Possible "Bombshell" on the Missing Explosives

Thursday's Washington Times has a potentially huge story on the missing Iraqi explosives from the al-Qaqaa facility:

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that 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 article also explains why it is unlikely that this material was taken after US forces arrived at the complex:

The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.

A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.

The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.

"The movement of 377 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," the statement said.


The article concludes with this tantalizing bit:

Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

Read the article for yourself here:

Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms


If this story pans out, the implications are massive. The Russians must be held to account for actively participating in Saddam's violation of UN sanctions. Even if the Russian angle can't be verified, it is becoming increasingly clear that the effort to spring the al-Qaqaa story as an anti-Bush "October Surprise" has failed badly. The Kerry campaign's continuing efforts to push al-Qaqaa as an example of administration "incompetence" fly in the face of the strong evidence that the explosives were gone before our forces arrived, and are grossly irresponsible.

Update: Tom Maguire at Just One Minute has some additional background and analysis.

Further Update: ABC News is reporting that not only might the quantity of missing explosives be vastly overstated, but that in some cases, it could have been removed without breaking the seals placed by UN weapons inspectors.