[extropy-chat] IRAQ: Weapons pipeline to Syria

[Damien Broderick]

At 12:43 AM 10/29/2004 +0200, Amara wrote:

>And explosives at Al Qaqaa seem to have been stolen
>*after* US occupation..
>
>http://www.kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1
>
>(Isn't this fun?)

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/29/1099028208191.html?oneclick=true

< a report by the US ABC network raised fresh allegations about the missing 
explosives that had been secured by the International Atomic Energy Agency 
in Iraq before the war.

The network ran videotape taken by a reporter embedded with the US Army 
101st Airborne Division nine days after the fall of Baghdad. The footage 
shows US troops examining barrels of what appeared to be explosives inside 
bunkers that had been sealed by UN inspectors.

Weapons experts familiar with the work of IAEA inspectors who were in Iraq 
say that the video appears identical to photographs that the inspectors 
took of the explosives that the agency put under seal before the war. One 
frame of the pictures shows what the experts say is an IAEA seal itself, 
with fine wires that would have to be broken if anyone entered through the 
main door of the bunker. The agency said that when it left Iraq in 
mid-March, only days before the war began, the only bunkers bearing its 
seals at the huge complex contained the explosive HMX, which the agency had 
monitored because it could be used in a nuclear weapons program.

The network said the troops had not been ordered to secure the site or its 
contents and left it unguarded when they moved. Reportedly it was later 
looted.>

Meanwhile, authoritative estimates say 100,000 Iraqis have been killed, 
more than half women and kids, mostly by coalition forces. Never mind, 
though. There'll be a contrary report along any minute now.

Damien Broderick