377 tons small part of absent Iraq explosives (UP TO 250,000T Missing)

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377 tons small part of absent Iraq explosives (UP TO 250,000T Missing)

 

MSNBC (AP) | 31 Oct 2004 | Associated Press

 

377 tons small part of absent Iraq explosives

 

Missing prewar stockpiles may total 250,000 tons

 

The Associated Press

 

Updated: 2:56 p.m. ET Oct. 31, 2004

 

VIENNA, Austria - From the deserts of the south and west to the

outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq is awash in weapons sites — some large,

others small; some guarded, others not. Even after the U.S. military

secured some 400,000 tons of munitions, as many as 250,000 tons remain

unaccounted for.

 

Attention has focused on the al-Qaqaa site south of Baghdad, where

377 tons of explosives are believed to have gone missing — becoming a

heated issue in the final days of the U.S. presidential campaign.

 

But with the names of other sites popping up everywhere —

al-Mahaweel, Baqouba, Ukhaider, Qaim — experts say the al-Qaqaa stash

is only a tiny fraction of what's buried in the sands of Iraq.

 

" There is something truly absurd about focusing on 377 tons, " said

Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst and Iraq expert with the

Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. He

contends Iraq's prewar stockpiles " were probably in excess of 650,000

tons. "

 

Underscoring the depth of Iraq's militarization before the March

2003 invasion, the Pentagon says U.S.-led forces have destroyed

240,000 tons of munitions and have secured another 160,000 tons that

is awaiting destruction.

 

A nation `awash in weapons'

 

Through mid-September, coalition forces inspected and cleared more

than 10,000 caches of weapons, U.S. arms hunter Charles Duelfer said

in a recent report. But up to 250,000 tons remain unaccounted for,

according to military estimates, much of it in small stashes scattered

around the country.

 

" I caution that there is a lot that we probably don't know about,

because this was a country, as the inspectors acknowledged, that was

awash in weapons, " Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said Friday in

Washington.

 

The 377 tons that Iraq says vanished from Al-Qaqaa sometime after

the April 9, 2003 fall of Baghdad represents just " one 1,000th of the

material that we are aware of, " Di Rita said.

 

The Bush administration has touted the thousands of tons of

explosives it did find after the March 2003 invasion as a sign of

success, and officials argue that U.S. forces pushing to Baghdad to

topple Saddam Hussein could not stop to secure every cache.

 

Critics, however, say war planners should have committed more

troops to the task of securing sites or let U.N. inspectors back to help.

 

In insurgents' hands?

 

The debate is sharpened by the possibility that whatever munitions

unsecured may since have fallen into the hands of Iraqi insurgents

leading a bloody campaign of bombings and attacks on U.S. forces since

the fall of Saddam Hussein.

 

Among the sites that don't appear to have been secured was a cache

of hundreds of surface-to-surface warheads at the 2nd Military College

in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Each warhead is believed to

have contained 57 pounds of high explosives.

 

Peter Bouckaert, who heads the emergency team for New York-based

Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press he was shown a room

" stacked to the roof " with the warheads on May 9, 2003. He said he

gave U.S. officials in Baghdad the exact GPS coordinates for the site,

but that it was still not secured when he left the area 10 days later.

 

" Looting was taking place by a lot of armed men with Kalashnikovs

and rocket-propelled grenades, " Bouckaert said Saturday in a telephone

interview from South Africa.

 

" Everyone's focused on Al-Qaqaa, when what was at the military

college could keep a guerrilla group in business for a long time

creating the kinds of bombs that are being used in suicide attacks

every day, " he said.

 

What about Ukhaider?

 

Another prominent site is an ammunition storage area at Ukhaider,

75 miles south of Baghdad, where U.N. inspectors found 11 empty

chemical warheads in " excellent " condition in January 2003.

 

Two U.S. aid workers reported looting at Ukhaider in October 2003,

but were told the U.S. military didn't have enough troops to seal the

site, The Oregonian reported Friday.

 

David Albright, a former U.N. inspector, said the sheer volume of

weapons stored across Iraq should have prompted the United States to

invite inspectors back to check on key sites such as Al-Qaqaa.

 

Instead, he told the AP, " there was a lot of arrogance " on the

part of U.S. officials who rebuffed the International Atomic Energy

Agency's repeated requests to resume general inspections.

 

IAEA inspectors pulled out of Iraq on March 16, 2003, a few days

before the invasion. They since have been allowed to return only

twice, both times to check on the Tuwaitha nuclear complex, the U.N.

agency's main concern in Iraq. They have not been back to Al-Qaqaa.

 

Focus on HMX

 

The IAEA, which informed the U.N. Security Council about the

missing explosives last week, says Al-Qaqaa is important because it

was the main storage site for HMX, which can be used in plastic

explosives but also in ignitors for a nuclear weapon.

 

Al-Qaqaa also contained large stores of RDX and PETN, but the U.N.

nuclear agency's main concern was the HMX. Although the IAEA said

Saddam's nuclear program was in disarray before the war and there was

no evidence that Iraq had revived efforts to build atomic weaponry,

the agency placed the material under seal as a precaution.

 

It remains unclear whether U.S.-led forces attempted to secure the

vast site, which the Iraqis say was looted " due to a lack of security "

after Saddam's fall. The White House contends the material may have

been removed before American troops arrived in the area.

 

Army Maj. Austin Pearson said his team removed 250 tons of

munitions, including plastic explosives, from Al-Qaqaa on April 13,

2003. But those munitions were not under IAEA seal as the missing

high-grade explosives were, and the Pentagon was unable to say

definitively that they were part of the missing 377 tons.

 

Cordesman thinks the Pentagon is taking a bad rap on Al-Qaqaa.

U.S. forces' main task at the time, he contends, was to advance

swiftly on Baghdad.

 

" There was little military point in securing this particular site

during a period the U.S. was rushing forward with limited

forward-deployed strength to seize Baghdad before Saddam's forces had

any chance to regroup, " he said.