Membranophonist’s Ramblings

The administration spin on the 380 tons of missing high explosives has run into more problems.

1. Video shot on April 18, 2003 by a KSTP (Minneapolis-St. Paul) crew clearly shows at least some IAEA seals intact.

   From an ABC News article:

   Experts who have studied the images say the barrels on the tape contain the high explosive HMX, and the U.N. markings on the barrels are clear.

   “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,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

   The barrels were found inside sealed bunkers, which American soldiers are seen on the videotape cutting through. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency sealed the bunkers where the explosives were kept just before the war began.

   “The seal’s critical,” Albright said. “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.”

2. The satellite imagery released by the Pentagon does show a truck in front of a bunker in the complex, but they have not released any showing trucks in front of the bunkers in which the missing high explosives were actually stored. Quoting GlobalSecurity.org:
   

   However, a comparison of features in the DoD-released imagery with available commercial satellite imagery, combined with the use of an IAEA map showing the location of bunkers used to store the HMX explosives, reveals that the trucks pictured on the DoD image are not at any of the nine bunkers indentified by the IAEA as containing the missing explosive stockpiles.

I’m hoping J. Krogman will come back and inform me as to what my “agenda” is.