Here is what we know so far about the facts related by Major Austin Pearson at today's news conference:

A U.S. Army officer came forward Friday and said a team from the 3rd Infantry Division took about 200 tons of explosives from the Al-Qaqaa munitions base soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell last year.

Major Austin Pearson appeared at a Pentagon news conference to say it was his mission to go the facility and clear explosives from the base. He said he did not discover that the International Atomic Energy Agency had reported 377 tons of explosives were missing until Tuesday night and he said he promptly contacted military officials.

No word yet on whether Major Pearson can confirm that the explosives his team destroyed were the "missing" RDX, HMX, and PETN.

UPDATE: Major Pearson says that his team removed around 250 tons of munitions and other materials from Al Qaqaa. He doesn't recall any "sealed" areas and can't say exactly what the munitions were, but the Pentagon says they believe some of the destroyed material was RDX.

Is this enough, from President Bush's standpoint? It certainly should be. The obvious conclusion is that the New York Times and John Kerry shot from the hip, accusing the Army of incompetence when they didn't know the facts. They relied on a patently self-serving and anti-Bush letter from Mohammed El Baradei, a less-than-honest U.N. bureaucrat. It is quite likely that the allegedly missing explosives have been accounted for; around half disappeared before January 2003, according to the IAEA's own records, and the remainder was most likely destroyed by American troops. (The total amount at issue, 377 tons, represents less than one-tenth of one percent of the munitions the U.S. Army has destroyed in Iraq.)

At a minimum, the unfolding facts support President Bush's contention that the subject needs to be investigated, and that Kerry, out of political opportunism, jumped to a conclusion that is very likely false.

Posted by John at 11:50 AM  |    |  

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/mt/mt-diespammers.cgi/8422

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The Major's Story:

» The death knell for Kerry's campaign? from Commonwealth Conservative
Hindrocket at Powerline thinks that the emerging details about the al-Qaqaa weapons controversy could be the death knell for Kerry's campaign. Read about it here and here. [Read More]

Tracked on October 29, 2004 12:10 PM

» Johnny Jihad Thanks You, Mr. Kerry from La Shawn Barber's Corner
Update: I started the Bandwidth Fund just in time. I'm getting a crazy traffic spike after Polipundit linked. Instapundit isn't the only game in town! -------- Do you know why it's vital to present a united front during wartime? Because our enem... [Read More]

Tracked on October 29, 2004 12:55 PM

» Al Qaqaa from Mind of Mog
I'm having a hard time with that word cause each time I see it, I think of what the kitties leave on the carpet. Must clean litter pans. Anyway, to the point of this post. Powerline has the relevant post.The last point is important: to date, the U.S... [Read More]

Tracked on October 29, 2004 12:57 PM

» Kerry Might Be In Deep Caca Over Al-Qaqaa from The Hopeful Cynic
Hindrocket over at Powerline correctly surmises this could be the coup de grace for the Kerry campaign. Given that Kerry has had nothing but a string of attacks to fall back on (cf "Democrats on the Defensive, per Usual"), the Rocket's probably right o... [Read More]

Tracked on October 29, 2004 01:44 PM

» More Facts Contradict Kerry's Charges about Al Qaqaa from bLogicus
CNN is showing a Pentagon briefing with an Army officer who is describing how the explosives at Al Qaqaa were destroyed in June 2003 after having captured it in April 2003. I'll have more as the story breaks. - Captain... [Read More]

Tracked on October 29, 2004 02:02 PM

» rapid from It's All Semantics
The Army's Major Austin Pearson has fired a kill-shot into Mr Kerry's false charges. It turns out the Army isn't quite as incompetent as Mr Kerry alleged. ... This was a non-story from the beginning, pure scare tactic, pure manipulation. ... [Read More]

Tracked on October 29, 2004 02:08 PM

» Jump from Conclusions... from My Sandmen
Powerline continues to track the Al Qaqaa story through the impact of today's Pentagon Press briefing after which it seems that story has become a liability for Kerry and the Old Busted Media while questions about WMD persist. [Read More]

Tracked on October 29, 2004 02:42 PM

» 3rd Infantry Division Removed 250 Tons of Materiel from Time is a Factor
While this testimony does not definitively answer the question of what happened to the explosives since they were last verified as being Al Qaqaa by the IAEA in January of 2003, it does seriously damage the already questionable Time's story. A key... [Read More]

Tracked on October 29, 2004 04:18 PM

» US Troops Removed 250 tons of Iraqi Explosives from Ace of Trump
Discusses the latest in the missing explosives story [Read More]

Tracked on October 29, 2004 07:24 PM

» Other News from Phony Kerry
There's a ton of other stuff going on, including voter fraud in Minnesota, an Army major claims U.S. forces removed 250 tons of ammo from Al-Qaqaa, an Iraqi blogger posted a powerfully moving post, Bin Laden, apparently alive and well, released this m... [Read More]

Tracked on October 30, 2004 12:27 AM

» online poker from online poker
Please visit the pages dedicated to online poker texas holdem phentermine [Read More]

Tracked on February 12, 2005 12:14 AM