Charles R. Smith
Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004

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  One fact overlooked by the U.N. report is that its simply impossible for 380 tons of explosives to simply walk away in the hands of looters. Such an effort requires organized work, heavy lift equipment, and large trucks.

Since the roads and the skies surrounding Al-Qaqaa were dominated by U.S. forces, it is unlikely a convoy of Iraqi trucks could have escaped unnoticed or unmolested from the munitions site.

All this supports the assertions that the explosives were no longer there when U.S. forces occupied the area.

There is no evidence that the explosives were at the munitions site when the U.S. Army arrived on the scene.

In contrast, there is mounting evidence, even within the U.N. documents, that the Iraqis had already moved the explosives long before the war started.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) put the Al-Qaqaa munitions side under seal in 1995 until the U.N. inspectors were kicked out in 1998. When the inspectors returned in late 2002, 35 tons of explosives were found to be missing.

What lies hidden beneath the U.N. attempt to October surprise the U.S. elections is the fact that the U.N. did little or nothing. Why didn't the IAEA inspectors destroy the explosives in 1995 when they disovered them?

The U.N. did destroy 90 of Saddam's long range missiles when they discovered that he had a secret program to extend the range of these weapons beyond what the U.N. mandated.

Instead, the U.N. elected to tag or mark the explosives as if they were some sort of "blue" light special. The tagging effort certainly alerted Saddam's troops of exactly which materials to hide.

FRENCH AND RUSSIAN WEAPONS

What the U.N. does not want to talk about is which of our illustrious allies were openly violating the ban on arms sales to Iraq. U.S. inspectors found Russian and French made weapons at the Iraqi munitions site that were manufactured during the 1990s.

The U.S. military teams uncovered several examples of U.N. violations, including a number of French bomb fuses with a production date of "2001-Sep-5".

The French bomb fuses, which had documentation noting that the devices were produced in 2001, were stored in a box stating the manufacture date was 1985 in an apparent effort to mislead U.N. and U.S. inspectors.

Another example was a large quantity of KMG-U cluster bomb dispensers developed in Russia by the Spetztekhnika Vympel NPO in Moscow and manufactured by Bazalt State Research and Production Enterprise.

The Iraqi KMG-U dispensers were armed with the PTAB2.5 anti-tank bomblets and AO2.5 bomblets.

According to the Russian manufacturer, the KMG-U dispenser and sub munitions were not available for export until 1993. However, there are no reported export sales by the Russian maker.

U.S. inspection teams also discovered a cache of South African CB470 cluster bombs. According to the declaration made in November 2002 by Saddam Hussein, Iraq had no such weapons.

Saddam may have denied that he had cluster bombs but U.S. State Department photos prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom showed that Iraqi Air Force engineers were working on modifying conventional cluster bombs into chemical weapons.

Cluster bombs carry a large number of "bomblets" or "sub-munitions", small softball sized grenades that separate from the main bomb unit. The falling bomblets then shower a large area with explosions.

Cluster bomb technology can be adapted to chemical or biological warfare by replacing the conventional explosive sub munitions with bio-toxin armed bomblets.

The U.S. teams also found fully active Russian made AA-8 air-to-air missiles, French made Durandal anti-runway rocket bombs, Russian anti-personal cluster bomblets and huge quantities of unguided rockets. Many of the munitions were piled into large heaps or simply scattered over the open countryside.

The discrepancies between documentation, box markings and actual items found clearly show that an intentional effort was made by foreign suppliers to mislead U.N. inspection teams. In some cases false shipping documents written in English were discovered with the weapons.

URANIUM TIPPED MISSILES

The U.N. also failed to uncover other Iraqi weapons with even more dangerous warheads. U.S. Army troops operating at a former Iraqi air field found Russian made missiles marked with radioactive warning signs.

Army bomb disposal troops confirmed that the missiles are indeed radioactive using Geiger counters. The Russian made R-60, NATO code name AA-8 Aphid, air-to-air missiles are part of a huge stockpile of former Iraqi Air Force munitions uncovered in over a dozen concrete bunkers.

The Russian made missiles are over 6 feet long and each carries 1.6 kilograms or about 3.5 pounds of radioactive uranium wrapped around a high explosive warhead. The uranium is not pure enough nor in large enough quantity to be a nuclear warhead but they are considered dangerous.

U.S. bomb experts noted the R-60 warheads are similar in design and content to a so-called "dirty bomb" that could contaminate a small area with radioactive materials.

The R-60 missiles cannot simply be destroyed since the uranium-laced warheads could pose a health hazard to coalition troops and local Iraqi civilians. Army bomb disposal experts gathered up all the R-60 missiles found at the site and quarantined them at a single, heavily guarded, location.

IRAQI VIOLATIONS

Iraq was in violation of U.N. resolution 687 which gave Saddam Hussein 15 days after the end of the first Gulf War to disclose his chemical, and biological weapons and to destroy all missiles with a range of over 90 miles.

Iraq also violated U.N. resolution 1441, the legal justification for resuming hostilites against the regime in Baghdad.

In fact, the proof is clear that Iraqi violated the Security Council embargo on arms sales. Photographs taken in Iraq prove that Saddam violated the U.N. ban on weapons imports with new purchases to his inventory.

The photographs prove that our so-called allies were not above Saddam's corruption.

The oil-for-food scandal erupting inside the U.N., Paris, Beijing and Moscow is a tale of death and destruction. Saddam used the so-called humanitarian effort to feed weapons to his armed forces.

The latest explosive report by the U.N. must be viewed in light of the oil-for-food corruption. The U.N. report does not cover the facts surrounding the origin of the explosives nor does it go far enough into why the weapons are no longer there.

The one main fact to consider is that most of these explosives were supplied to Iraq by our U.N. allies France, China and Russia.

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RADIO AND TV SCHEDULE Charles Smith will be on:

The Jerry Hughes Show on Friday, 10/29/4, at 3 p.m. Eastern time. Show information at http://www.cilamerica.com.

The Charlie Smith Show on the American Freedom Network on Monday, 11/1/4, at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Show information at http://www.americanewsnet.com/

Coast-to-Coast AM w/George Noory on Tuesday, 11/2/4, starting at midnight Eastern time. Premiere Radio Network, Sherman Oaks, CA