Yeah when I read that I thought maybe they had more tape. Because in the video I saw the bunker the soldiers broke into (very easily with bolt cutters) did not have those very foreboding IAEA tin seals (also known as kryptonite to mililtary dictators and terrorist wannabees).

- The MSM is down to shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic on this one....The lack of proof, proof in itself, that this was a pure and simple hit job coupled with the Bush camps comeback about Kerry's wild assed comments directly attacking the troops had Lockhart coming unhinged on FOX today.....Question is what will they pop up with next.....

I can't help but notice that the media is quick to certify these videos, but slow to show any of Saddams atrocities.

Maybe you already know this, but one of the pictures here:
http://kstp.com/

is from this IAEA page:

http://www.iaea.or.at/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIraq/iraq_gallery/iraq_gallery09/index.shtml

And the picture of the IAEA seal is also from the IAEA website.

- And btw....I can imagine one bunker holding assorted armaments with possibly something like 3 tons of HMX....can't quite see you fitting 380 tons in there... and just for the record HMX is totally unusable as a weapon until its processed quite a bit further....So unless the terrorists have access to very advanced factory and machining/casting facilities they're sitting on 380 tons of useless material if it even exists.....Course you'll never hear that little factoid on CBS, ABC, or in front page headlines of the NY liberal Times.....

Stange, I seem to remember representatives from the 3ID stating they specifically searched the place with a fine tooth comb but your video is saying they didn't check anything.

...and they wonder why no one trusts the MSM anymore. I wouldn't be surprised to see an IBM Selectric in one of the bunkers.

All the concern about the seals is really quite misplaced because as the IAEA points out itself the seals were quite useless.

From a IAEA document concerning Al Q Qaa:
"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."
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/alqaqaa_documents.pdf

Actually in this case "partially" means completely ineffective.

They locked the doors and left the windows opened.

It could have been in the process of being looted for months and no one would know.

How can anyone here doubt the veracity of the MSM's take on this story. Of course the military screwed up. Of course the military lied about their actions at El-Qaaqa. These giants of intellectual discourse are beyond reproach. They are -- in the words of Bill O'Reilly -- looking out for us.

I'm so tired of hearing conservatives denigrating those brave men and women of the Fifth Estate (it is the fifth, right?) These people who inhabit our nation's newsrooms are to be saluted. Who else would point out the misdeeds and misfeasance of the evil US military? Who else but these intellectual giants can understand the complexities of war and the execution of that war? We should bend our knees in deference to the members of the MSM. We need them to protect the world from the dreaded Huns in the US military. We need these selfless men and women to protect us from the storm troopers of the FBI and local police agencies.

I am sick and tired of conservatives lambasting the true heroes of the saintly MSM. They have a tape that shows the truth -- even though we ignorant folks don't see what they see. That's because we didn't attend the Columbia School of Journalism, an institution that dwarfs such philistine institutions as West Point, Annapolis, the FBI National Academy, etc.

If there's no memorial for the men and women of journalism, then there should be one built as quickly as possible. We must make journalism as desirable a career as possible. We must or those stupid Liberal-Left flunkies might decide to enter other career fields and really f*ck things up. Oooops. That last sentence slipped out.

you guys are truly in denial here...

we have David Kay (remember when he was on YOUR team?) saying that the Iraqis did not use those seals, only the IAEA did, and they only used them for for nuclear related materials like HMX...

It turns out that the picture released by the Pentagon is not from one of the bunkers where HMX was stored...

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/images/siea_2nov01_alqaqaa_02-hmx.jpg

and if you bother to stop and THINK for a moment, you might realize that Iraqi generals were preparing for an invasion, and as a place where a lot of munitions were stored, it should be unsurprising that there would be trucks moving the stuff they needed to defend against the invasion to the front. Moving HMX would be a VERY low priority for the generals....

You really need to ask yourself why you go to such efforts to kill legitimate stories.

The missing explosives at al Qaqaa is a legitimate story---but its just a VERY small part of a much larger story. Bushie is running around telling people that they have seized 400,000 tons of munitions---

which is all well and good, except for the fact that before the war, it was estimated that there was 650,000 to 1,000,000 tons of munitions. Which means that the US has NOT secured anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of the munitions in Iraq, and most of that stuff is in the hands of the bad guys...

and its being used to American troops, and the people we supposedly went to help, every single day.

Bush screwed up, and did so in a HUGE way, by jumping to conclusions regarding what would happen once we invaded, and not putting in enough troops. But he won't even admit that he made a mistake----and THAT is why he is so dangerous and incompetent...

oh, and here is a better link that shows where the trucks in the pentagon pictures were, and where the HMX bunkers were...

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/al_qa_qaa-imagery4.htm

paul lukasiak:

~...and the Pentagon lawn is astroturf, and there was no plane that stuck the Pentagon, and the Joooooossss knew about 09/11, and Bush did, too, before it happened, and...~

What is incompetent is a wild and partisan group of people with websites and a "press" tag in their hats (magic hats!) writing whatever suits their purposes: supporting Kerry's and the DNC's irresponsible accusations, imaginings.

I am actually flattered that Tom Brokaw regards "bloggers" as "snipers hiding in the bushes."

They terrorize, we snipe. Works for me.

Wow, Paul is one of those intuitive giants I mentioned in other threads. What an astute analysis!

Yeah, Paul has really done an outstanding job with this issue, truly gigantic great work.

~:-D

My on my! It's Paul Lukasiak himself, is it? Sure looks like the same spelling as the one I have at the top of my list of suspects of the forged Killian docs with Heldt? Nooo, it couldn't be the same one, surely? He would be hiding under a rock by now!

Wow, Paul is one of those intuitive giants I mentioned in other threads. What an astute analysis!

well, its a heck of a lot better than the

look, there is a picture of an intact seal. And there is another picture of a chain being broken on a door that has no seal. Therefore, it is impossible that the pictures of explosives we see could have been under seal. and because we didn't see the inside of the sealed building, there was no HMX there!

analysis that you guys have been coming up with.

I mean, if you want to critique my analysis, do so. But apparently you can't.

Re: NY Times article of 4/29/04 "Video Shows G.I.s at Weapon Cache" (Currently at Drudge) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/politics/29bomb.html?ei=5065&en=9b3f4b6995f82009&ex=1099627200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print&position=

Even without night-vision blogger glasses, the glaring thread that shines like neon in the fog of the latest NYT article is a compulsion to prove that the KSTP-TV video was actually filmed AT the location of Al Qaqaa and ON the date of 4/18/03 by reporter Dean Staley and cameraman Jim Caffrey.

Surely, a cameraman and reporter would have marked their video as to the exact location they were filming? And where are their notes? Why was it such a big deal throughout the article to prove where and when? Was the video edited to hide something? Did the video initially identify the location and date verbally or textually? Did that part of the video include things that would discredit it as being filmed on 4/18/03 as they claim, or could it have been in mid March when the UN inspectors were there? ("Mid March" according to the article.) Might there have been footage of UN inspectors in it? Might it show that the reporter in the original video was not Dean Staley? Or was Dean Staley in it, standing next to UN inspectors? Did KSTP-TV or ABC or any other media air footage in mid March taken of the UN inspectors' visit at Al Qaqaa or any other site that can be compared to this video being used by NYT? Was this video spliced together? Onto a cassette dated 4/18/03? Footage of IAEA seal together with other footage of "troops" breaking into bunkers together with footage of munitions? Were the "troops" reported by NYT as being in the video, the same TWO soldiers who allegedly took reporter Staley and cameraman Caffrey on the accidental joyride? Who are the two soldiers? Can they corroborate Staley and Caffrey's story? Is part of the footage perhaps from the IAEA's own videotape archive? Compliments of al-Baradei?

Two paragraphs that seem especially odd in the NYT article:

***Weapons experts familiar with the work of the international inspectors in Iraq say the videotape appears identical to photographs that the inspectors took of the explosives, which were put under seal before the war.***

***One weapons expert said the videotape and some of the agency's photographs of the HMX stockpiles "were such good matches it looked like they were taken by the same camera on the same day."***

this is really amusing. I get accused of being one of the conspiracy nuts who think that the crash at the pentagon was really some sort of missile....

then you have a true conspiracy nut who has placed me at the top of his own personal list of suspects for the Killian memos...

and this same conspiracy nut is desperately creating a new conspiracy because the media is making the effort to prove when and where the KSTP video was shot.

Of course, if the media didn't make that effort, the same conspiracy nuts would be claiming that the video didn't prove anything, because no one could prove where and when it had been shot.

that is the sign of the true aluminum hat wearer--- it doesn't matter WHAT the media does, its all just one vast conspiracy

TO CLARIFY:

These earlier comments of mine:

(Yeah, Paul has really done an outstanding job with this issue, truly gigantic great work....~:-D...Posted by: -S- at October 29, 2004 08:27 AM)

were in reference to Paul of Wizbang! (and I should have also included Kevin, which I do now). I am as impressed as could ever be in the coverage that Wizbang has provided about this issue, "EXPLOSIVESGATE" or thereabouts.

The only change to the conclusions I'd make would be to call it: "EXPLODINGKERRYSLIESAGAINGATE."

S....

don't you mean "ExplodingAllawiLiesAgainGate"?

After all, it was the Iraqi government that said that the explosives went missing after April 9th, and has recently reaffirmed that assertion.

I mean, try and be consistent here. If the Allawi government is unreliable, and John Kerry should not make statements based on what the Allawi government says, one would have to conclude that Bush is an even bigger "liar" than Kerry, given Bush's tendency to site Allawi's statements on how well things are going in Iraq....

That entire excerpt from ABC is a perfect example of lefty media obtuseness.

"The fact that there's a photo of what looks like an IAEA seal means that what's behind those doors is HMX. They only sealed bunkers that had HMX in them."

No, it doesn't mean jack, because by their own admission it "looks" like a seal, doesn't mean it "is" a seal, let alone one that wasn't tampered with. It also doesn't mean there was 380 tons of anything behind it. If I recall correctly, they don't even claim that this vedeo came from that exact site, only from "in the site or somewhere in the vicinity"

We cannot continue coexisting peacefully with people who have gone stark raving mad like the ABC hack who included that quote. They live on another planet, where the truth is whatever they feel it should be.

Do these people realize how stupid they look when they try to apply child-like reasoning and logic, and fall flat on their face?

paul kukasiak: something about you urging toward "consistent" seems so wrong.

Yes, to be clear -- you can apply whatever value judgement you want to here -- John Kerry is regarded as this voter to be a lying individual. Either that or he can't and/or does not read, or he rejects everything he hears and/or reads and just imagines possibilities.

Much as his "let's prosecute the war" mentality, is his "convince the jury even if it's not true" behaviors.

We aren't considering electing John Kerry's "sources" but Kerry (at least, you probably are, while I've already voted and voted to reelect Bush/Cheney), such that, regardless of origin of gossip or fact or both, if Kerry continues to insist that inaccuracies (those are lies in other venues) are fact, are actual, then he's either lying or he's incompetent or both.

I think both. Thus, again I suggest:
"EXPLODINGKERRYSLIESAGAIN."

"...GATE."

Re the NY Times article - it's linked at Drudge right now and it's dated 29 October 2004. (I had a typo 4/29/04).

No, it doesn't mean jack, because by their own admission it "looks" like a seal, doesn't mean it "is" a seal, let alone one that wasn't tampered with. It also doesn't mean there was 380 tons of anything behind it. If I recall correctly, they don't even claim that this vedeo came from that exact site, only from "in the site or somewhere in the vicinity"

well, the experts say that it IS the kind of seal used by the IAEA, that Iraq did NOT use these kinds of seals, and the video capture makes it pretty clear that the seal is intact, as is the rather heavy chain that was used to lock the bunker.

and we know that there wasn't 380 tons of anything behind it. Probably just 20 odd tons of HMX in that particular sealed bunker---there were nine separate bunkers at al QaQaa that were sealed by the IAEA because they contained HMX, and slightly under 200 tons of HMX in total. (you do the math).

As for the "what they claimed", initially, they were not certain if the video was from al Qaqaa or not. But if you read BR's rather feverish post about how much effort was being put in to verifying exactly where and when the video was shot, you will see that it has been pretty much established that the video was shot where HMX was being stored.

paul kukasiak: something about you urging toward "consistent" seems so wrong.

why is that? I mean, your side is constantly citing the Allawi government's pronouncements on how well things are going in Iraq, but when Kerry cites bad new emanating from that same government, he's a liar?

Now, given that Allawi seems to be blaming the US for all sorts of things at the moment (like the deaths of the 50 newly trained Iraqi Guardsmen), perhaps you have reason to be skeptical of him. (I certainly am---but I tend to be skeptical of former CIA assets who lead organizations that bomb school buses).

But the more facts that emerge about al Qaqaa, the worse it looks for your side. Your side's story keeps changing, ridiculous stories are bandied about (like the whole 'the Russians took it" story that appeared in the Moonie Times, that even Rummy is saying is complete nonsense), and the best argument that you can come up with seems to be "a heavy chain is not an IAEA seal".

This is in the NYT report linked by Drudge today, emphasis mine:

"Mr. Caffrey [photographer] provided The New York Times with the latitude and longitude of the camp, which places it between 1.5 and 3 miles southeast of Al Qaqaa bunkers. A commercial satellite photograph of the region shows that the camp was close to the storage site. Mr. Caffrey said the soldiers used bolt cutters to cut through chains with locks on them, as well as seals. He said the seals appeared to be lead disks attached to very thin wires that were wrapped around the doors of the bunker entrances, forming a barrier easily cut in two."

So the photographer is claiming that the military cut through IAEA seals. Did they?

More about the lies and the lying media lying with lying Kerry as he lies:

as recently as last night..."Bush...powerless" they write and then ding Guilliani as "blaming the troops..." (notice the abstracts, what they quote, what they don't quote, and then the outdated "support" information):

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2004/10/28/ap/headlines/d8612qj01.txt

So the photographer is claiming that the military cut through IAEA seals. Did they?

this does seem to conflict with what one of the commanders of the 101st said (i.e. that they avoided going into the sealed bunkers, because they knew that the seals meant something). However, that commander may not have been fully aware of everything that was done by members of the 101st when they were at al Qaqaa.

paulll: we *know* you are voting for Kerry. People got that a while ago.

If you troll through pejoratives, sometimes you're going to get graffitti'd.

Let's see, if "The Washington Times" is to be denigrated as per your misnomer, "The Moonie Times," then let's make that an equal field and call "SLATE" as "CRAPBLACKBOARD."

I'm not sure what the point is at this point, because nothing is ever resolved when it's in the realm of your opinion versus the facts of others.

So, have a nice day.

Paul, I understand your frustration, but try to see it from our side: we have learned through bitter experience over many years that the MSM IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED. This story may well turn out to be just what they reported, but we don't simply take their word for it. Especially now when several of the major news sources have dropped all pretense of being unbiased in this election.

So what we're doing here is investigating the claims and examining the evidence, not just simply taking the media's word for everything. Is that so hard to understand?

But people, let's drop the personal attacks and stick to the facts, okay?

If you troll through pejoratives, sometimes you're going to get graffitti'd.

correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you the same "S" whose initial comments about me were...

paul lukasiak:

~...and the Pentagon lawn is astroturf, and there was no plane that stuck the Pentagon, and the Joooooossss knew about 09/11, and Bush did, too, before it happened, and...~

What is incompetent is a wild and partisan group of people with websites

or was that some other "s" who started out with "pejoratives" about me?

elisa....

thank you.

I think its important to point out the genuine contradictions and questions (such as the one that you pointed out with regard to whether IAEA sealed bunkers were opened) from claims of bias that are really based on nothing more than sloppy reporting (ie, trying to make an issue out of the fact that a reporter said that seals were being cut, when the video shows only chains being cut.)

and despite our different perceptions of media bias, I think it is possible to determine the relevant facts in this matter.

cordially,

paul

David Kay: "Well, at least with regard to this one bunker, and the film shows one seal, one bunker, one group of soldiers going through, and there were others there that were sealed. With this one, I think it is game, set, and match. There was HMX, RDX in there. The seal was broken. And quite frankly, to me the most frightening thing is not only was the seal broken, lock broken, but the soldiers left after opening it up."
One of the embedded reporters:"All I can say with certainty is that, on that day [April 18, 2003, nine days after the fall of Baghdad] , there were bunker after bunker after bunker of explosives, tons of them, that were unguarded."
Aaron Brown talking to David Kay:
"AB: Was there anything else at the facility that would have been under IAEA seal?
DK: Absolutely nothing. It was the HMX, RDX, the two high explosives. "
David Alright:"I talked to a former inspector who's a colleague of mine, and he confirmed that, indeed, these pictures look just like what he remembers seeing inside those bunkers,"

Dear Paul Lukasiak - is your site at glcq.com?