More Evidence the Bush Administration is Incompetent

[Nickdfresh]

This is from CNN. As the the recent Bush campaign ad. stated the wolves are lurking in the forest. I guess Bush is correct, "we can't win the war against terrorism," under his farcical leadership. Vote these jack-offs out. This is yet another example of the incompetence of the pentagon under the (lack of) leadership of Sec. of Defense Rummy and Wolfoshitz.



Tons of Iraq explosives missing
Monday, October 25, 2004 Posted: 5:45 AM EDT (0945 GMT)



The interim government is trying to secure other weapons from militants.


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VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Several hundred tons of conventional explosives are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that once played a key role in Saddam Hussein's efforts to build a nuclear bomb, the U.N. nuclear agency confirmed Monday.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei will report the materials' disappearance to the U.N. Security Council later Monday, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told The Associated Press.

"On October 10, the IAEA received a declaration from the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology informing us that approximately 350 tons of high explosive material had gone missing," Fleming said.

The Iraqis told the agency the materials had been stolen and looted because of a lack of security at governmental installations, Fleming said.

"We do not know what happened to the explosives or when they were looted," she told AP.

Nearly 380 tons of powerful explosives that could be used to build large conventional bombs are missing from the former Al Qaqaa military installation, The New York Times reported Monday.

The explosives included HMX and RDX, which can be used to demolish buildings but also produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weaponry, the newspaper said. It said they disappeared after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year.

U.S. President George W. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, was informed of the missing explosives in the past month, the report said. It said Iraq's interim government recently warned the United States and U.N. nuclear inspectors that the explosives had vanished.

"Upon receiving the declaration on October 10, we first took measures to authenticate it," Fleming said. "Then on October 15, we informed the multinational forces through the U.S. government with the request for it to take any appropriate action in cooperation with Iraq's interim government."

"Mr. ElBaradei wanted to give them some time to recover the explosives before reporting this loss to the Security Council, but since it's now out, ElBaradei plans to inform the Security Council today" in a letter to the council president, she said.

Before the war, inspectors with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency had kept tabs on the so-called "dual use" explosives because they could have been used to detonate a nuclear weapon.

IAEA inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the 2003 invasion and have not yet been able to return despite ElBaradei's repeated urging that the experts be allowed back in to finish their work.

ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council before the war that Iraq's nuclear program was in disarray and that there was no evidence to suggest it had revived efforts to build atomic weaponry.

Al Qaqaa, a sprawling former military installation about 30 miles south of Baghdad, was placed under U.S. military control but repeatedly has been looted, raising troubling questions about whether the missing explosives have fallen into the hands of insurgents battling coalition forces.

Saddam was known to have used the site to make conventional warheads, and IAEA inspectors dismantled parts of his nuclear program there before the 1991 Gulf War. The experts also oversaw the destruction of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons.

The nuclear agency pulled out of Iraq in 1998, and by the time it returned in 2002, it confirmed that 35 tons of HMX that had been placed under IAEA seal were missing. HMX and RDX are the key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents have widely used in a series of bloody car bombings in Iraq.

ElBaradei told the United Nations in February 2003 that Iraq had declared that "HMX previously under IAEA seal had been transferred for use in the production of industrial explosives, primarily to cement plants as a booster for explosives used in quarrying."

"However, given the nature of the use of high explosives, it may well be that the IAEA will be unable to reach a final conclusion on the end use of this material," ElBaradei warned at the time.

"A large quantity of these explosives were under IAEA seal because they do have a nuclear application," Fleming said Monday.

The nuclear agency has no concrete evidence to suggest the seals were broken, Fleming said.



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

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.



http:// http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/25/iraq.explosives.ap/index.html

[Nickdfresh]

More Bad News

How are we going to secure and withdraw from Iraq if we are training the terrorists in our defense methodologies and allowing them to infiltrate the massive security forces Bush claims will be ready for the pseudo-elections to be held in January?

Just asking.

The U.S. Marines training the Iraqi (IN)security forces have a running joke of the GI humor kind. They say the United States runs the largest terrorist training camp (for the Iraqi Nat'l Guard). And evey time they give Iraqi recruits marksmanship training, the Iraqi guerillas fighting U.S. troops shoot straighter. But all the Bush-sheep remember to vote for your candidate and keep accusing Kerry of being a "Liberal Pussy Wimp," because if Bush is reelected, he will be remembered as one of the worst presidents of the 21st century. We are fighting the terrorists in Iraq. The very ones we are training to supposedly end this quagmire.


Dozens of new Iraqi soldiers found dead
U.S. security official killed near Baghdad airport
Sunday, October 24, 2004 Posted: 8:08 PM EDT (0008 GMT)


A U.S. Bradley armored vehicle burns after a roadside bomb attack near Baghdad airport Saturday.
Image:




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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi authorities have discovered the bodies of 44 Iraqi soldiers and four drivers after they were ambushed and killed overnight near the Iraq-Iran border, an Iraqi military commander said Sunday.

Unification and Jihad, a group led by suspected terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility Sunday for the massacre. The claim appeared on an Arabic-language Web site, and CNN has not confirmed its authenticity.

Col. Jassem Mohammed Alaiwa, commander of the Iraqi national guard, said the soldiers were killed "execution-style" -- along with their four drivers. They had been forced to lie down and were shot in the head. The killings occurred about 80 miles east of Baghdad.

The soldiers had just completed training and were heading toward Basra in southern Iraq, Alaiwa said.

Two of their transport vehicles were stolen and two others were set on fire in the attack, he said, adding that the soldiers had not been robbed.

Alaiwa called the incident a terrorist attack. He has asked the Ministry of Defense for reinforcements in Mendili, part of Diyala province.

Discovery of the bodies was followed by news that insurgents had killed a U.S. State Department security official at a U.S. Army base near Baghdad airport. (Full story)

Unification and Jihad has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks and kidnappings since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Al-Zarqawi said in an audiotape posted on a Web site that he was behind the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on August 19, 2003, that killed 22 civilians, including the U.N.'s chief envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello

The group has said it has killed numerous Westerners in Iraq, including two Americans and a Briton kidnapped in September and later beheaded.

Another Islamist militant group, Ansar al-Sunna, claimed responsibility Sunday for the killing of a police chief in the northern city of Erbil, saying the action was a warning to the leader of a Kurdish political party.

In the Web site posting, the group sadi the killing of Col. Taha Ahmad was a "clear warning" to Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party -- one of two major Kurdish parties that share power in northern Iraq.

Ansar al-Sunna has called Kurdish leaders traitors for cooperating with U.S.-led forces in the invasion of Iraq. It claims responsibility for the killings of three KDP members in September and 12 Nepalese contractors in August.

This weekend's killings followed a continued pattern of insurgent attacks on the Iraqi army. Iraq's interim government is training forces to stabilize the region ahead of national elections set for January.

Three attacks Saturday
On Saturday, two suicide car bombings and a drive-by shooting killed at least 14 people in separate incidents.

The deadliest attack took place in western Iraq near Haditha at Camp Al-Asad, which is on the Euphrates River about 124 miles west-northwest of Baghdad.

U.S. Marine spokesman Lt. Lyle Gilbert said the suicide attacker killed 10 Iraqi police and wounded at least five others, and there were no U.S. casualties.

An Iraqi journalist on the scene said at least 30 people were wounded in the blast.

The car bomb targeted a police station, where dozens of Iraqis were lined up to surrender their weapons and/or join the police force, several witnesses told the journalist.

Several hours later, a suicide car bomb detonated at a highway checkpoint near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad.

Two Iraqi national guard members were killed and another was wounded, a U.S. military spokesman said.

In the third attack, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, insurgents in a vehicle fired on a five-truck convoy, killing two Turkish drivers and wounding two other Turks, local officials said.

Earlier the U.S. military said that a newly promoted associate of al-Zarqawi had been arrested.

The al-Zarqawi associate was seized early Saturday along with five other terrorism suspects in southern Falluja, the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, the military said.

Their identities were not disclosed.

Initially, the al-Zarqawi associate was thought to be a minor member of the terrorist's circle, however "due to a surge in the number of al-Zarqawi associates who have been captured or killed by [multinational forces] strikes and other operations, the member had moved up to take a critical position as an al-Zarqawi senior leader," the U.S. military said.

Falluja has been the site of intensified U.S. attacks in recent weeks, with American forces stepping up their efforts against al-Zarqawi and his group.

The U.S. State Department is offering $25 million for the capture or death of al-Zarqawi, whose group swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden last week.

Other developments

A U.S. warplane launched an airstrike Sunday northeast of Falluja, killing four people, including two Iraqi police officers, police officials told CNN. Police said the strike in the al-Jurayfi neighborhood also wounded five people. Hospital officials said a child was among them. There was no immediate word from the U.S. military about the report.


Insurgents attacked a multinational convoy Sunday and wounded four Bulgarian soldiers, the U.S.-led military said in a statement. A Bulgarian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said one of the soldiers later died. She told CNN that the other three soldiers' injuries aren't life-threatening. The convoy, from the 1st Brigade Combat Team of Multinational Division Central-South, was attacked near Karbala, southwest of Baghdad, the military said.


About $500 million in unaccounted money from Saddam Hussein's former regime is being used to finance a growing insurgency in Iraq, a U.S. military intelligence official said Friday. (Full story)

CNN's Barbara Starr, Jamie McIntyre, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Nermeen Mufti and Caroline Faraj contributed to this report.http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/24/iraq.main/index.html

[Nickdfresh]

The U.S. is Training al-Qaida

How are we going to secure and withdraw from Iraqi if we are training the terrorists in our defense and security methodologies and allowing them to infiltrate the massive security forces Bush claims will be ready for the psuedo-elections to be held in January?

Just asking.

The U.S. Marines training the Iraqi (IN)security forces have a running joke of the GI humor kind. They say the United States runs the largest terrorist training camp (for the Iraqi Nat'l Guard). And evey time they give Iraqi recruits marksmanship training, the Iraqi guerillas fighting U.S. troops shoot straighter. But all the Bush-sheep remember to vote for your candidate and keep accusing Kerry of being a "Liberal Pussy Wimp," because if Bush is reelected, he will be compared to Lyndon Baines Johnson as one of the worst presidents of modern time. We are fighting the terrorists in Iraq. But the terrorists are often the very ones we are training to supposedly end this quagmire.


Dozens of new Iraqi soldiers found dead
U.S. security official killed near Baghdad airport
Sunday, October 24, 2004 Posted: 8:08 PM EDT (0008 GMT)


A U.S. Bradley armored vehicle burns after a roadside bomb attack near Baghdad airport Saturday.
Image:




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

Female hostage pleads for freedom from her captors.

PLAY VIDEO


RELATED
Gallery: Soldiers charged in prison abuse scandal


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

• U.S. diplomat killed in mortar attack
• Gallery: Abuse reports' key points
• Charity halts aid after kidnapping
• Blair: More Iraq violence likely
• Iraq abuse: Soldier sentenced

SPECIAL REPORT

• Inside Iraq
• U.S. Reaction
• Global Impact
• CNN/Money: Rebuilding Iraq
• War in Iraq
• Special Report

YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS
Iraq

Baghdad

or Create your own

Manage alerts | What is this?


BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi authorities have discovered the bodies of 44 Iraqi soldiers and four drivers after they were ambushed and killed overnight near the Iraq-Iran border, an Iraqi military commander said Sunday.

Unification and Jihad, a group led by suspected terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility Sunday for the massacre. The claim appeared on an Arabic-language Web site, and CNN has not confirmed its authenticity.

Col. Jassem Mohammed Alaiwa, commander of the Iraqi national guard, said the soldiers were killed "execution-style" -- along with their four drivers. They had been forced to lie down and were shot in the head. The killings occurred about 80 miles east of Baghdad.

The soldiers had just completed training and were heading toward Basra in southern Iraq, Alaiwa said.

Two of their transport vehicles were stolen and two others were set on fire in the attack, he said, adding that the soldiers had not been robbed.

Alaiwa called the incident a terrorist attack. He has asked the Ministry of Defense for reinforcements in Mendili, part of Diyala province.

Discovery of the bodies was followed by news that insurgents had killed a U.S. State Department security official at a U.S. Army base near Baghdad airport. (Full story)

Unification and Jihad has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks and kidnappings since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Al-Zarqawi said in an audiotape posted on a Web site that he was behind the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on August 19, 2003, that killed 22 civilians, including the U.N.'s chief envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello

The group has said it has killed numerous Westerners in Iraq, including two Americans and a Briton kidnapped in September and later beheaded.

Another Islamist militant group, Ansar al-Sunna, claimed responsibility Sunday for the killing of a police chief in the northern city of Erbil, saying the action was a warning to the leader of a Kurdish political party.

In the Web site posting, the group sadi the killing of Col. Taha Ahmad was a "clear warning" to Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party -- one of two major Kurdish parties that share power in northern Iraq.

Ansar al-Sunna has called Kurdish leaders traitors for cooperating with U.S.-led forces in the invasion of Iraq. It claims responsibility for the killings of three KDP members in September and 12 Nepalese contractors in August.

This weekend's killings followed a continued pattern of insurgent attacks on the Iraqi army. Iraq's interim government is training forces to stabilize the region ahead of national elections set for January.

Three attacks Saturday
On Saturday, two suicide car bombings and a drive-by shooting killed at least 14 people in separate incidents.

The deadliest attack took place in western Iraq near Haditha at Camp Al-Asad, which is on the Euphrates River about 124 miles west-northwest of Baghdad.

U.S. Marine spokesman Lt. Lyle Gilbert said the suicide attacker killed 10 Iraqi police and wounded at least five others, and there were no U.S. casualties.

An Iraqi journalist on the scene said at least 30 people were wounded in the blast.

The car bomb targeted a police station, where dozens of Iraqis were lined up to surrender their weapons and/or join the police force, several witnesses told the journalist.

Several hours later, a suicide car bomb detonated at a highway checkpoint near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad.

Two Iraqi national guard members were killed and another was wounded, a U.S. military spokesman said.

In the third attack, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, insurgents in a vehicle fired on a five-truck convoy, killing two Turkish drivers and wounding two other Turks, local officials said.

Earlier the U.S. military said that a newly promoted associate of al-Zarqawi had been arrested.

The al-Zarqawi associate was seized early Saturday along with five other terrorism suspects in southern Falluja, the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, the military said.

Their identities were not disclosed.

Initially, the al-Zarqawi associate was thought to be a minor member of the terrorist's circle, however "due to a surge in the number of al-Zarqawi associates who have been captured or killed by [multinational forces] strikes and other operations, the member had moved up to take a critical position as an al-Zarqawi senior leader," the U.S. military said.

Falluja has been the site of intensified U.S. attacks in recent weeks, with American forces stepping up their efforts against al-Zarqawi and his group.

The U.S. State Department is offering $25 million for the capture or death of al-Zarqawi, whose group swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden last week.

Other developments

A U.S. warplane launched an airstrike Sunday northeast of Falluja, killing four people, including two Iraqi police officers, police officials told CNN. Police said the strike in the al-Jurayfi neighborhood also wounded five people. Hospital officials said a child was among them. There was no immediate word from the U.S. military about the report.


Insurgents attacked a multinational convoy Sunday and wounded four Bulgarian soldiers, the U.S.-led military said in a statement. A Bulgarian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said one of the soldiers later died. She told CNN that the other three soldiers' injuries aren't life-threatening. The convoy, from the 1st Brigade Combat Team of Multinational Division Central-South, was attacked near Karbala, southwest of Baghdad, the military said.


About $500 million in unaccounted money from Saddam Hussein's former regime is being used to finance a growing insurgency in Iraq, a U.S. military intelligence official said Friday. (Full story)

CNN's Barbara Starr, Jamie McIntyre, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Nermeen Mufti and Caroline Faraj contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/24/iraq.main/index.html

[BigBadBrian]

Re: More Evidence the Bush Administration is Incompetent

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
This is from CNN.

I stopped reading right there.

[FORD]

So let me get this straight....

The BCE failed to secure this military warehouse full of explosives, and now those same explosives are being used by insurgents to kill US troops??

Great move, BCE!

Now if we had a fair, responsible media, this would be the headline in every newspaper and all over every news channel this morning. Instead, to prevent that from happenning, the BCE is probably planning a fake terra-alert (or God forbid, a staged event) even as we speak.

[ODShowtime]

Hey, war's messy! Sometimes tons of high explosive are left around and get stolen. Sometimes 50 people get executed at the same time on the side of the road. What are you gonna do?

We are making this country safer.

[McCarrens]

Originally posted by FORD
Now if we had a fair, responsible media, this would be the headline in every newspaper and all over every news channel this morning. Instead, to prevent that from happenning, the BCE is probably planning a fake terra-alert (or God forbid, a staged event) even as we speak.

If we truly had a fair and responsible media then the Democratic Party would have no power at all.

[Nickdfresh]

Re: Re: More Evidence the Bush Administration is Incompetent

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
I stopped reading right there.

Interesting response. Gee, must be some CNN conspiracy to ruin your day. What are the Faux and Friends saying? Terrorists stealing unguarded explosives to kill Americans and Terrorist infiltraiting our "Iraqi Security Forces" is a good thing? Maybe the Bush administration will find a silver lining in this but I doubt it. In any case, you are the proto-typical so called conservative. Any information that contradicts your unrealistic paradign of the world must be a: pick one- a. Communist conspiarcy b. Liberal Media c. never happened d. All of the above.

But check the facts on any of your choice of news providers. The information is the same. American military personnel are being killed because of really bad policy decisions of the Bush Administration.

[FORD]

Originally posted by ODShowtime
Hey, war's messy! Sometimes tons of high explosive are left around and get stolen. Sometimes 50 people get executed at the same time on the side of the road. What are you gonna do?

We are making this country safer.

Junior?? Is that you?

[Nickdfresh]

In case I didn't make my point, those 50 Iraqi soldiers were victims of Iraqi insurgents receiving u.S. training and equipment and pretending to be other Iraqi soldiers. That fact alone cannot be dismissed as "messy," catastrophic is more like it. It was an inside job most likely. "Making America safer" by training terrorists in our security and military modus operandi's????-I really doubt it! The legacy of this war will haunt us for years to come. This war is making our enemies better. You really think al-qaida wants Bush out of office. He's the best friend they ever had!

[fanofdave]

so several hundred TONS of explosives, that belonged
to Iraq, are now missing? that's a lot of weapons of
mass destruction power that the democrats and the rest
of the world claim never existed. before you get whiny
and claim they're not nuclear, can you deny they aren't
capable of causing mass destruction?

i will side with you on the accountability issue, though.
that's fucked up. that much destructive power should
never have been left vulnerable.

[FORD]

Originally posted by fanofdave
so several hundred TONS of explosives, that belonged
to Iraq, are now missing? that's a lot of weapons of
mass destruction power that the democrats and the rest
of the world claim never existed. before you get whiny
and claim they're not nuclear, can you deny they aren't
capable of causing mass destruction?

i will side with you on the accountability issue, though.
that's fucked up. that much destructive power should
never have been left vulnerable.

No, these are NOT classified as WMD's by any means. Some of this stuff could probably be purchased at your local farm supply store.

I happen to know exactly where the Washington State Patrol stores explosives which they confiscate from those who illegally posess it, and that material, in the wrong hands, could cause some serious damage. But there aren't any missiles, anthrax spores or uranium stashes located there.

[fanofdave]

again, i understand they don't meet the "criteria" for
weapons of mass destruction; does that mean they can't
create the same destructive results? that is why i side
with you on this one. that shit never should have been
left vulnerable to theft.

[FORD]

Originally posted by fanofdave
again, i understand they don't meet the "criteria" for
weapons of mass destruction; does that mean they can't
create the same destructive results? that is why i side
with you on this one. that shit never should have been
left vulnerable to theft.

Agreed, but your previous post sounded like an attempt to justify the invasion of Iraq by reclassifying these run of the mill munitions as "WMD's"