Al-Qaqaa Chaos: US Troops Witness Looting

[plover]

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/04/iraq.weapons.ap/ .

About a dozen U.S. troops were guarding [al-Qaqaa] when Iraqi looters raided the site...

[...]

"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots," one officer said.

[...]

One senior noncommissioned officer said troops "were running from one side of the compound to the other side, trying to kick people out" and that at least 100 vehicles were at the site waiting for the military to leave so that they could loot the munitions.

Though like many impresarios his management style is a bit heavy-handed:

The soldiers who spoke to the Times asked to remain unidentified, saying they feared retaliation from the Pentagon.

 

[russ_watters]

Quick question: how many pickup-trucks does it take to carry away 380 tons of explosives??

 

[Smurf]

I think ford said that a truck could carry 5 tons when properly equipped.
380/5=76 trucks
heh. Did they not expect to get it all, or do they have something more heavy duty than Ford (not hard in my opinion)

note: I know nothing about trucks so don't take my word for this.

 

[humanino]

I think ford said that a truck could carry 5 tons when properly equipped.

OK, fair assumption.
Yet, I am not driving a 5 tons of explosive loaded truck, in a place where roads are not so... flat. If you drive this, remember : "take it smoooooth..."

 

[plover]

Quick question: how many pickup-trucks does it take to carry away 380 tons of explosives??

Not a clue. But it's not a terribly useful question considering that the article notes the soldiers as saying that "the looting happened over several weeks in late April and early May 2003". Why do you make these responses without reading the entire document?

 

[humanino]

It is not a question of reading the document. It is a question wether this document deals with truth or propaganda. Is there not good points for GWB in this story ? Like : "Now they do have weapons"

So the document is either not true, or accounts for a terrible terrible mistake. Which is better ? The army could answer : We commited worse mistakes before, this is just another one.

As a result, there is a third possibility : explosives are really gone, but this happened "under control". Fortunately, i do not believe in conspiracy theories...

 

[plover]

humanino:

The explosives that are of most concern (RDX and HMX) are easy to transport.

According to the New York Times:

A special property of HMX and RDX lends them to smuggling and terrorism, experts said. While violently energetic when detonated, they are insensitive to shock and physical abuse during handling and transport because of their chemical stability. A hammer blow does nothing. It takes a detonator, like a blasting cap, to release the stored energy.

 

[humanino]

OK, I'll ride them

Another quote from your last link :

"The immediate danger" of the lost stockpile, said an expert who recently led a team that searched Iraq for deadly arms, "is its potential use with insurgents in very small and powerful explosive devices. The other danger is that it can easily move into the terrorist web across the Middle East."

which makes it clear that today occupation is justified, and help from other nations more likely to be eventually obtained. If your president tells ours Whatever our previous disagreements : the situation today needs urgent support. It is getting dangerous and more and more out of control he might get our troups to go there.

So maybe the control was really lost at some point, or maybe in a certain aspects this is really convenient for diplomatic reasons.

 

[plover]

It is not a question of reading the document.

My comment was referring only to Russ' response. His question seems to imply that he thought that the "100 vehicles" mentioned in my original quote had to take everything in one trip.

which makes it clear that today occupation is justified, and help from other nations more likely to be eventually obtained. If your president tells ours Whatever our previous disagreements : the situation today needs urgent support. It is getting dangerous and more and more out of control he might get our troups to go there.

So maybe the control was really lost at some point, or maybe in a certain aspects this is really convenient for diplomatic reasons.

The events in question are from April and May 2003—this is not a new danger. If terrorists wanted to remove substantial amounts of these materials from Iraq they've had plenty of time. There is also a good chance that these explosives are being used in the roadside bombs being used against the troops currently in Iraq. The main point here is this problem was caused by the lack of a plan to secure many important sites during the invasion combined with the use of too few troops to make securing such sites even possible.

 

[Gokul43201]

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/04/iraq.weapons.ap/ .
Though like many impresarios his management style is a bit heavy-handed:

So all the explanations about this event happening before the army got there, was just more of the same - a sackful of politically motivated lies ?

I only hope that Rummy gets the boot...and Wolfie too !

 

[russ_watters]

Not a clue.

Allow me...

THIS 25' moving van has a capacity of 3 tons.

http://autos.yahoo.com/newcars/fordtruck_f-150supercrew4x4_139-in.wbxltstyleside_2004/14068/style_specs.html?p=cap medium-large pickup truck has a cargo capacity of 2/3 of a ton(Smurf, a big pickup-truck may be able to tow 5 tons, but it can't hold it in its cargo bed).

Now, you seriously expect me to believe the US guards missed 75+ such trucks or 550 such pickups in 3 weeks? ~3 large truckloads or 20+ pickups a day? The quote said looting like the LA riots - that's individuals running off with what they can carry. Sorry, I'm not buying what you're selling.

 

[plover]

So all the explanations about this event happening before the army got there, was just more of the same - a sackful of politically motivated lies ?

Yes, the idea that the IAEA sealed cache might have been removed before U.S. troops arrived is hogwash, but that was proven last week sometime when they found the footage from one of the embedded reporters showing the IAEA seal being broken, and the containers inside the storage building. U.S. weapons inspector David Kay identified the seal and the explosives. Transcript here (a little under half way down the page).

The new information in the above article is mostly just eyewitness evidence from soldiers on the ground about how little effort was put into securing the al-Qaqaa site. There are more details in the original L.A. Times story (which unlike the link above requires registration).

Despite the stockpiles at the site, no U.S. forces were specifically assigned to guard Al Qaqaa — known to U.S. forces in Iraq as Objective Elm — after the 101st Airborne left the facility.

Members of the 258th Rear Area Operations Center, responsible for base security at nearby LSA Dogwood, came across the looting at Al Qaqaa during patrols through the area. The unit, which comprised 27 soldiers, enlisted the help of troops of the 317th Support in securing the site, the soldiers said.

The senior intelligence official said there was no order for any unit to secure Al Qaqaa. "No way," the officer said, adding that doing so would have diverted combat resources from the push toward Baghdad.

"It's all about combat power," the officer said, "and we were short combat power.

"If we had 150,000 soldiers, I'm not sure we could have secured" such sites, the officer said. "Securing connotes 24-hour presence," and only a few sites in Baghdad were thought to warrant such security.

Troops of the two units went to Al Qaqaa over a week in late April but received no orders to maintain a presence at the facility, the soldiers said. They also said they received no response to a request for help in guarding the facility.

"We couldn't have been given the assignment to defend a facility unless we were given the troops to do it, and we weren't," said one National Guard officer. "[Objective] Elm being protected or not protected was not really part of the equation. It wasn't an area of immediate concern."

From this report it sounds like the fact that any U.S. personnel were at al-Qaqaa is due to the initiative of the soldiers on the ground, not the Pentagon's invasion plan.

The Times article also has these details from a Marine officer concerning late April 2003:

"That site was just abandoned by the 101st Airborne, and there was never a physical handoff by the 101st to the Marines. They just left," said a senior officer who worked in the top Marine command post in Iraq at the time. "We knew these sites were being looted, but there was nothing we could do about it."

During the same period, Marines came across another massive ammunition depot near the southern Iraqi town of Diwaniya, the senior officer said. They sent a message to the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad seeking guidance on how to keep the site from being plundered.

Commanders in Baghdad responded that the Marines should attempt to blow up the depot. The Marine officers responded that the site was too large to demolish.

Commanders in Baghdad "didn't have a good response to that," the officer said. "There was no plan to prevent these weapons from being used against us a year later."

 

[plover]

Allow me...

Amazing, now I'm no longer clueless...

Now, you seriously expect me to believe the US guards missed 75+ such trucks or 550 such pickups in 3 weeks? ~3 large truckloads or 20+ pickups a day?

No, the guards knew looting was taking place, they just couldn't prevent it, and their calls for backup fell on deaf ears. They weren't even aware that anything special was in the facility.

In a universe where the Iraq invasion was planned competently, your objection might fly. But an intelligence officer indicated there was no 24 hour presence and no attempt to secure the site. (See the quotes in the previous post.) The most likely circumstances are that troops knew about some of the looting, could not have known the complete extent of it, and were not afforded a chance to keep much track of it.

The quote said looting like the LA riots - that's individuals running off with what they can carry.

I think the image being invoked here is that looting was pervasive, brazen, and hectic, not that Iraqis festooned in incendiary bling bling were running off into the desert waving a rocket in each hand.

I don't even know what purpose you think making an argument like the one above serves. If you want to say something snide, just do it, instead hiding of it in an image that just looks like a failure of the imagination. As it stands, you just give the appearance that Rumsfeld's reputation as a military planner is more important to you than the lives of U.S. troops. I fail to see how preventing the deaths of U.S. soldiers is a partisan issue. I fail to see how adopting a risky military strategy, and then disdaining to build in failsafes is anything but monumental incompetence.

If you think you can accomplish something with 130,000 troops, but your advisers insist that 300,000 are necessary, you should put at least 170,000 or so in position and get another 100,000 ready to ship out, so if your experimental plan doesn't work as intended, the people you are responsible for aren't left twisting in the wind. I'm no military strategist, but providing this kind of backup plan just seems like minimal common sense. If you're committed to something, do it right! Standing there and saying 'Look it worked!' because a primary objective was acheived while back in the theater of operations soldiers are still being mown down, insurgents are making off with huge stashes of weaponry, and the lives of the civilians you're supposedly protecting just get more dangerous is simply criminal.