The Truth Laid Bare: NYT's October Surprise Collapses

[tacitus]

NYT's October Surprise Collapses (http://www.truthlaidbear.com/archives/2004/10/26/nyts_october_surprise_collapses.php#001509)
October 26, 2004 04:33 AM (http://www.truthlaidbear.com/archives/2004/10/26/nyts_october_surprise_collapses.php#001509)

Yesterday, the New York Times did a fine service for the Kerry campaign by publishing a carefully timed hit piece (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25bomb.html?oref=login)describing how tons of explosives have gone missing from a site in Iraq.

This morning, the story is imploding, with NBC News leading the charge to point out that the explosives were already gone (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html)when U.S. troops arrived just a day after the fall of Baghdad. (Bizarrely, CNN has this as their lead story online, and it is nowhere to be found on MSNBC's front page).

But the Times didn't just do a shoddy job of reporting and failed to identify the possibility that the explosives were gone before our troops arrived. It's worse than that: they did find that out, they just buried it deep in the story and, apparently, never bothered to follow up on it.

Here's Page 1 of the online version of the NYT story yesterday (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25bomb.html?oref=login), where they wonder why nothing was done by U.S. forces to protect the site:

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

And then, buried on Page 3 of the story, we find the answer:

A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces "went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal."

This matches perfectly with the NBC story (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html):

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.

This morning, the NYT appears bent on continuing the error, running a story titled Iraq Explosives Become Issue in Campaign (http://nytimes.com/2004/10/26/politics/campaign/26campaign.html?hp&ex=1098849600&en=1041c35ee6aa5150&ei=5094&partner=homepage)(gee, wonder how that happened). In that story, the Times is forced to acknowledge that they did, in fact, know about their error in advance:

On Monday evening, Nicolle Devenish, the spokeswoman for the Bush campaign, noted a section of the Times report indicating that American troops, on the way to Baghdad in April 2003, stopped at the Al Qaqaa complex and saw no evidence of high explosives. Noting that the cache may have been looted before the American invasion, she said Mr. Kerry had exaggerated the administration's responsibility.

"John Kerry presumes to know something that he could not know: when the material disappeared," Ms. Devenish said. "Since he does not know whether it was gone before the war began, he can't prove it was there to be secured."

But still they won't give up, and run with the bogus story in this morning's editorial, which sniffs (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/opinion/26edt2.html):

James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger reported in The Times yesterday that some 380 tons of the kinds of powerful explosives used to destroy airplanes, demolish buildings, make missile warheads and trigger nuclear weapons have disappeared from one of the many places in Iraq that the United States failed to secure. The United Nations inspectors disdained by the Bush administration had managed to monitor the explosives for years. But they vanished soon after the United States took over the job. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was so bent on proving his theory of lightning warfare that he ignored the generals who said an understaffed and underarmed invasion force could rush to Baghdad, but couldn't hold the rest of the country, much less guard things like the ammunition dump. (Emphasis mine)

The reporters' names who worked the original story are right there, but the other name that bears mentioning is Jill Abramson, the Times' Managing Editor. Ensuring that a story like this is properly vetted falls squarely in the ME's realm of responsibility, so I think it's fair to ask Ms. Abramson what happened here, and why she's allowing her news pages to become an adjunct to the Kerry camapaign's attempts to smear Bush's record on Iraq.

More from:
Jim Geraghty at Kerryspot (http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerry200410252109.asp)
Captain Ed (http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/002864.php)
Hugh Hewitt (http://hughhewitt.com/#postid1047)
Roger Simon (http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2004/10/how_duranty_hap.php)
Belmont Club (http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/10/that-missing-rdx-nbc-reporters.html)
PowerLine (http://powerlineblog.com/archives/008309.php)
JustOneMinute (http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2004/10/missing_high_ex.html)
Michelle Malkin (http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000722.htm)

Proving that the media cycle has become compressed beyond all recognition, Polipundit has already run a poll to name this new media scandal (http://polipundit.com/index.php?p=4795)

[tacitus]

from the article: I think it's fair to ask Ms. Abramson what happened here, and why she's allowing her news pages to become an adjunct to the Kerry camapaign's attempts to smear Bush's record on Iraq.

Why bother to ask, we all know what the answer will be *silence*.

[DoctorDoom]

The NYT and its ilk have long sinced sacrificed journalistic integrity for leftist political activism. They are exempt from the 60-day clamp imposed by the outrageous anti-1A "Campaign Finance Reform" law, and are using that fact to serve as RAT campaign house organs.

Fortunately, the CFR doesn't affect the Internet.

[tacitus]

If it were not for the internet, the leftie media would have a field day with their lies.

[Maggie_T]

Bless Algore for inventing the Internet. :D


http://fool.exler.ru/sm/str.gif

[tacitus]

Bless Algore for inventing the Internet. :D


http://fool.exler.ru/sm/str.gif
Even if he can't turn on a computer. :thumb:

[Kathy29]

Kerry's sticking with the story to the point of calling the Airborne liars!

I just heard it on the radio. I hope it goes to print someplace so I'll have a link.

[tacitus]

Check this link and turn up the audio.

http://homepage.mac.com/napoleoncole/.cv/napoleoncole/Public/NYTrogate.jpg-link.jpg

http://www.dailyrecycler.com/blog/2004/10/nytrogate.html

[DesertFox]

All this time we been b'leevin' every word them blokes said.

Dagnabbit.

[Triller]

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.


http://www.nola.com/newsflash/international/index.ssf?/base/international-18/1098831263314030.xml&storylist=international

The first U.S. military unit to reach the Al-Qaqaa military installation after the invasion of Iraq did not have orders to search for the nearly 400 tons of explosives that Iraqi officials say were stolen from the site sometime following the fall of Baghdad, the unit spokesman said Tuesday.The first U.S. military unit to reach the Al-Qaqaa military installation after the invasion of Iraq did not have orders to search for the nearly 400 tons of explosives that Iraqi officials say were stolen from the site sometime following the fall of Baghdad, the unit spokesman said Tuesday.

When the troops from the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade arrived at the Al-Qaqaa base a day or so after Baghdad's fall on April 9, 2003, there were already looters throughout the facility, Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit, told The Associated Press.

.....

The explosives had been housed in storage bunkers at the facility. U.N. nuclear inspectors placed a fresh seal over the bunkers in January 2003. The inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time in March 2003 and reported that the seals were not broken — therefore, the weapons were still there at the time. The team then pulled out of the country in advance of the invasion later that month.
So no they couldn't have been shipped out in jan 2003.

[Estragon]

Obviously, the explosives were moved between March 3, when the IAEA last checked the site, and April 10, when the 101st entered the facility. The 101st saw no evidence of IAEA seals and, while it was not their mission to secure the complex, they did go through it, as per procedure, to insure no hostiles were present.

There is a word for the idea that "looters" made off with 380 tons of powder explosives: STUPID. It would have taken at least 38 full-sized tractor trailers to haul such amounts. After the beginning of the invasion and through the early spring, it would have been impossible to move the number of large trucks along the heavily-patrolled roads and through the multiple checkpoints. Ergo, it must have been moved before the area was crawling with US troops.

The Kerry camp and its leftist toadies are telling another bald-faced lie: that these explosives are "now being used against our troops." There is ZERO evidence of that. Virtually all the roadside IEDs, car bombs, and suicide attacks have been carried out with rudimentary materials. As they would almost have to be: HMX and RDX are powerful explosives, but not volatile. They are typically set off with other explosive devices, such as artillery shell mechanisms. Had HMX/RDX been used in any of the attacks, the resulting damage would have been far greater.

It is also unlikely that the materials were "stolen by insurgents." There was no insurgency in the first few months. The remnants of Saddam's Ba'athists were on the run and had not had time to organize, and the influx of foreign terrorists had only just begun.


.

[Naturalized-Texan]

Obviously, the explosives were moved between March 3, when the IAEA last checked the site, and April 10, when the 101st entered the facility.
The period in which the explosives had to have been moved is even narrower than that. There is no way that the explosives could have been moved after the invasion began on March 19. That many tractor trailers would have been discovered and stopped.

[Estragon]

You're right, Tex. Plus, the 3rd Infantry was there a week earlier than the 101st, according to . . . CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/04/iraq/main547667.shtml


U.S. Searches 'Suspicious' Iraqi Site
NEAR BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 4, 2003
CBS) U.S. troops found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad. But a senior U.S. official familiar with initial testing said the materials were believed to be explosives.

Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex just south of Baghdad.


[more on link above]