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Rumsfeld Believes Explosives Were Moved 8:40 am PST, 29 October 2004 By 7am.com Staff Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday he believes hundreds of tons of explosives were moved from an Iraqi weapons depot before U.S. troops captured it during the 2003 invasion. "We would have seen anything like that," he said in one of two radio interviews at the Pentagon, referring to any effort to remove the 377 tons of explosives�an effort that would have been substantial. "The idea it was suddenly looted and moved out, all of these tons of equipment, I think is at least debatable." The Pentagon also released one declassified reconnaissance photo showing two trucks outside one of dozens of storage facilities at the Al-Qaqaa depot. The photo was taken just days before the March 2003 invasion. The particular bunker is not one known to have contained any of the missing explosives, and Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita said the image only shows that there was some Iraqi activity at the base when it was taken, on March 17. Di Rita said the image doesn't address the missing explosives, per se. Rumsfeld also cast doubt on an earlier report based on an interview with an defense subordinate John Shaw, that Russian special forces may have had a hand in removing the tons of weapons prior to the U.S.-led invasion. That claim was reported in Thursday editions of The Washington Times, which quoted numerous defense and intelligence sources as saying Saddam Hussein essentially contracted with Moscow to have Russian special forces assist him in moving the tons of explosives to Syria, and possible Lebanon and Iran. The Times said one of Saddam's major weapons suppliers between the time of the first Gulf War and the March 2003 invasion was Russia. France, Belarus, Ukraine, and other nations were also suppliers, say some reports. Russia has angrily denied the report, and Rumsfeld said he couldn't substantiate it. "I have no information on that at all, and cannot validate that even slightly," the defense chief said. The Pentagon says it is looking into the issue, noting that over 400,000 tons of Iraqi munitions have either been destroyed or are in the process of being destroyed. Russian Troops Removed Iraq Weapons: Report 9:04 am PST, 28 October 2004 Russian special forces troops removed many of Saddam Hussein's weapons out of Iraq into neighboring Syria in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, The Washington Times reports in Thursday's editions. The paper quotes John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, as saying he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad. "The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units." Shaw, who was in charge of cataloguing the tons of weapons provided Iraq by foreign suppliers, told the Times reliable information he recently received from two European intelligence agencies implicates Moscow. Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, the paper said, quoting Shaw. The defense undersecretary said an investigation into Russia's involvement in dispersing Saddam's 380 tons of explosives was ongoing. Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday from the Al-Qaqaa weapons depot in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material. Shaw said the depot was known to the U.S. and was closely monitored. He said it would not have been possible for the special explosives, RDX and HMX, to have been removed. "�If the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."," he told the Washington Times. The paper quoted a second senior defense official as saying the Russian units in charge of dispersing Saddam's weapons "were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria." Bush, Kerry Debate Iraq; Explosives Claims Refuted 8:59 am PST, 28 October 2004 By 7am.com Staff President Bush and John Kerry traded barbs over Iraq on the campaign trail, with Bush attempting to appeal to Democrats whose "dreams and goals are not found in the far left wing" of their own party. Kerry, meanwhile, said when it comes to Iraq, Bush "doesn't get it, and he can't fix it." He added Bush has made a habit of "dodging and bobbing and weaving" when it comes to tons of missing explosives outside Baghdad, and accused Vice President Dick Cheney of "becoming the Chief Minister of Disinformation." Bush countered by accusing Kerry of "wild charges" unbecoming of a man who wants to be president. The last-minute campaigning comes amid increasing polls showing the race too close to call. In Bush's call to Democrats, which he made in Pennsylvania and Ohio, he admitted they would not "agree with me on every issue." "Many Democrats look at my opponent and see an attitude that is much more extreme," added the president. "If you're a Democrat, and your dreams and goals are not found in the far left wing of the Democrat party, I'd be honored to have your vote." And for the third day, Kerry, meanwhile, attacked Bush regarding 400 tons of missing explosives in Iraq�ordnance he says "could very likely be in the hands of terrorists and insurgents, who are actually attacking our forces now 80 times a day on average." "What we're seeing is a White House that is dodging and bobbing and weaving in their usual efforts to avoid responsibility, just as they've done every step of the way in our involvement in Iraq," Kerry said. Findings disputed But one former GI with the U.S. Army's famed 101st Airborne Division, and who was among one of the first American soldiers on the scene of Saddam Hussein's Al-Qaqaa weapons depot, said on Wednesday there was no way the bunkers he inspected housed 380 tons of high explosives, as has been reported by The New York Times. "When we walked into the bunkers that apparently nobody [else] went into, there is no way there were 380 tons of explosives in those bunkers," 101st Airborne veteran Ken Dixon told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" Wednesday night. Rather, he said, the weapons left behind amounted to "regular RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades], rockets and hand grenades." He did say he saw evidence that something had been removed. "You had tire tracks in dried-up mud," he told Sean Hannity. "Large tire tracks from big trucks. And you had boot prints going in and out of these bunkers." But in terms of the kind of looters mentioned in the Times article, Dixon said he saw "no sign" of that at all. When his unit arrived on April 10, 2003, the Al-Qaqaa bunkers were "wide open," Dixon told radio host Steve Gill on Nashville's WIN earlier in the day. "There was me and two other guys who were the only ones who actually went in the bunkers," he recalled. "What drew us there - they had these big metal doors and they were already open. So we thought people had already gone in there - we wanted to take a look." Strange markings And of the crates left behind, Dixon said there were some interesting markings on them. "We pretty much knew that they contained explosives from the symbols that were on the crates themselves," Dixon said. "There was nothing we could actually read because the majority of it was written in French." France, along with Russia, China and other nations, allegedly supplied Saddam's Iraq with weapons and other military supplies, in violation of U.N. resolutions. Dixon also made another observation that appears to refute claims Iraq was no haven for terrorism: "There were terrorist training camps all over [Iraq]," he told Gill, noting his unit cleaned out a terrorist training camp before heading to Al-Qaqaa. 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John Kerry have been exchanging fusillades over the disappearance of 377 tons of powerful explosives in Iraq. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=742&e=1&u=/usatoday/20041029/cm_usatoday/candidatesstretchforthefinishline __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/E-MAIL_TRIVIA/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
