The Ammo Dump Story

We waited on the Iraqi ammo dump story because we knew there was more to it than the possibility that American soldiers stood watching idly while Iraqi looters carried off 378 TONS of high explosives with IAEA markings. By now you know that it was CBS’s plan to air the story on Sunday night, have it appear in the papers on Monday and wait for the “correction” – that the explosives were already gone when we got there – to air after the election on Tuesday.

We waited on the Iraqi ammo dump story because we knew there was more to it than the possibility that American soldiers stood watching idly while Iraqi looters carried off 378 TONS of high explosives with IAEA markings. By now you know that it was CBS’s plan to air the story on Sunday night, have it appear in the papers on Monday and wait for the “correction” – that the explosives were already gone when we got there – to air after the election on Tuesday.

We’ll get to CBS in a moment. But first, for those who now insist that Saddam didn’t have WMD and therefore the war was a “mistake,” what do you call 378 tons of explosives that are used to make missile warheads and trigger nuclear weapons?

This is not the first time the IAEA has raised concerns about materiel related to non-conventional weapons having left Iraq – but note that these concerns were all raised AFTER the war, even as they admitted weapons and precursors might have left BEFORE the war. (See JINSA Report #416)

Then why as late as December 2002 were they and their allies insisting they could accomplish what the French called “disarmament through inspections?”

Try this: the inspectors had already lost track of items they had tagged and couldn’t return to sites to ensure that things had not been moved. The longer inspections lasted, the longer the IAEA had either to find the stuff or put off the day of reckoning until after sanctions were lifted and inspections ceased to have meaning. After the war it was obvious that materiel wasn’t where it was “supposed” to be. And, because in fact what disappeared DID have non-conventional uses, the IAEA started to worry. Not about the materiel, necessarily, but about who would be blamed. So, they shot first – blaming the U.S. for losing what was already gone and hoping no one would pay attention to when it disappeared. “The fog of war” was to be a cover for willful IAEA blindness coupled with Oil for Food payoffs that made the inspectors ineffectual by design.

This is the same IAEA that “missed” much of Iraq’s arsenal the first time, “missed” much of Libya’s arsenal, “missed” much of North Korea’s capabilities, and is currently charged with trying to ferret out Iran’s capabilities and intentions regarding nuclear weaponry. The IAEA had a clear interest in having theU.S.take the fall for losing a serious lot of serious explosives in order to deflect attention from its own sorry and dangerous record.

And where did it go? It’s hard to hide 378 tons of anything. And how did it get there? U.S. Army Intelligence posits Syria, overland by truck. Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the candlestick, anyone?

But here’s the thing that REALLY gets our goat. Everyone knew about the shortcomings of the IAEA long ago, including CBS. For an American “news” outlet to be happily complicit for political purposes in a story the effect of which was to smear American soldiers in their warfighting capacity is a shameful thing. Our guys deserve better.