Stratfor Morning Intelligence Brief - Oct. 27, 2004 ......................................................................
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1146 GMT - IRAN -- Iran and the EU3 -- Britain, France, and Germany -- began the second round of talks behind closed doors in Vienna, Austria, on Tehran's nuclear program Oct. 27, IRNA reported. The state-owned Iranian news agency said Tehran is expected to deliver a counter-proposal to the EU3 on resolving the dispute over Iran's alleged attempts to acquire nuclear weapons.
1134 GMT - AFGHANISTAN -- A U.S. military convoy struck a roadside bomb in southeastern Afghanistan on Oct. 27, injuring three U.S. soldiers and one Afghan soldier. A U.S. military statement said the incident involved a Humvee vehicle and took place near Qalat, the capital of Zabul province. Two of the Americans were rushed to the U.S. base at Kandahar for treatment, while the third American and the Afghan soldier were treated on the scene.
1128 GMT - IRAQ -- Nearly 800 British troops, escorted by 40 U.S. Marines, began their redeployment in northern Iraq on Oct. 27. British Lt. Col. James Cowan said 800 Scottish soldiers of the First Battalion, Black Watch, left the southern city of Basra to head for a base north of Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad. The forces will replace U.S. troops, who are expected to take part in a major offensive against Sunni insurgents in areas to the north and west of the capital.
1123 GMT - NORTH KOREA -- North Korea may be preparing for a test launch of a NoDong ballistic missile, South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo reported, citing South Korean officials. U.S. image intelligence has shown increased activity and the movement of mobile launchers at the Jeongju base, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, where the missiles are stored. It is unclear whether the movements are preparations for a launch or simply part of military drills.
Geopolitical Diary: Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004
Global media have been reporting ad nauseam about 380 tons of high-grade explosives that have gone missing from Iraq's Al Qaqaa facility, an arms depot sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Specifically, the charge is that U.S. forces, through negligence, allowed the looting of
215 tons of HMX, 156 tons of RDX and 6 tons of PETN explosives.
Normally, this is the sort of thing that makes a Stratfor analyst's hair stand on end. HMX? Tons of it? Missing? In Iraq? This is where we usually hit the panic button.
That was until, after a little bit of poking around, we discovered that the explosives in question did not disappear just this week, but last year.
Their absence was not confirmed until several weeks after the fall of Baghdad.
We quickly dialed back. After all, if this were such an old story, certainly it would shrivel up and blow away in short order. But it did not die. If anything, as the hours rolled by, it gathered steam until it began crowding out other far more time-sensitive issues.
The key issue for us -- and we are stunned that this information has not made it into the general discussion of this issue -- is that it is quite possible these explosives were either destroyed or removed before the 2003 Iraq war even began.
The IAEA last visually inspected the materials in January 2003, and although the agency states that it checked the buildings in March 2003 to ensure its seals were still on the buildings, it fully admits to not directly inspecting the explosives at that time.
It is also possible that the U.S. military destroyed the explosives. On April 4, 2003 -- a week before the fall of Baghdad -- U.S. forces reported finding a large quantity of white powder -- initially suspected to be WMD -- at an industrial complex in Latifiyah. When it turned out to be "only" high grade explosives, U.S. forces did what they did with every other arms depot they found: They blew it up. By the way, the Al Qaqaa facility is in -- you guessed it -- Latifiyah. Both RDX and PETN are often stored as white powder.
Details regarding the explicit location of the "powder" that U.S. forces found and destroyed are hardly complete, and the powder is not necessarily the same type or types of explosive, but the point remains that it is rather spurious for this all to be pouring out into the public eye -- and holding it -- some 18 months after the materials supposedly went missing.
There are three leading hypotheses on the explosives' fate.
First, the explosives were removed under the nose of U.S. forces. We find this unlikely if for no reason other than 380 tons of anything requires a bit of effort to move, particularly during wartime when anything that resembles a convoy gets an airstrike. Unsurprisingly, the Bush administration is denouncing this hypothesis for just that reason.
Second, the explosives were removed just before or in the early days of the war before U.S. forces could focus on the area just south of Baghdad. They were then stashed somewhere for later use. This scenario is a bit flimsy because it requires powerful explosives to be in the hands of guerrillas who are not using them. This is clearly the preferred spin of the Kerry campaign.
Third, the bulk of the explosives were removed before U.S. forces thoroughly investigated the area after the fall of Baghdad. In such a scenario the explosives would have either been redirected to military use or relocated someplace beyond the reach of U.S. forces, such as Syria. We are not seeing any discussion about this possibility.
Regardless of what specifically happened to the explosives, the timing of the entire media furor is questionable to say the least. We suspect that it will all die down on or about Nov. 3, the day after it does not matter what actually happened.
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