First U.S. Unit at Iraq Site Did Not Hunt Explosives

Wed Oct 27, 2004 06:42 PM ET
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first U.S. military unit to reach the site in Iraq where U.N. officials say 377 tons of high explosives are missing did not carry out a hunt for such material, the unit's commander said on Wednesday.

Col. Dave Perkins, then the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said the immediate concern when his troops reached the Al Qaqaa site on April 3, 2003, was to defeat a couple of hundred Iraqi troops who were firing from the compound as the Americans surged toward Baghdad.

The missing explosives have become a key issue heading into Tuesday's U.S. presidential election, with President Bush's Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, saying the administration's failure to safeguard the material revealed the president's "incredible incompetence."

Bush said Kerry was a candidate who "jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts."

The Pentagon arranged the media briefing as Bush tries to limit political damage from the issue.

The missing explosives had been monitored by inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Diplomats said the IAEA had cautioned the United States about the danger of the explosives before the war, and after the invasion told U.S. officials about the need to keep them secured.

Perkins said he did not believe that his forces had been informed the IAEA previously had marked and sealed explosives at the site. "This was just another one of those sites that the process was no different. It was no less stringent or more stringent," he told reporters.

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