‘Incompetence’: John Kerry’s factually unsupported denunciations

 Intrigue surrounding the disappearance of 377 tons of explosives from the al-Qaqaa facility in Iraq seems to be deepening, while preliminary reports that the material was lost due to American negligence appear to be among the least likely of explanations.

As initially suggested to the public by the New York Times, large quantities of powerful HMX and RDX – plastic high-explosives that can be used for civilian purposes but are particularly well suited to military ones (including triggering nuclear weapons) and terrorist applications – were stolen from the installation that "was supposed to be under American military control." Facts on the ground, however, indicate that the Times’ reporting was tremendously careless.

For starters, ABC news is now reporting a large discrepancy between the 141 tons of RDX declared by Iraq in July 2002, and the just-over-three tons of RDX recorded in January 2003 in confidential IAEA documents obtained by the network. ABC notes this "could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the United States launched ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ in March 2003."

Furthermore, the Third Infantry Division that first searched al-Qaqaa did not report the discovery of either HMX or RDX, though it uncovered, as reported by the Washington Post on April 5, 2003, "vials of white powder, packed three to a box" and stocks of "atropine and pralidoxime." In a column for National Review Online, Clifford D. May appropriately asks: "If the 3ID got so close and personal that they were counting the vials in boxes, how likely is it that they would have missed 380 tons of HMX and RMX?"

Similarly, as a recent Pentagon statement explicates, "the removal of 380 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division’s arrival at the facility." (Emphasis added.)

Logically, one gathers from this information that the vast majority, if not all, of the HMX and RMX at al-Qaqaa had been removed prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. But how, then, to account for their disappearance?

The answer may well lie in a front-page Washington Times article by Bill Gertz. Gertz quotes John Shaw, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for International Technology Security, who contends – based on information from two reliable European intelligence services – that Russian troops and Iraqi intelligence "almost certainly" removed the missing material from the facility. Noting that the RDX and HMX were probably of Russian origin, Shaw explains how the Russians "brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units. Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."

Moreover, Shaw describes the incident in the context of a larger Baathist Iraqi effort to hide powerful arms by moving them to Syria, Lebanon, and possibly Iran – an account bolstered by satellite photographs released Thursday showing truck convoys at several weapons sites in the weeks before U.S. military operations were launched. Consequently, it is hardly implausible to believe that this program applied as well to the removal of WMD caches possessed by Saddam prior to the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq.