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I have to admit I am just baffled by the ABC News story this morning on the possible discrepancy in the amount of RDX explosive stored at Al Qaqaa.
Let's keep this simple. Here's the ABC News story:
International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported.
The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.
But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over three tons of RDX were stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.
And here is the letter (PDF) Mohamed El Baradei provided to the U.N. Security Council on Monday:
The explosives [reported lost by Iraq] are given as: HMX (195 tons), which had been under IAEA seal, and RDX (141 tons) and PETN (6 tons), both subject to regular monitoring of stock levels. The presence of these amounts was verified by IAEA in January 2003.
Emphasis is mine. El Baradei didn't just pass on the Iraqi report. He vouched for its authenticity, at least with regards to the previous levels.
It seems simply impossible to make these two reports match up with each other.
On the one hand, it seems hard to believe that ABC News would run with an internal IAEA memo on this story unless they were absolutely sure it was legitimate. Wading into a controversial story like this with a confidential source document that you aren't 100% sure would require a level of stupidity I'm not willing to attribute even to our MSM friends.
But if ABC's document is true, what conclusion can we possibly reach other than to conclude that El Baradei flat-out lied to the Security Council in his Monday report?
Either ABC's document is bogus (unlikely), or El Baradei is lying (staggering). For the life of me, I don't know which it is, but I sure would like somebody with better confidential sources than me to find out...
