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Administration Spins Al Qa Qaa

By Jeralyn, Section War In Iraq
Posted on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 04:35:05 AM EST
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Update: The New York Times says Bush is making things worse:

"The disastrous theft was revealed in a recent letter to an international agency in Vienna. It was signed by the general director of Iraq's Planning and Following Up Directorate. It's too bad the Bush administration doesn't have one of those."

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Original Post

Here go the wingers again, claiming an NBC story shows that the weapons at al Qa Qa were gone 18 months before we invaded Iraq, ergo, it's not Bush's fault. The Washington Post reports:

The Bush campaign pushed reporters to look into an NBC News report that the network had been embedded with troops who searched the site three weeks into the war but never found the powerful explosives that are now missing, suggesting they were already gone.

Don't buy a word. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) saw the weapons in January, 2003:

IAEA inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers, Fleming said. Inspectors visited the site again in March 2003, but didn't view the explosives because the seals were not broken, she said.

It's Karl Rove who's trying to manipulate the facts:

Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, also contended that The Times had chosen to run the article at the end of the campaign, though he argued that the explosives probably disappeared about 18 months ago. The Times article said it was based on a letter reporting the missing explosives dated two weeks ago, on Oct. 10, sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency by the Iraqi interim government. The Times and CBS confirmed the facts in the letter in an interview with the Iraqi minister of science and technology, Rashad M. Omar.

Josh Marshall and Daily Kos sort out the news from the spin. First,

The Iraqi interim government says that the explosives at al Qa Qaa went missing some time after April 9th 2003 because of "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."

Then consider, as Josh points out, this version:

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

As to any claim that the weapons had been missing for 18 months, that puts the credibility of the Bush administration even more at issue because now they are saying they only found out ten days ago. Josh says:

McClellan says that the Pentagon only just learned about this. And that's why they only now assigned the Iraq Survey Group to examine what happened at al Qa Qaa. But Di Rita says that the US government has known about it for 18 months. So which is it?

Also, see David Sanger's New York Times article tracking the Bush zig-zagging on the missing weapons. It's enough to make you dizzy.

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