At Iraqi Depot, Missiles Galore and No Guards
By RAYMOND BONNER and IAN FISHER
Published: October 17, 2003
(reprinted here totally without permission)
MUSAYYIB, Iraq, Oct. 16 It weighs more than a thousand pounds, so carting it away could present a few logistical problems for the average looter. But the fact remains that there is a very nice 15-foot-long missile, in mint condition, there for the taking, at one of Saddam Hussein’s defense factories a few miles west of here.
The missile, along with a dozen ready-to-fire 107-millimeter antitank rounds, just a few feet away, is part of a problem that the American military has only begun to grapple with: as much as one million tons of ammunition is scattered around Iraq, much of it unguarded like the armaments here simply because the United States does not have the personnel to keep watch.
On Thursday in Baghdad, an American brigadier general, Robert L. Davis, acknowledged the scope of the problem, saying that there are 105 large ammunition dumps as well as scores of smaller sites, not all of them guarded regularly. But General Davis, who is overseeing the cleanup, sought to give assurances that the Pentagon is working as fast as possible.
In the past three weeks alone, he said, recently deployed private civilian contractors have destroyed more than 2.5 million pounds of ammunition, whereas American soldiers were able to destroy only a million pounds in the last six months.
“It’s a very high priority,” General Davis told reporters.
But on Thursday, not a single soldier or guard was to be seen at this compound in the desert 40 miles south of Baghdad. A few Iraqis wandered about, and vehicles drove on the roads in the compound; one man drove off on his three-wheeled motorcycle with a bounty of long sections of pipe.
Evidently, American soldiers were here during the war. Their graffiti attests to that “Saddam Free Zone,” “Go Team USA #1.” Apparently, they left before thoroughly searching the site, or perhaps they simply lacked the time or expertise to clean it up.