Missing Explosives In Iraq (Updated)
The reports vary between 350 and 400 tons, but either way you slice it that’s a helluva lot of explosives to go missing. Make no mistake, it’s a serious issue. The 2 items, called HMX and RDX, are components of plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex. With the correct skills, they can be formed into shaped charges or all types allowing a more specific targeting than the typical IEDs in use.
That said, there’s some nagging omissions in the story. The story says that the explosives were being watched over by the IAEA, but the IAEA pulled out of Baghdad before the war began in 2003. How long before? Long enough for Saddam’s forces to remove it and take it somewhere else? The IAEA themselves say they don’t know when the explosives were taken. Why is it a given that it was taken in the post-attack looting that occurred? Recall what happened at the Iraqi National Museum where initial estimates were that 170,000 items were looted. Turned out that wasn’t the case. While a great number of things were, in fact, stolen, a hugely larger number of artifacts had simply been moved.
Hey, I’m very concerned that that much explosive is unaccounted for. I need some more details, however, before I go pinning blame for it onto anyone in specific.
Update: It’s a bit misleading to include this in a story on the explosives:
| :::::::: | HMX and RDX are key ingredients in plastic explosives such as C-4 (search) and Semtex (search) — substances so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just 1 pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 (search) over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people. | :::::::: |
This give the impression that someone put a pound of Semtex on the plane and turned it into a fireball in the sky. Not so. The explosion compromised the structure of the plane and pressure effects along with the shear forces of a multi-ton aircraft moving through the air at .7 Mach did the rest. Not to mention that sudden stop when it hit the ground. This is not to say these explosives aren’t powerful – they most certainly are – it’s just not necessary to overstate the issue.
