In this issue:

LaRouche in Arab Press: Why Kerry Should Be President

Arafat in France Undergoing Treatment

Interim Iraqi PM Accuses U.S. of 'Negligence'

Abu Ghraib Torture Colonel Failed To Secure Weapons Depots

A Week of Folly: Pentagon Can't Explain Missing Explosives

ABC-TV Footage Documents Existence of Missing Explosives

Fractured Fairy Tales: Pentagon Blames 'Spetsnaz' for Missing Explosives

From Volume 3, Issue Number 44 of EIR Online, Published Nov. 2, 2004
Southwest Asia News Digest

LaRouche in Arab Press: Why Kerry Should Be President

An article published the week of Oct. 25 in two major Arabic-language newspapers, the Egyptian opposition paper Al Shaab and the Bahrain newspaper Al Wasat, details the analysis given by U.S. Democratic Party leader Lyndon LaRouche in his Oct. 6 webcast on "Why John Kerry Should Be Elected President."

The article, written in Arabic by LaRouche collaborators, details the "three insanities" that LaRouche described in his webcast, and elaborates on George W. Bush's mental illness.

The authors also present LaRouche's basic ideas about the science of physical economy, stressing the fight for economic development, historically, against imperial looting, including details of Franklin D. Roosevelt's victory and success in leading the U.S. out of the Depression. They call on Arabs, including Arab-Americans, to do whatever they can to make sure Kerry is elected.

Arafat in France Undergoing Treatment

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was flown to Paris Oct. 21, on French President Jacques Chirac's personal aircraft, and is now at the Hospital d'Instruction des Armees de Percy, one of the best hospitals in France. (See this week's InDepth for more on the Palestinian situation.)

Interim Iraqi PM Accuses U.S. of 'Negligence'

Just a few weeks after George W. Bush was using him as a election prop, Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, on Oct. 24, accused the U.S. of "negligence" in the massacre of 49 Iraqi National Guard recruits. Allawi's terse statement was: "There was an ugly crime in which a large group of National Guards were martyred. We believe this issue was the outcome of major neglect by some parts of the multinational [forces]." His remarks were characterized as very vague in the Arabic media.

Allawi's remarks, utterly unusual for a U.S. puppet, are being read in the Arab world as an attempt to cover up his own responsibility. These recruits were Iraqi recruits, in "his" new military, and his government has been dealt a heavy blow.

The recruits reportedly travelled unarmed and without an escort, which had been planned, but was delayed. Just days before this massacre, 22 recruits to the new Iraqi Army were killed in a car bomb attack.

Abu Ghraib Torture Colonel Failed To Secure Weapons Depots

The only officer who had the authority to post guards or remove material from the Al-Qaqaa weapons storage facility in Iraq was "Col. Thomas M. Pappas of Abu Ghraib fame," and nothing was done to protect such facilities, reports National Guardsman David DeBatto in an Oct. 29 Salon.com article titled "The Looting of Iraq's Arsenal."

DeBatto's article says, "The same month Al-Qaqaa was being stripped of high explosives, I warned my military intelligence unit of another weapons facility that was being cleaned out. But nothing was done." Pappas was the commander of the 205th Military Intelligence battalion, who would be the only person authorized to assign guards, writes DeBatta, making clear that Pappas is the same officer involved in the Abu Ghraib tortures.

DeBatto adds, "But Al-Qaqaa is not the whole story," and recounts how, when he was serving with the Army National Guard's 223rd military Intelligence Battalion, from April through October 2003. Near his battalion's base at Camp Anaconda in Iraq was another major weapons and ammunition facility "that was unguarded and targetted by looters.... Nothing was done to secure this facility, as it was systematically stripped of enough weapons and explosives to equip anti-U.S. insurgents with enough roadside improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, for years to come."

DeBatto wrote the article for Salon after reading the Oct. 24 article in the New York Times reporting that powerful explosives, monitored and sealed by UN inspectors, had disappeared after the U.S. invasion of Iraq (see next report).

A Week of Folly: Pentagon Can't Explain Missing Explosives

The Bush Administration and the Pentagon leadership looked like incompetents and prevaricators Oct. 29, after a week of trying to counter attacks from commentators and the John Kerry campaign following a report in the New York Times Oct. 24, that 380 tons of explosives were missing from the Al-Qaqaa munitions depot in Iraq. The Times revealed that Administration officials had no answers to a series of questions that the Times and CBS News posed after learning of the missing explosives from a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

On Oct. 29, the Pentagon released satellite photos obtained by U.S. intelligence agencies, showing the site, prior to the war, with trucks parked next to buildings. This was interpreted to mean that Saddam Hussein was transporting chemicals out of the site, before the war was to begin. But several hours after the release of the photos, U.S. Army Major Austin Pearson appeared at a hastily organized Pentagon briefing to say that he had been in Iraq, at the site, and oversaw the removal of some 250 tons of the material that both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and other Pentagon officials had said had been removed by enemy forces before the U.S. invasion.

But an ABC-TV affiliate had already delivered serious damage to the Pentagon, which was busy giving itself self-inflicted wounds (see next report).

ABC-TV Footage Documents Existence of Missing Explosives

ABC-TV film footage, released Oct. 27, shows that explosives and other material sealed by IAEA inspection teams, were still in place at the Iraq weapons storage facility at Al-Qaqaa when U.S. troops arrived. The film footage was taken by two journalists, Dean Staley and Joe Caffrey, from KSTP-TV, an ABC affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, when the team accompanied the 101st Airborne Division, to Al-Qaqaa on April 18, 2003, that is, just weeks after Saddam Hussein fell.

The journalists joined soldiers going to the site, which former inspector David Kay confirmed, from the film, to be like Al-Qaqaa. "The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al-Qaqaa," he said. Kay stressed the importance of the seals visible in the film. "The damning thing is the seals. The Iraqis didn't use seals on anything. So I'm absolutely sure that's an IAEA seal," he said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Caffrey said that the U.S. troops had used bolt cutters to cut the chains with locks on them, and the seals. They said they visited six bunkers, full of crates of HMX containers. Caffrey said, "The soldiers were pretty much in awe of what they were seeing. They were saying their EOD—explosive ordinance division people, who blow this kind of stuff up—would have a field day."

Caffrey said the troops left the bunker doors open when they left. "It would have been easy for anyone to get in."

The journalists' story, which was run in Minneapolis, tends to indicate that the material was not removed prior to the war, and that, indeed, it was the occupying forces who had control over the sites.

In addition, a report from Human Rights Watch, filed in May 2003, had provided the United States and Great Britain with specific information regarding unsecured weapons stockpiles, around Baghdad and Basra. Nothing was done about it, the group said on Oct. 28.

Fractured Fairy Tales: Pentagon Blames 'Spetsnaz' for Missing Explosives

On Oct. 28, a third-level Defense Department official, John A. Shaw, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for International Technology Security, was retailing the bogus story that Russian "Spetsnaz" (special forces) took the RDX and HMX explosives which were missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility in Iraq.

In interviews with the London Financial Times and the Washington Times Oct. 28, Shaw, who reports to neo-con ideologue Doug Feith, said: "The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units. Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units." He also said: "For nearly nine months my office has been aware of an elaborate scheme set up by Saddam Hussein to finance and disguise his weapons purchases through his international suppliers, principally the Russians and the French. That network included ... employing various Russian units on the eve of hostilities to orchestrate the collection of munitions and assure their transport out of Iraq via Syria."

As this week's InDepth reports, Feith's Pentagon operations are under Senate investigation for fabricating intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. The latest caper by Shaw belongs in the same category as the other incidents being probed by the Armed Services Committee.

On Oct. 28, a statement issued by the chief of the Russian Defense Ministry's press office, Vyacheslav Sedov, said the charges were "invented and absurd." He said, "all Russian military advisers and specialists had left Iraq long before the beginning of the American-British operation in this Middle East state. I could understand an attempt to make a mountain out of a molehill, but there has not even been a molehill this time," he said.

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