The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board weighs in:
The U.N.'s Revenge
October 29, 2004; Page A14
The United Nations appears to have cast its vote in the U.S. Presidential election this week, and it wasn’t exactly a secret ballot. It used 377 tons of high-grade Iraqi explosives to announce its opposition to re-electing George W. Bush.
At least we think that’s a fair suspicion from the oh-so-convenient timing of the story of the explosives missing from the Qaqaa munitions depot outside Baghdad. The story itself ought to be of minor import and has many oddities about it, but none more curious than the chronology of how it came to dominate the last week of this election.
On October 10, a letter from the Iraqi Ministry of Science & Technology arrived at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Vienna headquarters. The letter included a list of “high explosive materials” that “were lost” after April 9, 2003, through “the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security.” This is the ministry that worked with the IAEA before the war and it’s headed by a man who used to work for Saddam Hussein.
The Iraqi ministry was responding, in what appears to be record time, to a U.N. request. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei attaches the Iraqi letter to his own October 25 letter to the U.N. Security Council, saying he had received it “consequent to [a] reminder” the IAEA had sent on October 1. Somehow, information that was known for many months suddenly required urgent communication to New York.
Another perplexity is the Iraqi ministry’s flat-out statement that it knew the explosives were present before April 9, 2003, the day prior to the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division’s arrival at al Qaqaa. A far more logical explanation is that Saddam removed the material before the war began. Buford Blount, who commanded the 3rd ID at the time, said yesterday that “Saddam for several months before we attacked moved most of his ammunition and explosives. … And he moved tons and tons of ammunition and distributed it throughout the cities and throughout the desert. I don’t think anyone at this point can say whether there was anything there of that magnitude.” The U.S. also has satellite photos, from March 17, 2003, showing heavy equipment working around al Qaqaa.
Such removal would not have been hard to accomplish, as an IAEA inspection report of January 14, 2003, makes only too clear: “Of note was that the sealing on the bunkers was only partially effective because each bunker had ventilation shafts on the sides of the buildings. These shafts were not sealed, and could provide removal routes for [the] HMX while leaving the front door locked.”
As for “looting,” it’s hard to see how that could have taken place without the notice of coalition forces. The Pentagon says it would have taken roughly 38 truckloads to move 380 tons of explosives – all while U.S. vehicles filled the Iraqi roadways at that time.
The IAEA informed the U.S. about the missing stockpile on October 15, noting that it was “likely to leak.” In his October 25 letter to the Security Council, Mr. ElBaradei dryly noted “the matter has been given media coverage today.” That was the day the story was first reported by the New York Times and CBS News. Mission accomplished?
Meanwhile, the Kerry campaign continues to hammer President Bush over the missing explosives, as if this is anything more than a minor mystery in the broader debate over who can best secure victory in Iraq. To put the missing 377 tons in further context: The recent Duelfer report says that the U.S. has found 405,944 tons of munitions in Iraq, of which 243,045 tons have already been destroyed.
There’s one last date worth noting: September 10. That’s the day Mr. ElBaradei announced that he would seek a third term as IAEA head. The Bush Administration believes heads of U.N. agencies should serve a maximum of two terms. It told Mr. ElBaradei when it supported him for a second term in 2001 that it would not support him for a third. A Kerry Administration might take a different view, especially after this week.