Knight-Ridder has a new story out about looting of weapons depots in Iraq. It’s worth reading in its entirety. A few excerpts:
“The more than 320 tons of missing Iraqi high explosives at center stage in the U.S. presidential election are only a fraction of the weapons-related material that’s disappeared in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion last year.
Huge amounts of arms and ammunition were stolen from military sites, and there’s “ample evidence” that Iraqi insurgents are firing looted weapons at U.S. troops and using some of them in car bombs and improvised explosive devices, said a senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.N. officials also are concerned about the disappearance of sensitive equipment and controlled materials that could be used to develop nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
“If this equipment is finding itself on the open market, then anybody with money can buy it,” said Dimitri Perricos, acting head of the U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC), the U.N. weapons inspection agency. (…)
In a new disclosure, the senior U.S. military officer and another U.S. official, who also spoke on condition he not be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that an Iraqi working for U.S. intelligence alerted U.S. troops stationed near the al Qaqaa weapons facility that the installation was being looted shortly after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003.
But, they said, the troops took no apparent action to halt the pillaging.
“That was one of numerous times when Iraqis warned us that ammo dumps and other places were being looted and we weren’t able to respond because we didn’t have anyone to send,” said a senior U.S. military officer who served in Iraq. (…)
Al Qaqaa was on a classified list of Iraqi weapons facilities that the CIA provided to Pentagon and military officials before the invasion, said the U.S. intelligence official.
But when the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command produced their own list of sites that a limited number of U.S. “exploitation teams” should search, priority was given to those identified by exiled Iraqi opposition groups, he said. Al Qaqaa wasn’t one of them.
“The top of the list was dominated by nuclear facilities and places where we expected to find chemical and biological weapons,” he said. “Iraqi exiles had a very heavy hand in determining which places got looked at first.””
(Funny how we failed to secure the nuclear sites, then.)
Several aspects of this story are interesting. First, it’s further confirmation that a large part of the problem was that we simply didn’t have enough troops. (“We weren’t able to respond because we didn’t have anyone to send”.) Second, if it’s true that we were warned that al Qaqaa was being looted shortly after the fall of Baghdad, that’s one more reason to doubt the claim that the DoD just doesn’t know when the looting took place. (That idea has never seemed all that plausible to me. Besides, if it is true that despite knowing, from IAEA declarations, that there were huge quantities of very high explosives at al Qaqaa, we didn’t bother to check it out until May, that would be damning in itself.) Third, the very idea that we might have constructed our list of priority objectives on the basis of what Ahmed Chalabi told us, and taken his word over the CIA, is completely incomprehensible to me. If this is true, what could the relevant officials possibly have been thinking? And finally, it underscores the fact that this story is not just about the explosives at al Qaqaa. As people on the right side of the blogosphere have been telling us for days, there were a lot of weapons sites in Iraq. This one was, of course, one of the largest, and we knew what was there; but of course there were others. We already know that others, including nuclear sites, were looted as well. I keep wondering: what did Rumsfeld et al think they were doing? On what possible set of assumptions could this have made any sense at all?
One of the annoying counterarguments was that the tonnage (380) was just too much to have been looted — that would take trucks and many laborers and a lot of time and been hard to hide from allegedly “watchful” US troops!
Except that they were using trucks, and many laborers, and had weeks without being bothered, and did cart off untold tonnage far in excess of 380 both at Qaqaa and other sites, with our knowledge, and without anything being done to stop it — primarily because there were no troops available to police it, and because of Rumsfeld’s famous attitude about it (another variation of “shit happpens”).
The more I think about this, the more it really is beyond belief.
The public and repeatedly stated rationale for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein couldn’t be trusted – that he had all these really dangerous weapons, and he might share them with terrorists, or use them against the US or neighboring countries. This gathering threat was, we were told by Bush & Co and by his supporters, including Tony Blair, the reason why it wasn’t possible to wait: it was vitally necessary to invade now.
This rationale has been repeated again and again on the grounds of “better safe than sorry”: sure, Saddam Hussein turned out not to have the stockpiled WMD that Bush & Co were so certain he did before they invaded. But what if he had? People make the rationale over and over again: Bush was right to invade, based on the available intelligence, because even though the intelligence was wrong, if it had been right, the threat would have been too vast to ignore.
Never mind that many people were rightly dubious about these WMD prior to invasion. The above was and has been for two years the justification for invading Iraq.
Now there is definite, explicit proof that where Bush & Co had definite, accurate, information that there were stockpiled weapons, they had no plan to make them secure.
And that still makes me blink. Invading Iraq was a vast undertaking. Bush & Co must have known that its success or failure would make or break their administration. Granted they made no plans for long-term occupation – and that was stupid, but then their original plans had no place in them for reconstruction or nation building. They didn’t want to do it, they didn’t intend to do it, and the complete failure when they had to do it is hardly a surprise.
But no plans for dealing with stockpiled weapons/materiel? That was exactly what they were, supposedly, invading Iraq to do.
It’s beyond belief. It really is.
Jesurgislac:
But no plans for dealing with stockpiled weapons/materiel?
Its even worse. There were plans, and they were explicitly warned of the certainty of widespread looting immediately after a liberation, as well as the devastating consequences of such looting. This was from the policy experts in the administration based on past experience (Panama, etc.). I remember in October, 2003 watching a PBS special on this, and the interview with the primary expert who warned them.
And they consciously rejected those warnings, in favor of what other plan?
Stupendous incompetence, arrogance and lying.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has posted a new article on “Simplicity” today, including a discussion of Occam’s Razor. The arguments from incompetence or insanity or lack of resources (priorities, anyone?) require some energetic mental gymnastics and metaphysical speculation.
The Iraqis believe Bush got what he wanted in Iraq. But a war in your country can turn you into a reality-based community.
Third, the very idea that we might have constructed our list of priority objectives on the basis of what Ahmed Chalabi told us, and taken his word over the CIA, is completely incomprehensible to me.
Over and over, one name keeps popping up. Chalabi. More and more, it looks like he was the *only* source of information that BushCo used. How many “independant” sources have turned out to be his cousins?
Greatest. Con. Man. In. History.
“taken his word over the CIA, is completely incomprehensible to me.”
Greatest. Con. Man. In. History.”
Oh, cmon, can we stop this? There are good reasons it is incomprehensible, and you are not required to really believe that the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld were deceived. It was useful to pretend to believe Chalabi. It is now useful to pretend to have been fooled.
I’m pretty sure that we will wake up sometime next week reading in our beloved NY Times about how this whole missing weapons story was falsely planted by the evil genius Karl Rove in order to get Bush re-elected.
We will read how Rove’s evil plan sucked in the unwitting John Kerry and then slowly but surely Rove conveniently released little tid bits of information until eventually the entire story blew up in Kerry’s face disgracing him in front of the electorate.
And thus the real October surprise at long last reveals itself.
Remember, you heard it hear first. ; -)
There’s a logic here, and most people have missed it, but the whole Al Qaqaa business is really a coded media event aimed at the gun-toting right. What Bush is trying to say, despite his protestations, is: Look, I said we’d bring democracy to Iraq and we did, and what better proof is there than ensuring their right to loot, keep and bear arms?
It’s his 2nd amendment trump card, masked from the MSM, but speaking very clearly to his base, just like his Dred Scott references scored him points with the anti-abortionists.