White House Releases Photo of Weapons Site
Wall Street Journal ^ | October 29, 2004 | CHRISTOPHER COOPER and DAVID S. CLOUD
 

The Bush administration, moving to buttress its claim that Saddam Hussein's government and not looters may have removed nearly 400 tons of explosives from a sprawling Iraqi weapons dump, released a satellite picture purporting to show prewar "loading activity" outside one of the bunkers where materials may have been stored.

The Pentagon said the photograph, dated March 17, 2003, and posted last night on the Pentagon's Website, shows a portion of the 56-bunker al-Qaqaa munitions complex, which has been identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a storage site for a powdered explosive called HMX. The picture shows six desert bunkers, one of them adjacent to a tractor-trailer truck and a smaller vehicle. While a description accompanying the small photograph says it isn't known whether the bunker actually contained explosives and the image isn't detailed enough to show whether cargo is being moved, the photograph is labeled "loading activity."

At issue is whether the explosives were removed by Mr. Hussein's government or whether a lack of security after the invasion gave looters the opportunity to take them, threatening U.S. and allied troops. The satellite image is clearly designed to inject a measure of doubt into Mr. Kerry's claim that the administration's Iraq strategy didn't properly plan for the war's aftermath and left tons of unguarded weapons lying about for insurgents to collect.

As the Bush administration pressed its case, it was careful not to oversell the fuzzy photograph or claim that it settled the issue of when the explosives were removed. "All this shows is that there was activity at this site or at least part of this site between the time the inspectors left and the time the troops arrived," one administration official said. "We're not making any claims about what the activity portrayed in the photo is."...
 

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