NEW YORK, Oct. 31 /PRNewswire/ -- NEWSWEEK PERISCOPE item:
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20041031/NYSU010 )
Nov. 8 issue - New evidence shows that American military forces in Iraq
were slow to respond to suspected looting of Saddam-era ammunition dumps.
According to U.S. officials, in late April, a week or two after the fall of
Baghdad, an Iraqi informant reported to the CIA that he saw people looting
buildings at Al Qaqaa State Establishment, a huge fortress where hundreds of
tons of deadly explosive were stored. The CIA distributed alerts throughout
the intelligence community and to military units in Iraq. However, according
to a source who was briefed on the incident, the U.S. military never sent in
any troops to frighten off the looters and secure the facility.
Last week the same ammo dump became the center of a pre-election political
controversy when a U.N. agency and the Iraqi government alleged that as many
as 320 tons of the explosive compounds HMX and RDX had been looted from the
site. A Pentagon spokesman described the allegation that CIA information had
been ignored as "farfetched." Defense Department officials claimed that the
HMX and RDX might have been spirited away from Al Qaqaa by Saddam's minions
before the war, or, alternatively, that large quantities of the material were
destroyed by a U.S. military team which visited the site a few days after the
war. Video recorded by a Minnesota TV crew that visited Al Qaqaa a few days
after the military team, however, showed that when U.N. seals were broken at
one bunker at the depot, boxes and barrels of what appeared to be high
explosives were still there in large quantities.
Whatever happened to the explosives stored at Al Qaqaa, intelligence
sources tell NEWSWEEK little of it has turned up so far in the dozens of bombs
that terrorists are planting around Iraq every day. According to U.S.
officials, small quantities of chemicals related to HMX and RDX have been
detected in the wreckage of suicide bombings believed to have been carried out
by the Islamist network headed by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Mussab
al-Zarqawi. But most homemade Iraqi bombs-which currently are being planted at
a rate of 30 per day-are made of artillery shells and aerial bombs looted from
hundreds of other ammo depots built by Saddam. U.S. intelligence agencies
believe Zarqawi's fanatical following consists of a hard core of a few hundred
active fighters -- some of them foreign militants who infiltrated from
neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria -- and perhaps a couple of
thousand sympathizers around Iraq. But while Zarqawi's blood-soaked
spectaculars get most of the publicity, U.S. officials believe a majority of
the less bloody, but deeply disruptive, daily bombings of supply convoys, oil
pipelines and other economic targets are the work of a much larger network of
former Saddam loyalists. British and U.S. intelligence sources say Baathist
insurgents may number as many as 8,000 to 10,000 fighters and an equal number
of sympathizers willing to offer food, lodging or financial support. Due to
the looting of Saddam's arsenals, U.S. defense officials fear, both insurgent
networks -- who analysts believe are not permanently allied but may
co-operate on an ad hoc basis-have access to an unlimited supply of arms and
explosives.
-Mark Hosenball
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6370144/site/newsweek /
SOURCE Newsweek
 back to top
Related links:
http://www.newsweek.msnbc.com
Photo Notes:
NewsCom:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20041031/NYSU010 AP
PhotoExpress Network: PRN1 PRN Photo Desk,
photodesk@prnewswire.com
CONTACT:
Carol Sullivan of Newsweek, +1-212-445-4078
|
