Tons of Weapons Disappear

[Nurvingiel]

I read the acticle, but the ad really caught my eye. A link to "Stolen Honor" - I was going to watch it just to see what it was about, but the write-up was too ridiculous.

How do voters know who to believe? It seems even major news sources can't be trusted anymore - for either side.

[Insidious Rex]

Yes, just FYI, The washington Times is considered extremely conservative. its the republicans answer to the washington post in this town.

Anyway, if its the russians then what kind of proof do we have verfiying this? they must be acting on some source. currently the russians are denying it vehemently:

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Sedov dismissed the allegations as "absurd" and "ridiculous."

"I can state officially that the Russian Defense Ministry and its structures couldn't have been involved in the disappearance of the explosives, because all Russian military experts left Iraq when the international sanctions were introduced during the 1991 Gulf War," he told The Associated Press.

now granted the russians have been known to lie openly in the past but what proof are they going on exactly? i know Jersey and others like to play this as a gotcha game but im genuinly concerned with this amount of explosives falling into the wrong hands. not on who can score the most points with it. i would hope others are too.

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Yes, just FYI, The washington Times is considered extremely conservative. its the republicans answer to the washington post in this town.

So let me get this straight then. if it's a "conservative" paper it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It's a liberal paper such as the NY Times - we're supposed to take it as fact (which is who initially dragged up this story this week). I just want to make sure on this.

Anyway, if its the russians then what kind of proof do we have verfiying this? they must be acting on some source. currently the russians are denying it vehemently:



now granted the russians have been known to lie openly in the past but what proof are they going on exactly? i know Jersey and others like to play this as a gotcha game but im genuinly concerned with this amount of explosives falling into the wrong hands. not on who can score the most points with it. i would hope others are too.

See that's where you are wrong - I'm not playing this as a gotcha game. I'm just tired of jump on the "Bush was to blame" attititude before the facts are out.

let's see who played the gotcha game in this thread...

IR (1st post of the thread) -

What the heck just happened in Iraq! 380 TONS of explosives "slipped" through the hands of the coalition forces and into the hands of the insurgents?! How could that happen! Is no one else appaled by this? Why exactly is it we were firing military leaders who said we needed more troops when we cant even guard a known weapons stockade?

BoP -

They can't FIND Saddam's WMDs, and now they've managed to "lose" an arsenal of explosives?!

IR -

Then maybe we should have burried all these explosives in the Iraqi sand since we clearly werent able to gaurd it...

Granted IR - you did back down after other reports came out - but you initially jumped all over that it was Bush, the coalition and "his stupidity" before there was even any facts. So tell me - who IS playing the "gotcha game"? At least I said in my first post - let's wait until the facts are out.

As for Russia having a habit of lying - let's not forget the reports on Beslan - HOW many people did they report were held hostage? AND HOW many ACTUALLY were?

As for being concerned - of course I'm concerned. But I'm not going ot just lay blame before it's researched. There probably will not be any answer to what happened here until AFTER the election. I have a funny feeling though that Kerry has cancelled those advertising spots though, which he announced they were working on.

[jerseydevil]

BTW IR - I resent the fact that you imply that I am NOT concerned about the weapons missing. You seem to forget MY BROTHER IS OVER THERE AND MY COUSIN (WHO IS A BROTHER TO ME) WILL BE GOING OVER THERE!!!!!!!

My brother...



My cousin Steve...

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by jerseydevil

So let me get this straight then. if it's a "conservative" paper it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It's a liberal paper such as the NY Times - we're supposed to take it as fact

wait was nurvengel talking about the washington times or the new york times? oh thats right she was commenting on the washington times. forgive me for commenting on her comments about what she saw on their site by relating to her some information well known by most americans or at least most washingtonians that might help her understand WHY she saw that.

See that's where you are wrong - I'm not playing this as a gotcha game. I'm just tired of jump on the "Bush was to blame" attititude before the facts are out.

oh heaven forbid i get a little upset that enough explosives to blow up several large cities have disapeared into the iraqi desert. youre right i shouldnt be upset by that. because clearly getting upset means im bashing bush. and furthermore I shouldnt be concerned if this happened before march because that would mean it wasnt bushes fault so it doesnt matter nah nah, right? yes thats proper thinking there.

let's see who played the gotcha game in this thread...

oh now PLEASE show me how EITHER of my posts where simply about scoring points against Bush and were NOT a genuine display of real concern over the fact that an enormous amount of explosives had gotten into the hands of the insurgents (which EVEN TONIGHT a pentagon official has said) as reported to us. Please go ahead Mr. I can read your mind. Id like to see that. Youll EVEN notice I put the word “slipped” in quotes because that’s the EXACT word I heard when I first heard about this story. If I was manipulating the story would I purposefully keep quotes around a loaded word like that? Hm? Furthermore, nice of you to selectively snip only certain bits of my post out to try to make it seem like something else while totally IGNORING the parts where I said:

Im still in a daze over this story. Is it really true that we lost THAT many explosives? Please tell me they just moved it and forgot where they put it.

sounds like the words of someone just lookin to score points eh? Ridiculous…

but you initially jumped all over that it was Bush, the coalition and "his stupidity" before there was even any facts.

now your next assignment is to show me where I ever once used the word BUSH or HIS STUPIDITY in my posts. Go ahead. Knock yourself out.

So tell me - who IS playing the "gotcha game"?

oh! Oh! I know! I know! Pick me! YOU! or was this not your post:

Wait - don't muddy the waters for the democrats. Don't you know that it HAS to be Bush and all Bush. Didn't you see how it doesn't really matter about the Oil and Food scandal or the fact that France was giving Iraq weapons right up till the war? Don't tell us that Russia might have had a role to play in the 380 tons of missing explosives now. Not to mention that if it's true - then they were actually moved to a TERRORIST supporting country like Syria. Come on - they were against the war - we don't want to hear about them doing anything "bad" like that.

oh and I also noticed you never addressed the basic question I had of ok it was the Russians how are we so sure of this? More questions worth answering are if we knew of the explosives and we knew the explosives disappeared long before the coalition moved in then why wasn’t this disclosed long ago as well? Why keep it a secret? It shouldn’t be a major blow against anyone politically if we weren’t in position to keep the explosives in check right? So why the secrecy? Surely once they realized the explosives were gone they did some kind of investigation right? So how come when this story exploded they didn’t say yes yes we knew all about that and we have done a thorough investigation of it? Why did they instead act like they were caught off guard and weren’t sure what happened with the explosives and only now are offering possibilities? It just seems really odd to me. Which is why im… concerned. Sue me.

Originally Posted by jerseydevil

BTW IR - I resent the fact that you imply that I am NOT concerned about the weapons missing. You seem to forget MY BROTHER IS OVER THERE AND MY COUSIN (WHO IS A BROTHER TO ME) WILL BE GOING OVER THERE!!!!!!!

then why IN THE WORLD aren’t you anguished about this as much as I am? And AGREEING with me that it’s a horrible situation and how could this happen? Instead of trying to counter every point every poster makes that isn’t positive to the bush camp. I know if I had relatives over there and I found out about this politics would go out the door I can tell you. I would be furious!

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

wait was nurvengel talking about the washington times or the new york times? oh thats right she was commenting on the washington times. forgive me for commenting on her comments about what she saw on their site by relating to her some information well known by most americans or at least most washingtonians that might help her understand WHY she saw that.

You didn't quote nurv on that - you made a general statement as if the newspaper was not to be trusted because it's a conservative paper. If you were responding to nurv on the point of the advertising - maybe you should have quoted her and explained it better. I have a feeling that isn't what you were doing though. I think you just wanted to point out that the paper is conservative.

oh heaven forbid i get a little upset that enough explosives to blow up several large cities have disapeared into the iraqi desert. youre right i shouldnt be upset by that. because clearly getting upset means im bashing bush. and furthermore I shouldnt be concerned if this happened before march because that would mean it wasnt bushes fault so it doesnt matter nah nah, right? yes thats proper thinking there.

there is a difference in being conerned and just jumping to the conclusion that we were there when the weapons were. I'm just not jumping to conclusions over us having been there because there was NO timeline for when the weapons went missing.

I NEVER said that it doesn't matter if it happened before March. MY PROBLEM is that you and BoP right away just lashed on that it was Bush's fault or that it was the coalition's fault. There is a BIG difference there - so don't tell me what I think there.

sounds like the words of someone just lookin to score points eh? Ridiculous…

As I said -

Granted IR - you did back down after other reports came out - but you initially jumped all over that it was Bush, the coalition and "his stupidity" before there was even any facts.

When you stated about the timeline - that was AFTER reports started coming out that Kerry might have been jumping the gun.

now your next assignment is to show me where I ever once used the word BUSH or HIS STUPIDITY in my posts. Go ahead. Knock yourself out.

[
You don't have to say Bush when you say things like this - you imply it...

"Why exactly is it we were firing military leaders who said we needed more troops when we cant even guard a known weapons stockade?"

So tell me - who were are you claiming fired these military leaders and prevented enough troops from being in Iraq? Is that Kerry you are talking about, or Blair or is it Chirac? or might it be BUSH without actually naming him?

Also - the military persion you are talking about wasn't fired, he was scheduled to retire and he did. He has even come on the news saying - he was NOT fired nor was he FORCED to retire. Democrats love to say he was fired because it makes it seem that Bush never listened to anyone.

oh! Oh! I know! I know! Pick me! YOU! or was this not your post:

i was making a statement that you and others seem awefully concerned with what we did or didn't do regarding this (before the facts are even known)- but the support of weapons that France gave, the scandal with the UN - you seem to have no comment on. That to me is hypocritical.

oh and I also noticed you never addressed the basic question I had of ok it was the Russians how are we so sure of this? More questions worth answering are if we knew of the explosives and we knew the explosives disappeared long before the coalition moved in then why wasn’t this disclosed long ago as well?

Supposedly this wasn't kept secret - but we did NOT know before we moved in that they were missing. It was supposedly known soon after we moved in and it was reported in the media.

Why keep it a secret? It shouldn’t be a major blow against anyone politically if we weren’t in position to keep the explosives in check right? So why the secrecy? Surely once they realized the explosives were gone they did some kind of investigation right? So how come when this story exploded they didn’t say yes yes we knew all about that and we have done a thorough investigation of it? Why did they instead act like they were caught off guard and weren’t sure what happened with the explosives and only now are offering possibilities? It just seems really odd to me. Which is why im… concerned. Sue me.

I think good questions to ask also would be WHY the media - liberal media to boot - is bringing out OLD news a week before the election and acting like it's new news.

then why IN THE WORLD aren’t you anguished about this as much as I am? And AGREEING with me that it’s a horrible situation and how could this happen? Instead of trying to counter every point every poster makes that isn’t positive to the bush camp. I know if I had relatives over there and I found out about this politics would go out the door I can tell you. I would be furious!

Personally I think you are less anguished about it than you wanted Bush to **** up and point the finger, that he ****ed up on the stragety, that he ignored experts (even though there were MANY experts he listened to on the other end). I'm not playing politics here. I'm upset that the weapons are gone - but we have no idea where they are and it's premature to say WHERE they went or what happened to them.

Being concerned about them is one thing - finger pointing is another. You seem to still not understand the difference though. It's like talking to brick wall.

As of right now - we don't know if Russia took them, we don't know when they were taken, as Khamul posted - it would take a hell of a lot to take them out while we were there - at least all at once. Paul Bremer also explained on Fox how difficult it would have been to remove the explosives while we were there. Now when paul bremer said anything against Bush - democrats jumped right on that - now are you going to tell me that he's lying and not telling the truth? Are people only credible to you when they speak out against Bush - but not when they come to his side? You seem much more willing to give Russia a slide though on it - because they've denied having any role. Even though you do acknowledge that they have lied in the past.

[Nurvingiel]

Well, I did say the Washington times and one article that looked dodgy, but I didn't make a comment on the whole newspaper. However, if I read that paper often, I would start looking closer at the other articles.

The NY Times should also be taken with a grain of salt.

JD those are great pictures! I think we should all worry that these weapons disappeared no matter whose fault it was. It also reminds us that there are many caches of weapons out there, controlled by questionable groups, that we know nothing about.

[Khamûl]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

im genuinly concerned with this amount of explosives falling into the wrong hands.

There is another theory. ABC News seems to think that maybe there wasn't as much explosive material there as was first thought.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=204304&page=1

Take it as you will; I'm just presenting it as an alternate scenario.

But no matter how much is really missing, I am concerned that it's in the hands of God-knows-who. More thoughts on this to come later.

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Khamûl

There is another theory. ABC News seems to think that maybe there wasn't as much explosive material there as was first thought.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=204304&page=1

Take it as you will; I'm just presenting it as an alternate scenario.

While the only thing that CNN is really reporting is that there is a video tape from an ABC affiliate who was embedded with one of the units - which shows them looking over the explosives AFTER the fall of Bahgdad. They do note that there is no way in the video to even tell if it's the high explovises or not that the soldiers are looking at. Each news outlet seems to have chosen which theory they are going to concentrate on.

Yesterday it was said that the UN purposely leaked this to hurt the president and that they had plans with CBS to actually wait until MONDAY the day before the election to release it. The problem was that the NY Times decided to run it before the agreed upon date. People can disagree with this as just conspiracy theory - but it does seem interesting that a UN memo over something they have known about for a while - gets released just right before the elections. If it was such a big deal to the UN as they claim - why didn't they make a big deal about it when they knew about it?

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

JD those are great pictures!

Thanks - I hope my cousin will send me pics when he's in the Marines and off in Iraq - which I'm sure he'll be going off to.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by jerseydevil

You didn't quote nurv on that - you made a general statement as if the newspaper was not to be trusted because it's a conservative paper. If you were responding to nurv on the point of the advertising - maybe you should have quoted her and explained it better. I have a feeling that isn't what you were doing though. I think you just wanted to point out that the paper is conservative.

what difference would it have made if i had quoted her or not. i responded in the frame right after hers and my first part was SPECIFICALLY addressing her comments. which is why i said "Yes, for YOUR information..." And youll note i said that the Washington Post is essentially the opposite end of the spectrum from the Times. which is TRUE. and well known. you didnt see me shouting oh the Times is a rag but the post is neutral. no i told it like it is. do you disagree that the times is conservative? frankly, Im one of the few people here that can inform about local Washington media to people from say Canada who may stumble across it. so i was just providing that service. i just found it interesting that last night the ONLY two online resources for that russian story was the Times and rushlimbaugh.com... *snort*

I think good questions to ask also would be WHY the media - liberal media to boot - is bringing out OLD news a week before the election and acting like it's new news.

great. add it to the collection. as i said my concern on this is not political but humanitarian. im not john kerry. im not interested in using this as political fodder. im interested in finding out what the hell happened. if its one huge completely fabricated liberal conspiracy like you suggest then yeah i wanna know that too.

Personally I think you are less anguished about it than you wanted Bush to **** up and point the finger, that he ****ed up on the stragety, that he ignored experts

nope. im definitely more anguished about it. i already knew bush made plenty of mistakes regarding the war. that happens. im more concerned about our soldiers being blown to kingdom come with HX.

I'm not playing politics here. I'm upset that the weapons are gone - but we have no idea where they are and it's premature to say WHERE they went or what happened to them.

agreed. and youll note i havent said where they went and what happened to them (although the Times has tried to say this ). Just demanded answers. But right now we have rumsfield saying oh those weapons were probably taken before we even invaded and "defense experts" in the pentagon in a press conference saying well we might have blown up some of that AFTER we invaded. well sounds contradicting to me. sounds like they have no clue what happened.

Ill grant them this, there was just a BUTT load of munitions caches in Iraq and keeping track of it all was a daunting task (for 100,000 troops and a couple of satellites...) and the fact that this loss represents just like .01% of the total munitions in Iraq is as much terrifying to me as it is enlightening.

Also... I will ALSO acknowledge (dont EVER tell me Im just a liberal spin machine thanks) that this particular variety of super high explosives (plastique) is for the most part NOT being used by your average rag tag insurgent on their road side bombings. for the most part they have been using old shells and "metal based" munitions because of the shrapnel effect and not pinpoint super powerful plastique explosive which is mostly what was stolen (from there at least). so it seems as if these munitions THUS FAR havent really trickled down to the common insurgent yet. or else they have no need for it. but if we see a tim mcveigh type massive truck bomb any time soon we will know where that came from...

It's like talking to brick wall.

ha ha! how long have you been posting with me? and yer just now figuring out how stubborn i am?

As of right now - we don't know if Russia took them

it appears the russia thing is quickly dieing. and this new theory that we may have blown up some of them is coming to the fore.