Anaconda,

Sgt. Greg Ford. Ford was also a counterintelligence

agent and is now retired from the National Guardand

lives in California. Ford also remembers the vast

weapons stockpiles lying open to looters just outside

Anaconda. He advised me that he had also filed at least

one written report about the problem and verbally

advised Lt. Col. Ryan as well. Ford told me, " No

one seemed too interested in what I said about that

stuff. I went out there several times after I told them

and the place was still unguarded. The more times I

went out there, the more stuff was missing. It

really sucked. " Ford went on to say that his sources

had also told him thatlocal insurgents, ex-Baath party

members as they were known then, were going to use the

weapons as roadside improvised explosive

devices(IEDs). In fact, Ford told me, one of his

sources in Samarra, a tribal sheik, told him that an

Iraqi expatriate living in Syria had been sending

drivers across the porous border between the two

countries and systematically looting weapons storage

facilities, including Al Qaqaa,for material to be used

in making IEDs. Until that time, late spring of2003,

IEDs were virtually unknown in Iraq. But beginning

around June,they became a common threat to U.S. forces

around Anaconda and elsewhere.

 

Ford also told me of a warehouse outside the city of

al Khalis, located about 15 kilometers south of

Anaconda. During a visit there in May or June 2003,his

intelligence team discovered a huge cache of weapons,

including heavy machine guns, ammunition, missiles and

large chemical drums with Russian insignia. The local

people he spoke with told him it had been abandoned

right after the regime fell and had been looted ever

since. Ford said he filed a written report and verbally

briefed his unit upon his return to base. He requested

an EOD team to remove the weapons and chemicals. When

he returned two days later, almost all of the

weapons and chemical drums were gone. When he asked his

local sources if the American soldiers had removed

them, he was told " No, Ali Babba took them! " The

warehouse had been looted and the weapons were now on

the street.

 

Michael Marciello, another ex-counterintelligence

agent from the 223rd, told me a similar story on

Thursday. He said that he too informed his unit chain

of command about the unguarded storage facility

outside of Anaconda, but got no response. Marciello

told me that he saw many such unsecured storage sites

all over Iraq that were full of weapons and ammunition.

" They were commonplace, " he told me. " Nobody really

cared about them. "

 

An Army civilian interpreter who worked with the 223rd

last year had a blunt reassessment of the U.S. military

command's vigilance. " They just didn't give a shit, "

said Abdullah Khalil, a Kurdish-American who served

in Iraq last year with several Army units, including

the 223rd. " I told Ryan many times about those weapons

and that they were being stolen. People in the villages

asked me all the time when are we (the Americans) going

to move them? I asked Ryan what is he going to do?

He never even answered me. Because I am Iraqi, he

treated me like ananimal. What happened in Al Qaqaa is

no surprise. "

 

On Thursday I spoke with Department of Defense

spokesperson, Lt. Col. Barry Venable, who told me that

he is not aware of any reports about unsecured

weapons storage facilities near Camp Anaconda. He also

said that " the priority of the troops at that time was

taking down the Saddam regime. " Since the regime's

fall, said Venable, " Coalition forces have

destroyed 240,000 tons of munitions and have secured

another 160,000 tons that are awaiting destruction. "

When asked if there were enough troops to secure the

weapons sites after the war, he insisted, " There were

enough troops to complete the mission. " Are there still

unsecured weapons storage sites in Iraq that are being

looted even as we speak, I asked? Lt. Col. Venable

admitted he had no idea.