There’s a lot of buzz in the back pages of the Internet over the fire and explosions at Forward Operating Base Falcon’s munitions depot in Iraq on October 10th. The mainstream media is reporting destruction but not casualties, but sites like Above Top Secret are saying as many as 300 soldiers died and there’s a cover-up going on.
Here’s the report from Forbes:
A fire broke out at an ammunition depot at a U.S. base in southern Baghdad on Tuesday night, setting off a series of explosions from detonating tank and artillery shells that shook buildings miles away. The U.S. military said there were no immediate reports of casualties.
It was not clear whether the depot at Forward Operating Base Falcon was hit by an attack. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, said Lt. Col, Christopher C. Garver, a military spokesman.
The blaze broke out in an ammunition holding area, where material is kept temporarily before distribution to the units at Falcon, said Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, a spokesman at the base. He said more than three battalions are located at the base but he would not give a specific number of troops.
“There is a lot of ammunition there, but it’s not a full storage depot,” he said. “This does not degrade our operational ability at all.”
Here’s the story from Libertyforum.org:
Late on the evening of October 10, 2006, Iraqi resistance groups lobbed mortar and rocket rounds into the immense ‘Forward Base Falcon,’ the largest American military base in Iraq, located 13 km south of the Green Zone in Baghdad. In addition to accurate mortar fire, Grad and Katyusha rockets were also used.
Falcon base was designed to house a large contingent of American troops, mostly drawn from the 4th Infantry Division, stationed at Fr. Bliss, Texas. At the time of the attack, there were approximately 3000 men inside the camp, which also was filled with ammunition supplies, fuel, tanks and vehicles. Over 300 American troops, including U.S. Army and Marines, CIA agents and U.S. translators were casualties and there also were 165 seriously injured requiring major medical attention and 39 suffering lesser injuries 122 members of the Iraqi armed forces were killed and 90 seriously injured members of same, were also evacuated to the U.S. military hospital at al-Habbaniyah located some 70km west of Baghdad.
Here’s a link to a video shot by a soldier of the explosions.
Here’s a link to aerial photographs of the site.
So what happened? I don’t know if the military could cover something of this magnitude up, as a lot of families would have to be told of any casualties. Then again, something like this would be a nasty “October Surprise” for the President and GOP. If this is being covered up until after the elections, the people responsible should be fired.
my brother is 4th ID… he’s telling me “no, casualties were slim to none… “
Here’s another video that I believe is the same incident, it shows a huge explosion
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2006/10/18/catastrophic-success-a-visual/
oh, I’m looking at the source of the article… TBR, seems to be clearly anti-war / anti-bush…. now I’m wondering how well I can trust the level of bias they may be exhibiting… anyone have deeper insight?
he did say it was some of the “best fireworks ever seen”
woktiny — someday, consider evaluating the report and concurrent sources — instead of whining about the politics of the source. We all know that Fox gets it right, once in a while. I imagine the same is true of TBR — even if the focus bothers your religion.
The point remains our beloved mass media ignoring the incident beyond the first few hours of coverage.
3,
That’s the problem. I don’t trust the mainstream guys saying “no casualties”, but I don’t trust the fringe guys to report the facts accurately either. The only good argument for a cover up is the timing with the elections.
I think we can all agree that we are hoping there were no casualties and if there were, that our hearts go out to the families
My first suspect was the A-Team. But considering people actually died, it appears they’re ruled out. For now.
I’m calling hogwash on this story. Rense is the equivalent to the Weekly World News on the internet. I’m sure a few people died, but the military isn’t in the habit of billiting troops next to ammo. You can’t cover up 300 injuries, much less 300 deaths. Also, anyone think the photos look suspicious?
Wow, insurgents with Katyushas now? Wonder where they’re coming from?
9,
If you’re sure a few died, then you are also in contradiction to the military’s line, which is that nobody did. As far as the pictures, in what way do they look fishy?
The explosions did occur, even the mainstream press covered that part. The question is why isn’t the military saying more about the incident, of only to quash these rumors?
the military isn’t in the habit of billiting troops next to ammo.
Seems like there are lots of things they are very good at, and ammo safety is one of them. I believe there is no story here much beyond what we already know.
I tried to send this to my brother over in Iraq and he couldn’t view it (separate issue). That made me look up other sources so he could see it.
Found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CV7sIrMWh4
This was added BACK IN JULY. Well before the ammo dump explosion two weeks ago.
In general, I do not agree with the need for this war (at least the original stated reasons – now we have to stay and clean up our mess) but I must insist that everyone get proper information from multiple sources to get a balanced view.
The news would rather lead with Rush Limbaugh saying Michael J Fox was acting in a stem cell commercial. Thanks for looking out for the public’s interest.
#13, If Fox Spews bothers you so much, then why watch it? There are alternatives that do have some credibility.
I’m going with woktiny’s brother on this one. It is quite possible that there were no deaths that may be attributed to the explosions. There would not only be families at home, but also troops in the field that would be talking.
I think this is just another made up story. The far right doesn’t have a monopoly on making the news.
Dude, I have a ton of friends still in (as I was), and there’s no way that a coverup would work on that magnitude.
PLUS
We (and I say we, cause I’m still in the National Guard) in the military aren’t idiots, munitions aren’t kept next to tents housing people. They’re kept the hell away from people, usually on the fringe of the base permiter. Sometimes, even further out, almost like a penninsula. For THIS EXACT REASON. That’s why there were no casualties.
I may not like Bush or the gv’t, but saying that 300 troops dies is an outright lie.
I just wanted to point out Above Top Secrets headline:
“Another Media cover up? 300 US soldiers die?”
So now the media, and not the gov’t, is covering things up. Ironic.
14- That’s the guy from Back to the Future, although it wouldn’t be a surprise if a newsish anchor’s name was “Michael J.”
Hmm.. Government-Media Complex?
take it all at face value, and that way when you learn different, you can take the new information at face value as well.
besides, as secretive as this administration has been it would suprise me in the least if it was true.
from the photos I don’t see where 300 people could have died. I might believe 5 or 10, but not 300.
Not a nuke. If it was, the camera would have stopped working along with the people watching it.
I only hope the count is ZERO (0). Its want any American should hope regardless of party.
Doesn’t seem credible there’s any kind of massive cover-up on this. Reports from relatives (#1) and the notion that even the Army would have sense enough to billet troops away from the live ammo (#9, #11) are more convincing than rumors from rense.com (wonderful site though it is, and I love the supermarket rags too – where else you gonna see an alien sneaking up to touch a senator?).
Still, if the whole thing went up in spectacular fireworks, it’s hard to believe there were NO casualties. This administration has trouble telling the truth about anything, no reason to think they’d start now.
Just look at the pictures and look at the video and make up your own mind: The guys taking the video are about 1 mile away from the ammo depot (5 seconds at 300m/s for sound = 1.5Km = 1 mile).
The pictures of the airplane show no barracks close to the perineter (except a guard tent) and the depot seems to be built with standard procedure: containers exploding upwards and not outwards, inner containment walls for every 35 containers and outer containment walls surrounding those.
Considering this happened by night, I suppose a total of 10-20 people inside the outer containment walls. Of which maybe 25% got hurt and maybe 5% killed. No way this would amount to 300 killed!
I have guarded ammunition depots back in my time during military service – around 1914 😉 – and as already stated: the military know how dangerous ammo depots are and how likely they’re going to be a target. I don’t buy it.
Fabrizio
Dag Fabrizio, kan je me even emailen zodat ik je emailadres heb. dank, wim
Another liberal trial balloon.
#5…. wow, what’s eating you?
I certainly wasn’t whining or bringing religion into this (so why are you?), just stating that the source has an anti war bias, so maybe can’t be trusted to not exaggerate the effects of the war. I think the point and question were valid.
note that I’m also not making assertions about any other media outlet, just sharing what I found and seeking further insight.
Please bear in mind that “Forbes” is in fact run by a prominent member of the PNAC….
There had to be people guarding it and people working with/around it, so there were doubtless some casualties. 300 seems awfully large in those circumstances though. I suspect both sides are exaggerating — as usual.
The video clip that i saw on CNN Clearly showed an Extreme High temp fire. Two likely causes for the color temps i saw on the live un-edited footage. One: Magnesium flares and TWO: Depeleted uranium. the live shots shown on CNN imediatly caused me to start invesigating a DU fire. (All later footage shown is color & content edited). Fron the fire temps and the ballistics of the material thrown clear du is the single plasuable cause for the damage in the photos of the base. The white containments are AC storage for DU rounds. (all have to be cooled in the hot desert climate) This gathering of photos at Rence show the containments severly melted and a white/blueish residue seems to indacate very high temps. These pics show a large amount of ASP falcons DU storage Totaly burned up!.
Both the M1 tank round magazine and the Aircraft cannon shell magazine mag. suffered catatropic hits. This is ONE HUGE mess if this group of photos of the aftermath are legit.
The fire temps confirm DU fire. the photos seem to confirm DU containment fire.
The other bits bogging down this is the mis-interpreting of the video of the blasts.
the final one i say was a Tank deployed over the wall MOAB used Safty Boss like to snuff the spreading fires. The photos show that the conventional storage areas (evidanced by Black sooty ground) was going to suffer a major catastrophic hit from further spread of the damage (2000 Lbers do some nasty things) the trench on the out side of the concrete wall could be where the charge setting tank was driven after the blast seen on the vids. The POL point (Petrol Oil Lube) was prob. cause of the mushroom.
I am not even sort of fuzzy on any of this. This fire was Garganuan messy and i hate to have to say it is going to kill thosands upon thosands world wide.
Can anyone post other photos of the site close up?