Nbadan
10-29-2004, 02:59 PM
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U.S. left ammo site unguarded
Friday, October 29, 2004
MIKE FRANCIS
Six months after the fall of Baghdad, a vast Iraqi weapons depot with tens of thousands of artillery rounds and other explosives remained unguarded, according to two U.S. aid workers who say they reported looting of the site to U.S. military officials.
The aid workers say they informed Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the highest ranking Army officer in Iraq in October 2003 but were told that the United States did not have enough troops to seal off the facility, which included more than 60 bunkers packed with munitions.
"We were outraged," said Wes Hare, city manager of La Grande {Oregon - sd}, who was working in Iraq as part of a rebuilding program. A colleague who also visited the depot, Jerry Kuhaida, said it appeared that the explosives at the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area had found their way to insurgents targeting U.S. forces.
"There's no question in my mind that the stuff in Ukhaider was used by terrorists," said Kuhaida.
Oregon Live.com (http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/1099052619177610.xml#continue)
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"The big concern we had was that something had to be done," Kuhaida said. "It was all fresh ammunition and gunpowder." So Kuhaida pledged to try to contact Sanchez, who was commanding U.S. forces in Iraq at the time. He found Sanchez's e-mail address on the Internet and sent a message saying he wanted to pass along some information.
When one of the general's aides replied, Kuhaida sent a list of munitions found at the depot, along with coordinates of its location. And he urged the military to secure the site. The aide sent an immediate reply that said "they were taking action," Kuhaida said.
But when Kuhaida met the aide face to face in Baghdad a month later and asked about the depot, the aide told him the military simply didn't have enough troops to guard the site.
"There's no question in my mind that these guys were sincere about it," he said of their desire to keep munitions from falling into the wrong hands. "They just didn't have the resources."
U.S. military and intelligence officials were well-aware of the facility. Declassified documents from the first Persian Gulf War show that it was bombed in 1991, as a suspected storage site for biological weapons. On Jan. 16, 2003, before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, U.N. inspectors said they found 11 empty chemical warheads at Ukhaider. They said at the time the complex consisted of a series of bunkers built in the late 1990s.
more
KGW.com (http://www.kgw.com/iraq/stories/kgw_102904_news_iraq_we)
U.S. left ammo site unguarded
Friday, October 29, 2004
MIKE FRANCIS
Six months after the fall of Baghdad, a vast Iraqi weapons depot with tens of thousands of artillery rounds and other explosives remained unguarded, according to two U.S. aid workers who say they reported looting of the site to U.S. military officials.
The aid workers say they informed Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the highest ranking Army officer in Iraq in October 2003 but were told that the United States did not have enough troops to seal off the facility, which included more than 60 bunkers packed with munitions.
"We were outraged," said Wes Hare, city manager of La Grande {Oregon - sd}, who was working in Iraq as part of a rebuilding program. A colleague who also visited the depot, Jerry Kuhaida, said it appeared that the explosives at the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area had found their way to insurgents targeting U.S. forces.
"There's no question in my mind that the stuff in Ukhaider was used by terrorists," said Kuhaida.
Oregon Live.com (http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/1099052619177610.xml#continue)
More...
"The big concern we had was that something had to be done," Kuhaida said. "It was all fresh ammunition and gunpowder." So Kuhaida pledged to try to contact Sanchez, who was commanding U.S. forces in Iraq at the time. He found Sanchez's e-mail address on the Internet and sent a message saying he wanted to pass along some information.
When one of the general's aides replied, Kuhaida sent a list of munitions found at the depot, along with coordinates of its location. And he urged the military to secure the site. The aide sent an immediate reply that said "they were taking action," Kuhaida said.
But when Kuhaida met the aide face to face in Baghdad a month later and asked about the depot, the aide told him the military simply didn't have enough troops to guard the site.
"There's no question in my mind that these guys were sincere about it," he said of their desire to keep munitions from falling into the wrong hands. "They just didn't have the resources."
U.S. military and intelligence officials were well-aware of the facility. Declassified documents from the first Persian Gulf War show that it was bombed in 1991, as a suspected storage site for biological weapons. On Jan. 16, 2003, before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, U.N. inspectors said they found 11 empty chemical warheads at Ukhaider. They said at the time the complex consisted of a series of bunkers built in the late 1990s.
more
KGW.com (http://www.kgw.com/iraq/stories/kgw_102904_news_iraq_we)