A bizarrely persistent spammer/troll has finally forced me to take the plunge and start comment registration. Hopefully, I'll have the system set up in the next few days, so heads up - you'll need to register with a username and password in order to participate in discussions.

In the meantime, please ignore anyone that insists on flooding my comments section with links.

UPDATE: It will be Typekey.

Bloomberg reports:

Employment Growth Accelerated in October: U.S. Economy Preview Oct. 31

U.S. employers probably added 175,000 workers to payrolls in October, the most in five months, while the unemployment rate held at a three-year low of 5.4 percent, the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists shows.

Considering the fact that the real loss of jobs during Bush's Administration now stands at 410,000, and not John Kerry's incessant quote of 1.6 million, a slight uptick in the last two months of the year could result in a wash or even a net gain of jobs during Bush's 4 years in office. This would dodge the job-losing ghost of Herbert Hoover, even after the inheritance of a recession that was abetted by the most catastrophic terror attack in history.

Apparently the director's cut of the Bin Laden tape is even more interesting than the excerpt shown on Al Jazeera:

Osama bin Laden doesn't seem nearly so cocky in the unedited version of a videotape aired on al-Jazeera, complaining that the manhunt against him has hampered al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden's newest tape may have thrust him to the forefront of the presidential election, but what was not seen was the cave-dwelling terror lord talking about the setbacks al Qaeda has faced in recent months.

Officials said that in the 18-minute long tape — of which only six minutes were aired on the al-Jazeera Arab television network in the Middle East on Friday — bin Laden bemoans the recent democratic elections in Afghanistan and the lack of violence involved with it.

On the tape, bin Laden also says his terror organization has been hurt by the U.S. military's unrelenting manhunt for him and his cohorts on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

A portion of the left-out footage includes a tirade aimed at President Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, claiming the war in Iraq is purely over oil.

I can certainly understand why the collaborators at Al Jazeera would cut the tape, but I can't fathom why Bin Laden would distribute a display of weakness in the first place. I hope that a domestic news organization will obtain and release the full video and/or transcript for our perusal.

UPDATE: The Belmont Club interprets the edited version:

It is important to notice what he has stopped saying in this speech. He has stopped talking about the restoration of the Global Caliphate. There is no more mention of the return of Andalusia. There is no more anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically saying if you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.

This analysis was proffered prior to knowledge of the extended transcript. And note Wretchard's conclusion:

The American answer to Osama's proposal will be given on Election Day. ... Osama has stated his terms. He awaits America's answer.

(Via CQ)

UPDATE: See also Wizbang, Truth Laid Bear, Volokh Conspiracy.

UPDATE: Was the tape mistranslated? MEMRI thinks so:

The tape of Osama bin Laden that was aired on al-Jazeera on Friday, October 29 included a specific threat to "each U.S. state," designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming election against George W. Bush. The U.S. media in general mistranslated the words "ay wilaya" (which means "each U.S. state") to mean a "country" or "nation" other than the U.S., while in fact the threat was directed specifically at each individual U.S. state. This suggests some knowledge by bin Laden of the U.S. electoral-college system. In a section of his speech in which he harshly criticized George W. Bush, bin Laden stated: "Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."

Interesting.

(Via sja)

50 Reasons to Vote for George Bush

Walter Russell Mead has a profile and interview with Dick Cheney in this month's Esquire Magazine. This is a must-read for everyone that plans to vote this election. It's extremely long, but it's perhaps the best explanation of this administration's real mistakes and ultimate rationale and strategy in the war on terror that I've seen in recent memory.

The author has good credentials and certainly isn't a shill for the administration:

I think and write about U. S. foreign policy for a living at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Before getting this far—my first contact with the vice-president—I'd gone through months of screening. My latest book had circulated among the vice-president's staff to determine whether my political attitudes passed muster. Call me unaligned; there are days when I can't decide whether to worry more about the Bush administration or its critics.

And it's not flattering:

But I had come to the White House on a mission. This man, and this administration, were wrecking my life. I wanted to know why.

I hate the decision I'm being forced to make this November. I hate the choices that the war on terrorism is imposing on us. The gravest threats of an unimaginably difficult and challenging future are coming together with some of the unhappiest unresolved conflicts in our national life, creating a perfect political shit storm. I don't like the storm and I don't like the choice. But the war is real, our divisions are real, and the choice isn't going away.
...
That's not quite my beef with Dick Cheney. Rather, for virtually his entire adult life, he's been engaged in the systematic destruction of what I was raised to believe was progressive, decent, and forward-looking in the United States of America.

But I endorse much of his less personal criticism; maligning the communication efforts of this Administration is largely just and accurate:

And what did Cheney's silence on these topics mean? Had the administration not really thought about these problems or learned anything from its experience in the terror war? In that case, would another four-year mandate mean more of the same? ... In Battle Creek, Michigan, and again in Dayton, Ohio, I watched with diminishing hope as Cheney continued to utter slogans—often slogans I agree with—but without performing what I remain naive enough to believe is an essential task of a national leader in wartime: giving the public a serious and thoughtful exposition of the country's policies in a time of great danger. ... But as much as Cheney and Bush might like to compare themselves to Churchill, the real problem isn't that they are excessively Churchillian; it's that they aren't Churchillian enough. Churchill believed that the united will of the British people to fight was the secret weapon that would win the war, and preserving and toughening that united will was the course that he took. His wartime speeches acknowledged defeats and setbacks. Unpleasant facts were frankly stated and faced. He earned the trust of a people at war by voicing their doubts even as he stoked their resolve. ... Not everyone in the United States or abroad would have accepted this case or agreed with the president's decision for war if coercive diplomacy failed, but we would clearly be in better shape today if the administration had done more to put the full range of its views on the table.

But the author also possesses a deeper understanding of the danger that partially explains why some of us that don't care much for Cheney's stances on domestic issues still think it's so important to re-elect the incumbent:

For many people, the "cautious and prudent" course would be to leave Iran alone, avoid war, and try to work out some way of living with its bomb. Russia has the bomb, China has the bomb; Israel, India, England, and Pakistan have the bomb; we've even learned to live in a world where France has the bomb. Why not do the "cautious and prudent" thing—and learn to live with a nuclear Iran?

A few days later, I spoke to former secretary of state George Shultz about this principle, and he immediately understood and agreed. Tie goes to the runner in those cases, Shultz says. That is, when you are facing unknown, possibly grave dangers, and you really don't and perhaps can't know exactly what to do, it is safer to act than to wait. It's a positively radical idea, at the heart of George Bush's doctrine of preventative war. It is precisely this kind of thinking that got the United States into Iraq. And never before in our history, perhaps never before in the history of war and peace, have prudent and cautious added up to invade .

There's the rub. And Cheney is still quietly and calmly explaining that it's the right thing to do. Worse still, I think I believe him.

So do I. And this point is crucial:

Yet there's a more substantive point as well. Cheney is a military-history buff and is very well read on the U. S. Civil War. Lincoln made a lot of mistakes in that war. There were times when things looked very bleak for the United States. International public opinion was on the side of the South. Enormous scandals rocked the government, analysts and pundits blasted Lincoln's administration, and even his allies sometimes despaired.

But Lincoln knew that he had to hold on, to fight the war through thick and thin, to engage the enemy and grind him down with the North's superior numbers and wealth. In Grant he found the general who could fight this kind of warfare: ugly, costly, and at times ruinously unpopular.

Cheney sees this kind of persistence as the essential quality of wartime leadership. I don't think he's wrong. Churchill, too, was a leader who saw the essential logic of the fight against Hitler and was willing to follow it wherever it led—to the alliance with Bolshevik Russia, which he hated with every fiber of his being; to the destruction of the British Empire, which he had dedicated his life to preserving; to the very gates of hell.

Suppose that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder, goes this quiet, unspoken argument. Yes, the news from Iraq is bad. And yes, it is the Bush administration's fault. Well, Lincoln made one blunder after another. Churchill failed in Norway, failed in France, failed in Yugoslavia, failed in Crete, failed in Singapore. And he won the war. You cannot ask a leader to be infallible or ever-victorious in a real war. You can only ask him to persevere.

Lincoln, Churchill, and Grant: I don't think Cheney invokes them just to drop names. These are clues to the kind of world he believes we live in and to the war of survival he believes we must fight. These names are a measure of the stakes he sees, of the risks he will run, the price he will pay, the suffering and damage he is willing to sustain and inflict.

It's a good article with one fatal flaw: the non-conclusion, which rolls up the mass of analysis with the declaration that the Bush Administration has "missed the most important lesson of all," by failing to communicate war's hardship while having had the vision and bravery to undertake its toil. The author's piece plummets by operating in a vacuum that fails to examine and prioritize these mistakes in the context of the previous alternative and the current alternative - a Kerry Administration that might communicate more effectively than the Bush Administration, yet lacks a fundamental strategy to persevere and aggressively engage the global war on terror. By the logic of the author's piece, Kerry offers the far "riskier" option because he would naturally favor inaction and shun "prudent" courses of preemption and Churchillian will.

A return to a reactive, defensive foreign policy that projects weakness, looks for politically convenient "solutions" for Iraq and allows Iran to go nuclear will lead the United States in the wrong, bleak direction, at a moment in history where we face a new paradigm of ubiquitous destructive technology and the catastrophic intentions of dedicated extremists.

It's a concept so abstract that most Americans can barely grasp its practical implications through the hazy memory of September 11th and our subsequent return to the majority's collective failure of imagination. In this sense, the difficulty of the task renders me far more forgiving than the author regarding the Bush Administration's failure to adequately communicate rationale and setbacks during the war; I'd rather have flawed leadership that takes action and unfortunately risks flagging political will than an Administration that does the opposite. But make no mistake - if we return to a never-never-land that embraces diplomatic processes that have been exposed time and time again as failures, through a corrupt multilateral organization that's merits are not adequately adjusted for the self-interest of its member states, we greatly increase the chances of decline and ultimate catastrophe for the United States - perhaps within a generation.

There exist practical reasons to fear a Bush Presidency, but I think that the country can survive any domestic and fiscal disagreements, in a reasonably comparable way to the manner in which we'd handle the alternative. In contrast, I'm absolute in the belief that a foreign policy guided by a man like John Kerry, who has shown 35 years of consistent weakness - from his unethical tactical judgment as an anti-war protestor to his vote against one of history's broadest coalitions assembled for the first Gulf War - will be a quiet disaster.

Consider: a beautiful house that has termites can be a wonderful place to live - until the roof crashes in on the heads of your children.

I'm not blind to his errors or assured of our ultimate success, but George W. Bush has proven that he has the political courage and will to attempt success and weather errors; the essential qualities of a wartime President. I politely ask those of you that are still undecided to consider this argument - and to please consider voting for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

Let them finish the job.

UPDATE: As a requisite complement to my argument, and for an illustration of the alternative of Kerry's leadership, please watch a film titled "Kerry Iraq Documentary." Then make your ultimate decision.

Very classy:

John Kerry's stepson, Chris Heinz, 31, displayed his mother Teresa's famous lack of rhetorical restraint at a recent campaign event with a group of Wharton students. Philadelphia magazine reports: "Heinz accused Kerry's opponents - 'our enemies' - of making the race dirty. 'We didn't start out with negative ads calling George Bush a cokehead,' he said, before adding, 'I'll do it now.' Asked later about it, Heinz said, 'I have no evidence. He never sold me anything.'" Heinz also reminded writer Sasha Issenberg of Pat Buchanan by saying, "One of the things I've noticed is the Israel lobby - the treatment of Israel as the 51st state, sort of a swing state."

A Jewish conspiracy theorist and a jerk - but I repeat myself.

Tabling the "cokehead" comments for a moment, the popular meme about the overwhelming power of the insidious Jewish lobby and its modern direction of US policy towards Israel ignores a few very relevant facts:

1. There are only about 5.2 - 6 million Jews in the United States, and only a little over half of those Jews self-identify as "religious."

2. Republican presidents enact policies that are typically more favorable toward Israel.

3. About 75% of Jews typically vote Democratic and plan to vote for John Kerry this year.

4. Nearly a third of all US Jews live in New York, a consistent Democratic stronghold in national elections.

5. The Jewish population in America is in decline, while the immigrant Muslim population is ascendant.

While the pro-Israeli lobby has played an historically disproportionate role in US politics via outsized funding and activism, any Republican policy towards Israel would court perhaps only 0.16% of the population.*

The leftist article of faith that Republican Presidential policy toward Israel is primarily motivated by pandering to Jewish voters is one of demographic ignorance and bigotry.

* 0.16% does not represent the percentage of Jews in the US; it's a rough estimate of the potential Republican Jewish constituency that takes into account the 75/25 Democratic party affiliation and the location of 1/3 of Jews in NY, a Democratic stronghold that's electorally unavailable at the national level. It's only meant to be a rough estimate.

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein has some more pointed commentary.

I'm reposting this because if I find it timely, perhaps some of you will as well. Enjoy.

(Requires Quicktime)

UPDATE: Infidel Cowboy cleverly ties the lyrics back to politics.

Jim Geraghty:

"Last night, I heard secondhand that a left-of-center friend said, during a discussion about the tape, “Well, now I actually agree with bin Laden, I mean, the stuff he said about Bush.”

It was probably meant as a joke, or as a statement of irony. I wasn’t there, so I don’t want to draw conclusions about the statement’s meaning, and apparently the topic of conversation shifted so that no one could really analyze what that speaker meant.

But I have little doubt that in some other corners of our country, a statement like that was probably said and wasn’t a joke, or wasn’t ironic."

Dean Esmay from the popular blog Dean's World will be a guest on Pundit Review Radio today. Check him out.

First Tom Brokaw deployed the word "jihad" to describe the efforts of the bloggers that took down CBS's phoney documents.

Now he's said this:

In an interview last week Mr. Brokaw said CBS News had clearly made mistakes. But, he said, "I think there were people just lying in the Internet bushes, waiting to strike, and I think that particular episode gave them a big opportunity."

My response? You're exactly right, Mr. Brokaw.

Now take it a step further and ask yourself: what motivated those people to lie "in the Internet bushes" and devote so much time to disproving those documents, even though most bloggers juggle day jobs and receive no compensation or direction from any political party?

Drop me a line and we'll talk about it reasonably some time. Seriously.

(Via Malkin)

It sort of resembles a clip from "Weekend at Bernie's."

Al Jazeera has just played a tape of Osama Bin Laden that refers to a recent event in Iraq. It was authenticated by "the government," though I'm not sure what agency. The tape lists a litany of complaints about the Bush Administration and highlights the motivation behind September 11. The US cable networks now have it.

More as it develops.

"The Bush Administration resembles a corrupt Arab government."

"Bush is misleading Americans."

"September 11 would have been less severe if George Bush had been more alert," Bin Laden said.

Has he been in contact with Joe Lockhart? What odd statements.

MSNBC said that bin Laden references John Kerry in the tape.

It looks like an endorsement for Kerry, which can be interpreted several ways.

UPDATE: I don't have access to a TV right now - did bin Laden voice any displeasure with Bush's support of the Federal Marriage Amendment? Because if he did, I think we definitely need to check Lockhart's satellite phone records. As it is, I'm suspicious:

"In addition, the infidel George Bush is outsourcing America's future with tax cuts to the wealthy. Where are the 1.6 million jobs? The infidel Bush is the first infidel since the infidel Herbert Hoover to lose jobs! Awake from your slumber, America! The infidel John Kerry has a plan. You can do better, Insha'Allah!"

"Let me tell you, I spoke to the infidel Christopher Reeve a week ago, and if the infidel John Kerry is elected President, Insha'Allah, the infidel Christopher Reeve will walk again!"

"Are you infidels aware that the infidel John Kerry killed infidels in a war of imperialist infidel aggression in Southeast Asia?"

"The infidel Mary Cheney is a lesbian."

(Um, some people seem confused - those last quotes were parody)

UPDATE: Back to a somewhat serious note - Bin Laden mocked President Bush for Reading "My Pet Goat" just after the planes struck the towers on 9-11, one line of a series of attacks in the video that that used talking points featured in Fahrenheit 9-11.

I'd like to remind you of this picture from the Democratic National Convention:

And this picture of Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe at the Washington, DC premiere of F 9-11:

DNC Chairman McAuliffe shakes the hand of a man that celebrates the Iraqi resistance as "the Minutemen."

Read this to comprehend my fleshed-out position on the matter.

It's not an abstract concept to grasp which candidate is perceived as more of a threat to terrorists, considering one party's mainstream embrace of the man that authors dangerous propaganda that's beneficial to their cause.

I hope this helps sharpen your focus, America.

UPDATE: Right on Red has more fun with Bin Laden:

Infidel Bush has secret plans to reinstate the draft, so as to continue his illegal crusade against the oil-producing peoples of the Middle East. Young infidels from working class minority families will be the hardest hit.

UPDATE: The Llama Butchers have more Moore!

Beautiful Atrocities has a great round-up. My favorite:

Economist Jude Wanniski: I'm leaning toward Kerry because I prefer recession to imperialist war.

(Emphasis mine)

Wonder what getting shot at feels like? Here's a little taste from thousands of miles away.

My cap is permanently tipped to those soldiers.

And harping on Kerry's post-Vietnam rhetoric, I certainly wouldn't accuse them of false atrocities, approved and directed "at all levels of command," while they're fighting to win a war. Think about it. Think about a modern analogy that extrapolates Abu Ghraib to reflect the efforts of all of those men; an extrapolation that's based on made-up testimony by anti-war protestors that pose as combat veterans.

The concept certainly bothers me.

(Via Ace)

Everyone should probably check out Drudge.

UPDATE: Now we've got a FOX News link:

U.S. Team Took 250 Tons of Iraqi Munitions

U.S. Army officer came forward Friday and said a team from the 3rd Infantry Division took about 250 tons of munititions and military material from the Al-Qaqaa (search) munitions base soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell last year.

Explosives were included in the load taken by the team but Major Austin Pearson said he was unable to say what percentage it accounted for. The Pentagon believes the disclosure helps to explain what happened to 377 tons of explosives that the International Atomic Energy Agency (search) said disappeared after Saddam Hussein's regime fell.

Recall that the IAEA's initial estimate of about 380 tons of RDX and HMX was revised downward to about 200 tons of HMX that was marked by the UN. The rest was not in question.

This news doesn't officially stake the story, but it throws a lot of cold, cold water in the gold-gilded locker room at the New York Times.

UPDATE: Earlier, Geraghty highlighted the WaPo's relatively fair analysis of the larger context of the explosives story (prior to this most recent, key development). I meant to link it this morning, but Kerry Spot treats the Post's treatment with very similar conclusions. That Geraghty kid's a star; mark my words, someday he's going to get hired by a prominent publication.

Bonus thought #1: There's a takedown of Andrew Sullivan at the end of the post. Sullivan has now morphed from staunch "Eagle" to overly emotive hyperbolist to closeted Kerry shill to ... what's the apt description? "Condescending jerk," apparently.

Bonus thought #2: The WaPo's riled me up with bias before and undoubtedly will again (start the stopwatch), but consistently, all election season long, they've shown up with their gameface on certain key issues. The massive exception to this statement is anything written by overt hack Dana Milbank and many of the jaundiced, canned Iraq narratives by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

Michael Dobbs, Howard Kurtz and Thomas E. Ricks have been stars among the media elite, however. Credit where credit's due.

I'm posting light today, but Michele has something you ought to read; it's about my favored topics of cognitive dissonance and dishonesty:

I've written before about the utter hypocrisy of the left, but never have I seen that hypocrisy displayed before me so blatantly as I have today. And yet, they are so wrapped up in their vile righteousness that they remain absurdly unaware of how they are letting their contradictions slip.
...
And now, in a complete reversal of fortune, ****** has become the poster boy for the left. The man who was once hailed as a racist, homophobic supporter of spousal abuse is now the king of the leftie world because he made an anti-Bush video. All is forgiven, ******! Bash those gays, make more videos about beating up women because you are golden, baby. As long as you come out against Bush, you could come out in favor of eating babies and no one would blink an eye.

Go find out who and what she's talking about.

An anti-war protestor hoists her sign in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. (Photo- INDC)

Do most Americans understand the meaning of the word sacrifice? Does our insulation from fear distort our view of the war on terror?

What would you do if you were a 22 year old Kurdish Muslim woman in March of 2003, when an army drawn from several countries invaded your homeland?

If you were Humalia Akrawy you would remember your brother, killed under Saddam -- and remember how they sent back just one leg and part of an arm to demonstrate his death and their power to your family. You would look at your father, who no longer has full use of his hands after being tortured by Saddam.

And then, despite the disapproval of many but with the blessing and support of your family, on 23 March you would volunteer to become a translator for the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army.

But what would you do when Ba'athists and jihadists ambushed your car, injuring your brother and trying to kill you, and when they later killed your 24 year old sister thinking she was you -- pumping 60 AK47 bullets into her body? Or when you received a letter saying, "We know we missed killing you, but we will be back" and then your home was blown up, injuring another brother and killing the Iraqi policeman guarding it?

If you were the remarkable Ms. Akrawy you would help your remaining family members move to a safe area in the far north of the country and then return to your job. And this time, instead of insisting on a lower profile role, you would eagerly agree to become the translator for Lieutenant General Petraeus himself, the commander of the 101st - despite all the media exposure that entailed - and you would proudly do that job in the face of continued death threats against you.

I had the humbling experience of meeting this courageous, intelligent and outspoken 23 year old woman today. Here are some of my notes, capturing her own words as much as I was able, and posted here with her enthusiastic permission.

Read it.

It was our opportunity to help this woman. It's our obligation to finish the job for this woman. This was the right war at the right time, and the success of Democracy in Iraq will make her family safer, as well as ours.

Protein Wisdom, INDC Journal and the Daily Recycler present:

"The Choice."

*** Red Sock thinks Bush is Wicked Awesome; John Kerry, not so much. Whaaatta tool.

*** The Truth Laid Beah has a wicked pissah of an explosives-gate round-up:

Explosivesgate Roundup: Day III

Some folks might be thinking "wow, this story is moving amazingly fast,", and I'll admit that was my first reaction. But the reason this story looks like it is moving quickly is because other news organizations are now doing the work that the NYT should have done in the first place. And it is going fast because, frankly, it wasn't all that damned hard.

They suck like da *&%$#*# Yanks! Choke! Da curse ah Howell Raines!

*** James Joynah is all ovah an impendin' assault into Fallujah ...

A stable Iraq, if it can ever exist, can come about only after the armed militants are defeated. That's not going to happen through negotiations, gun buybacks, or other passive strategies.

Hey insurgents - soon the Marines are gonna be on your ass like Teddy K on a bottle ah Glenfiddich and a Back Bay hookah!

Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawxxxxxxxxxx!

Where are the IAEA's missing explosives, along with other elements of Saddam's WMD program? It seems that the Russians might know:

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."
...
The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not convince Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.

A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.

This gels with the previous assessment of a suspicious Russian presence in Iraq before and during the war, along with dubious Russian denials of any previous violation of UN sanctions:

March 24, 2003

Tensions increase between the United States and Russia. The United States charged the Russians of supposed deliveries of Russian weapons in Iraq. The spokesman of the American President, Ari Fleischer, rejected denials of Moscow and assured that Washington has "evidence" of these deliveries, which could give the Iraqis invaluable assets against the Anglo-American forces. Devices listed are binoculars for night vision, GPS units, and anti-tank missiles.

Ari Fleischer said the American government asked the Russians to immediately put an end to its assistance. It reminded them that the deliveries of this type of materials and equipment in Iraq were the subject of sanctions by the United Nations. The Russian government and the companies mentioned as having delivered armaments to Iraq have rejected these allegations on Monday, describing them as "inventions" and reaffirming that Moscow strictly respected the embargo imposed by UN in Baghdad. Russian president Vladimir Putin rejected the American charges himself during a telephone conversation with George W. Bush, the Presidential press secretary indicated Tuesday, quoted by the Interfax agency.

Also recall that during the war, a column of Russian diplomats was shot at by coalition forces as it moved out of Baghdad towards the Syrian border. At the time it was described in the Western media as a case of mistaken crossfire.

The straight version from the BBC:

7 April, 2003

A convoy of Russian diplomatic cars shot at while leaving Baghdad was caught in crossfire between US and Iraqi forces, a Russian TV journalist travelling with the convoy has said.

In contrast, this translation of an analysis by a group of Russian journalists and military experts paints a slightly different picture:

Read More »

CW says: "Iraq has no ties to Al Qaeda; it's all in Dick Cheney's head!"

Read this.

“I conclude that plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, ‘by evidence satisfactory to the court’ that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda.”

(Via Beautiful Atrocities)

Many Kerry supporters assume that those of us that are overt partisans for Bush are blinkered true believers that can't see the man's personal and professional failings and blunders. This assumption is wildly incorrect. There are many aspects of the President's policies and decisions that worry me greatly, give me pause and make me yearn for a third, imaginary candidate who could rise above both choices this election season and lead America with sureness, nuance, curiosity, openness, and grace. But then, when I revisit an honest moment like the one featured in this new campaign ad, and think of the relatively soulless alternative presented by so many politicians, I recall why this man earns my respect for his sincerity and political will to attempt the right - though not necessarily easy - course of action.

Every President makes errors. Every politician obfuscates and spins the news. Every administration from the inception of this democracy onward has eagerly provided plenty of legitimate ammunition to political opponents from all hues of the political spectrum. But among other important traits, a guiding factor that holds sway over steering a massive and inherently flawed bureaucracy in the right general direction is sincerity and strength of character.

George W. Bush possesses these qualities, and that goes a long way towards earning my vote.

Individuals that were against the war to disarm Saddam Hussein are suddenly terrified over the fate of 380 of the over 1 million tons (0.03%) of conventional explosives that are currently estimated to exist in Iraq. The pointed US effort that has thus far destroyed 400,000 tons of munitions, yet failed to immediately account for 380, somehow respresents an unacceptable US failure and subsequent terrorist risk to the IAEA, NY Times and other overt critics of the Bush Administration.

But perhaps they draw the wrong lesson from this situation.

For example, considering the IAEA's current deep concern over the location of the explosives and their potential use "in standard nuclear weapons design," why didn't the UN destroy the deadly material when it had the option?

After the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the United Nations discovered Iraq's clandestine effort and put the United Nations arms agency in charge of Al Qaqaa's huge stockpile. Weapon inspectors determined that Iraq had bought the explosives from France, China and Yugoslavia, a European diplomat said.

None of the explosives were destroyed, arms experts familiar with the decision recalled, because Iraq argued that it should be allowed to keep them for eventual use in mining and civilian construction.

Coincidentally, this bolsters the famous "dual-use" argument that the Bush Administration cites so often - and is typically ignored by the media. Iraq was permitted to keep high-explosive material that was specifically intended for use in the construction of a nuclear bomb because they successfully argued to the UN that someday, they might like to use it for "mining and civilian construction." But what about that - did they use it for mining?

But Al Qaqaa was still under the authority of the Military Industrial Council, which ran Iraq's sensitive weapons programs and was led for a time by Hussein Kamel, Mr. Hussein's son-in-law. He defected to the West, then returned to Iraq and was immediately killed.

Kamel revealed interesting details about Iraq's ostensibly civilian program when he defected:

What Kamel divulged about Iraq's weapons programs was shocking. Kamel described where the material and facilities were, what was built, the existence of an extensive biological program, the existence of a far more more extensive nuclear program than was ever known, who was running Iraq's deception programs and how they worked.

To recap thus far - after the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein convinced the IAEA to allow him to retain the high explosives that they're now so worried about being used for terrorism or a nuclear weapon, under the guise of potential use in mining and construction. Despite that supposed intention, the explosives remained under the control of the Military Industrial Council, whose leader defected in 1995 and revealed that the explosives were indeed part of a secret nuclear weapons program that was "far more more extensive ... than was ever known."

After the information about the covert nuclear weapons program was revealed to the world, three years before inspectors were booted from the country, the UN failed to destroy or confiscate the explosives that are now missing:

The Qaqaa stockpile went unmonitored from late 1998, when United Nations inspectors left Iraq, to late 2002, when they came back. Upon their return, the inspectors discovered that about 35 tons of HMX were missing. The Iraqis said they had used the explosive mainly in civilian programs.

Once the inspectors returned in 2002, the Iraqis explained that nearly 10% of the explosives - previously kept for "mining and civilian construction" but later revealed to be part of a nuclear weapons program - disappeared because the Iraqis claimed that they had been primarily used for - you guessed it - "mining and civilian construction." No viable evidence backed up Iraqi claims to the IAEA about the whereabouts or use of the missing HMX material.

A comprehensive Google search also reveals no NY Times report about the UN's failure to secure 35 tons of missing explosives at the time.

From the IAEA's 2002 report to the Security Council pursuant to Resolution 1441:

Read More »

CW says: "Undecideds always break for the challenger."

Not according to this Rasmussen Reports survey:

Those who made up their mind earlier in the process tend to be more supportive of Senator Kerry. Those who made up their mind later in the process are more supportive of the President. This is consistent with the fact that Senator Kerry led in most polls through mid-August and has generally trailed since Labor Day and the Republican National Convention.

Among voters who made up their minds in the Spring of 2004 or sooner, Kerry is favored by a 51% to 48% margin.
...
The candidates are essentially tied among those who made up their minds during the summer. However, those who decided in the past month favor President Bush by a 57% to 38% margin.

Keep talking Senator, keep talking. Let's see how many times you can say "Mary Cheney's a lesbian" before election day.

(Thanks to Michael Kim)

UPDATE: Ace has more on the phenomenon.

A newly unearthed CBS News report reveals that a rather thorough search of the Al Qa Qaa weapons facility was conducted by the 3rd ID back in April of 2003.

Read the Belmont Club's excerpt and analysis.

UPDATE: Say Anything has a pretty big development:

Now it seems clear that there was no stash of weapons at Al Qaqaa, according to the United Nations weapons inspectors .

A team made up of Stanford Statistics students and supervising professors is running a predictive election model, and Bush is currently up ... BIG:

Kerry 21.0%
Bush 76.4%

The numbers above represent the probabilities that either candidate wins enough votes on the Electoral College to be elected President, as of the latest available polls.

Why their analysis is different:

Our analysis attempts to make finer distinction from poll data, apart from declaring a state Red, Blue, or Swing. It proceeds in two steps:

Step 1: compute the probability that a given candidate wins a given state, given the latest polls for that state, rather than categorizing the state as Red, Blue, or Swing.

Step 2: roll up the probabilities thus computed for each of the 50 states plus D.C. to infer the nationwide probability that a given candidate wins the majority of the electoral colleges (270 or more votes in the 2004 election).

Interesting. Check it out.

UPDATE: No, I don't put much stock in fancy statistics, either; I rely on yard signs. This one was spotted in Powhatan County, Virginia by reader Ned May:

Je suis d'accord! Chirac est un ver qui mange du fromage!

UPDATE: Princeton however, says "non!"

Predicted median with undecideds: Kerry 309 EV, Bush 229 EV (probability map)

Median outcome, decided voters only: Kerry 264 EV, Bush 274 EV (probability map) (Trends to 10/12)

Zut!

But wait! Is the Princeton analysis unbiased? Check out what the good professor says on his site:

I do not take donations. If you would like to express your support, you are welcome to do so politically through ActBlue. For balance, Republicans may donate through the NRSC.

"For balance." Furthermore:

Dear fellow Kos readers,

I am undertaking a meta-analysis of state polling data to calculate a current snapshot of the probable range of election outcomes. Like most of you, I have a strong bias about how I want the presidential election to turn out. However, I wanted a measure that did not have that bias. Read my preliminary findings here.

Heh. A good scientist never tips his hand, le professeur.

Meeeerd-euh! Je n'y crois pas à ces conneries!

Si les cerveaux étaient de l'essence, ils ne seraient pas suffisants pour faire tourner un kart de fourmis à l'intérieur d'un beignet!

(Via commenter StatSam)

Gallup? Pew Research? Zogby? Well yes, but in addition to those polls ...

7-Eleven did an unscientific poll in 2000, which was uncannily accurate.

The poll gives 7-Eleven customers the choice of a Bush, Kerry or undecided cup when purchasing a fountain soft drink. Poll results are based on the number of cups sold for each candidate. Although unscientific, the poll samples millions and millions of Americans from all walks of life across the nation, including those whose primary phone is a cell phone.

This year the vote is:
Bush: 51.17 %
Kerry: 48.83 %

Heh. Thanks to e-mailer Robert Burke.

Kerry's newest position on Iraq states that President Bush "took his eye off the ball" by confronting Saddam Hussein instead of maintaining exclusive focus on Osama bin Laden and the terrorists in Afghanistan. As I've previously pointed out, Kerry conveniently ignores the fact that he urged an earlier focus on Iraq, after 9-11. From his October 9th, 2002 speech prior to the vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq:

But the administration missed an opportunity 2 years ago and particularly a year ago after September 11. They regrettably, and even clumsily, complicated their own case. The events of September 11 created new understanding of the terrorist threat and the degree to which every nation is vulnerable. That understanding enabled the administration to form a broad and impressive coalition against terrorism. Had the administration tried then to capitalize on this unity of spirit to build a coalition to disarm Iraq, we would not be here in the pressing days before an election, late in this year, debating this now. The administration's decision to engage on this issue now, rather than a year ago or earlier, and the manner in which it has engaged, has politicized and complicated the national debate and raised questions about the credibility of their case.

(Emphasis mine)

Today we can add another piece of evidence to the pile: leftie blogger Mickey Kaus dug up an additional quote from John Kerry's November 16, 2001 television interview with John McLaughlin, given at a point when American forces were still engaged in combat in Afghanistan:

I have no doubt, I've never had any doubt -- and I've said this publicly -- about our ability to be successful in Afghanistan. We are and we will be. The larger issue, John, is what happens afterwards. How do we now turn attention ultimately to Saddam Hussein? How do we deal with the larger Muslim world? What is our foreign policy going to be to drain the swamp of terrorism on a global basis? [Emphasis added]

Kerry was talking about a focus on Iraq barely two months after 9-11.

Kaus comments:

Wait--I thought shifting the focus to Saddam was a "diversion" and distraction from the fight against Al Qaeda! Not, apparently, when Kerry saw an opportunity to score political points by advocating it. [But would he have rushed to war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace!-ed. Maybe not. But, given Kerry's recent he-took-his-eye-off-the-ball rhetoric, it's embarrassing that he brought up pivoting to Iraq "now" long before the Afghan campaign was over--indeed, when the Tora Bora battle against bin Laden's men had barely begun.]

Exactly. Anyone that votes for Kerry because they think that Iraq was "Bush's distraction" is living in a world of spin and denial.

Pat Buchanan apologizes for Lawrence O'Donnell's foamy-mouthed tirade. Truth, Lies and Common Sense has the details and a hilarious photoshop.

Michelle Malkin is not impressed.

The main thrust of the New York Times' attempted hit piece has been blown out of the water by NBC News. As per usual, the Daily Recycler has a video that specifically devastates the Kerry Campaign's resultant talking points.

Watch it.

UPDATE: Say Anything has commentary and a round-up:

It seems very apparent now that this entire story was some sort of attempt at discrediting Bush's position and performance in Iraq shortly before the election.

UPDATE: The NY Times knew, but buried it in the story:

But the Times didn't just do a shoddy job of reporting and failed to identify the possibility that the explosives were gone before our troops arrived. It's worse than that: they did find that out, they just buried it deep in the story and, apparently, never bothered to follow up on it.

UPDATE: Contrary to the Times' report, the missing explosives, HMX and RDX, aren't much more potent than TNT, the material used in Iraqi Improvised Explosive Devices:

The materials can handily be molded and shaped into bombs, he said, but the explosives are only "slightly more powerful" than TNT and not as explosive as C4 chemical explosives.

In contrast, the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 was made of more powerful Semtex, not simply RDX:

The bomb was made out of the plastic explosive Semtex and was activated by a timer.

Semtex does contain RDX, but in a ratio from 1/20th to 1/2.

In addition, the New York Times ran a previous story that remarked that there were over 1 million tons of ordinance loose in Iraq.

The Times and the Kerry campaign are spinning this in all kinds of pleasant directions, no?

UPDATE: An MSNBC producer suddenly backs off their story ...

AR: Was there a search at all underway or was, did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?

LLJ: No. There wasn’t a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was – at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.

Contrast this dubious assessment ("the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own") with the facts that the NYT already reported NBC's findings in their story, this still says absolutely nothing about when the explosives were removed from the storage facility, there are a million plus tons of explosive ordinance in the country anyway, and the explosives weren't really more powerful than conventional arms.

This was a spun hit piece, pure and simple.

UPDATE: "mt" makes the best comment that anyone's ever left on this blog:

El Baradei leaked a false letter that reproduces a previously debunked story. The NY Times in their zeal to see Kerry elected president, run with the story without providing any of the evidence that shows this facility was void of the weapons BEFORE the United States invaded.

What part of this story do you and Geek not understand?? Do I have to get my "Team America" puppets out and put on a show for the "intellectually challenged" out in Bill's audience?

Must. Get. Puppets.

UPDATE: Looks like CBS was originally behind the "October surprise ..."

60 MINS PLANNED BUSH MISSING EXPLOSIVES STORY FOR ELECTION EVE

UPDATE: I've been informed that the Baltimore Sun's account is wrong, and that RDX is much more powerful than TNT. I'm looking into it.

UPDATE: Fred Schoeneman digs up details:

C4 (more correctly, composition C-4) is made of 91% RDX, the remainder being a plasticizer which allows for moldability and stickiness. So anyways, for practical purposes, you can think of RDX as synonymous with C4. C4 has a relative effectiveness factor (R.E. factor)RE factor of 1.34, which makes it significantly more powerful than TNT (which sets the standard at 1.0). Additionally, I think that the RE factor of RDX is actually somewhat higher than for c4, because the plasticizer in c4 is inert.

Semtex has similar properties to c4, and is made up of roughly equal portions of RDX and PETN. PETN has an RE factor of 1.66 -- which would, I'm guessing, make the RE factor of Semtex somewhere between 1.34 and 1.66.

Contrast with the Baltimore Sun's quote from John Pike, "a defense analyst for GlobalSecurity. org:"

The materials can handily be molded and shaped into bombs, he said, but the explosives are only "slightly more powerful" than TNT and not as explosive as C4 chemical explosives.

I suppose I need to do every interview myself. All of them. In the world.

I'll see if I can get Mr. Pike on the horn to clarify.

On Sunday night, I wrote the following caveat about John Kerry's UN deception:

A commenter brings up a reasonable point - Kerry "meant to communicate" that he only met with the permanent members of the Security Council, not "all of them," as he specified on two occasions. I don't believe that this interpretation completely invalidates the significance of Kerry's statements, but in any case, I've been told that verification regarding the permanent five is in the works as well. We'll see. I await further detail with everyone else.

But ... journalist Joel Mowbry posts at Redstate:

Not Russia or China, either

Fox News' reliable Jim Angle is now following up on my Washington Times story, reporting that, in fact, John Kerry only met representatives of four members of the Security Council--a small fraction of the 15 nations who sit on the panel. This also destroys left-wing bloggers' theories that Kerry meant the "permanent representatives" (US, UK, France, China, Russia) when he said the "entire Security Council." Since we know for sure that Kerry met with France, the city-state of Singapore, and the former French colony of Cameroon, that means that at most Kerry met with half of the four other "Perm reps." (Not to mention far, far less than the "entire Security Council.")

And once again, it should be obvious to anyone that the Kerry campaign understands how deep a lie their boss told when they backtracked before the Washington Times story ran. Kerry lied. Repeatedly. On what he himself portrayed as a crucial event in shaping his thinking about the dominant issue of the election. He did this while making honesty and integrity cornerstones of his campaign.

This is a very significant lie, people. It's not a simple exaggeration for Kerry to claim - seven times - to have met with "the entire UN Security Council," "all of them," "in a room just like this at a table like this," when he really only had verified, individual meetings with France, Cameroon and Singapore, and employed the story as a justification for criticism of George Bush's "failed diplomacy" during a nationally televised debate.

I'd probably give him a pass if it had been the Permanent 5, but "France" does not equal "the UN Security Council" or "the permanent members of the Security Council." Kerry's tendency to manufacture strangely detailed stories actually disturbs me - it should disturb you too.

Still no word on whether he wore his "magic hat" to the imaginary meeting.

Read More »

I promised a moonbat pictorial yesterday, but I'm swamped and ran into some minor technical difficulties while working on the post.

Patience. Hopefully the final product will meet with your approval.

In the meantime, here are some quick links to tide everyone over:

*** Ace has some worthy thoughts on war and political will, including a bonus spanking of Andrew Sullivan:

I had hoped that this country would rise to the challenge, and perhaps it still will. Certainly there are those who understand the stakes in this battle, and the catastrophe that would flow from a defeat. But it does seem that 40% of the population -- and perhaps 50-55% -- have no stomach whatsoever for any war that involves more than 100 hours and/or 100 American war dead.
...
What on earth did you think you were doing urging the nation into a war that you would only continue supporting under the most blithely-optimistic of conditions?

Sullivan is not a warhawk. He's a bird of paradise. And that's far worse.

Read the whole thing.

*** The Commissar just celebrated his first anniversary as a blogger. Congrats!

*** Science fiction meets reality at my alma matter:

A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.

The “brain” -- a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish -- gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene.

This brain may be able to fly a plane, but can it coach a football team?

(Via tickled ubergeek Esmay)

*** Florida Cracker features photos of a Bush rally in Ft. Myers. She's also on the hunt for the biggest Insta-suck-up in the blog world.

*** Ever the optimists, the Llamas chronicle Old Media panic:

Today is the first installment of "PANIC!!!!!! Watch", dedicated to watching for signs of panic within the herd of the dinosaur media as a means to assess the status and chances J. Francois has going into next week. I've decided to call it "Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail" as it describes rather accuaretly the emotions of the core of the dinosaur media covering Dubya.

*** And Team America creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone discuss their dislike of Michael Moore in a transcript posted at Protein Wisdom. Jeff adds his own thoughts, of course.

More later.

... and I approve of this message.

(Click on the video)

(Via KS)

Americans aren't the only ones that are tense about this election:

Arabs Worried About the Impact of ‘Second US Civil War’
Amir Taheri, Arab News

JEDDAH, 25 October 2004 — Normally it is Washington that worries about stability in Arab countries.

These days, however, there is much official nail biting in Arab capitals over the threat of instability in the United States.

“What we are witnessing in the United States is their second civil war,” says an Arab diplomat posted to Washington. “The difference is that this war is waged in the media, in churches, on the hustings, and inside many American homes.”

That next week’s presidential election is the closest in US history seems certain. What is causing concern in Arab and other capitals is that the intense passions unleashed by both sides could provoke instability and violence regardless of who wins.

Arab diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, claim that the Democrats, many of whom believe their party was robbed of victory in 2000, are determined to fight hard to dislodge President George W. Bush from the White House.

Fears that the “American street” might explode, in the fashion often attributed to the “Arab street,” may well be exaggerated. But the possibility of US government becoming paralyzed for weeks, if not months, as a result of disputes over election results cannot be discounted.
...
“The prospect of the US being unable to take urgent decisions for months cannot be taken lightly,” suggests an Arab diplomat. “Such paralysis could be dangerous in our region where the situation remains volatile. The war in Iraq, the dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the UN fight with Syria over Lebanon, and the Israeli plan to withdraw from Gaza cannot be put on the backburner for months.”

The poisonous nature of America's political environment has consequences beyond who obtains power in January, not the least of which is setting an example for the fledgling Democracy of our new allies in Iraq.

(Via the Llamas)

I'll take second place to the Corner:

Washington Post:

2004 Best Blogs - Politics & Elections Readers' Choice Awards

Best Inside the Beltway

Winner
National Review - The Corner
www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp

Honorable Mention
INDC Journal
www.indcjournal.com

Barely any SWWNBNOL or Kos in sight, and a lot of Corner wins. Actually, it looks like the right-leaning bloggers cleaned up all around ...

Thank you to all of the readers that voted in the contest and make INDC a regular visit - I sincerely appreciate your support.

People looking for the definition of an overhyped story should compare this Drudge bit to the previous story of a Presidential candidate repeatedly fabricating stories about meetings with foreign diplomats regarding a war in Iraq.

(Be sure to listen to the audio for complete context)

UPDATE: The point of my post (since nobody actually ever reads my posts) is that Edwards, who has previously made inappropriate comments, isn't doing anything that I'd consider particularly newsworthy or scandalous in this case. She's just making a dumb, hesitant, off-the-cuff remark and getting an unfair treatment from Drudge.

I have no idea why anyone would treat that sound clip with outrage, whereas Kerry's repeated remarks about fabricated meetings elicit a "yawn."

UPDATE: If you'd like to peruse more serious examples of worry about post-election riots, check out Kerry Spot.

There's no doubt that this is a scary piece of news:

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

I have a few immediate problems with the Times' unnecessarily hyperbolic treatment, however. The story devotes a great deal of space to the breathless assertion that the explosives are used to "detonate nuclear weapons," but as far as my education permits, a nuclear chain reaction is basically initiated from shape charges of conventional explosives. To correctly jump start an implosion weapon, exact measures of these high-explosives need to be placed at very specific machined angles to create the desired effect. And beyond the expertise involved in designing the weapon, the fundamental challenge has always been the obtention of nuclear material; any terrorist chasing the bomb would have no problem getting his hands on the relatively small amount of requisite high-grade explosives, if he's already able to get his hands on some uranium.

So essentially, the fact that these explosive could be used to initiate a nuclear reaction is not significant, and the Times is attempting to hype the story with a misleading and unnecessarily terrifying focus on nuclear proliferation.

Beyond the Times' propaganda however, the MIA status of 380 tons of high explosives is a story that shouldn't need hype, with its potentially strategic implications to success in Iraq and the war on terror. Who has the goods? If the material disappeared during the post-war looting (an unproven implication/assumption of the story), why hasn't it been used in force? Has it been used at all? Was it moved by Saddam Hussein after the IAEA inspectors pulled out prior to invasion?

That last question is an angle that you won't hear much about in the news.

Another interesting angle of the story is the assumption that munitions in Iraq were leagues safer in the sloppily run bureaucracy of Saddam Hussein's terrorist state (remember the missing WMD documentation), but I suppose that's a much larger, abstract argument. In the here-and-now, there's no getting around the fact that 380 tons of missing high explosive material is very bad news. More detailed observations as information develops.

UPDATE: As a commenter succinctly points out:

I read this story a couple of times and I'm still confused as to exactly WHEN the explosives went missing.

Me too.

UPDATE: Commenter JPickens reads the story closely:

"A European diplomat reported that Jacques Baute, head of the arms agency's Iraq nuclear inspection team, warned officials at the United States mission in Vienna about the danger of the nuclear sites and materials once under I.A.E.A. supervision, including Al Qaqaa."

"But apparently, little was done. A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces "went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal." It is unclear whether troops ever returned. "

So, no IAEA seals were found, and the IAEA had already reported that the stuff was uncontrolled BEFORE the US invasion.

"[B]ut saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal." Did they see any "materials" that were later unguarded? The article is unclear.

UPDATE: Captain Ed offers some perspective, with an on-the-ground assessment from the son of a Navy SEAL in Iraq:

No one doubts that 380 tons of high-tech explosive is a big, big problem. But the Times article fails to put the issue into its proper perspective; the US and its coalition partners have been securing and destroying loose munitions ever since the invasion, as fast as they can. My friend Mike, a Navy SEAL and a contractor in Iraq, worked on this mission during his time there, and described the process in his letters home to his son:

"When Daddy first came to Iraq it was estimated that there was more than 2 million tons of ammunition stored in hundreds of storage places called ‘caches’. We may not have that much ammunition in our own country
...
So let's keep in mind that when we're talking about 380 tons of ammunition, it represents 0.019% of the estimated amount of explosives and munitions that confronted the US at the beginning of the invasion. As Mike makes clear, it will take years to find, secure, and destroy all of these caches, and the Coalition had to prioritize the sites very quickly on their arrival. Absent any IAEA seals, they did what common sense dictated: the US moved its troops into positions where they could fight the enemy and secure communications."

He includes pictures; please read the rest of the post.

UPDATE: See new post.

Arthur Chrenkoff once again has an amazingly comprehensive round-up of the stories that you will never see on the front page of the New York Times:

There are two Iraqs.

The one we more often get to see and read about is a dangerous place, full of exploding cars, kidnapped foreigners and deadly ambushes. The reconstruction is proceeding at a snail's pace, frustration boils over and tensions - political, ethnic, religious - crackle in the air like static electricity before a storm.

The other Iraq is a once prosperous and promising country of twenty-four million people, slowly recovering from physical and moral devastation of totalitarian rule. It's a country whose people are slowly beginning to stand on their own feet, grasp the opportunities undreamed of only two years ago, and dream of catching up on three decades of lost time...

In truth, of course, there is only one Iraq. Even if we don't see it too often reflected in the news coverage, we instinctively know that Iraq of violence and Iraq of recovery can, and do, coexist with each other within the same physical borders. We know that there is nothing mutually exclusive about tragedy and hope, horror and promise, frustration and exuberance. This is true in our own lives; and so it is just as true in lives of whole nations.
...
"In a recent poll 80.5% of Iraqis ..."

"[t]he World Bank said... it had granted Iraq 60 million dollars to build and repair schools ...

Meanwhile, on Iraqi university campuses ...

"[The IMF] predicts a post-conflict economic boom in Iraq this year ...

Read the whole thing.

Security Council members deny meeting Kerry

At the second presidential debate earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said he was more attuned to international concerns on Iraq than President Bush, citing his meeting with the entire Security Council.

"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.

Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."

But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.

(Emphasis mine)

All politicians lie, right? Not quite like this:

Watch the video.

Kerry manufactured meetings out of whole cloth and then presented them as justification for a serious contradiction of George Bush's decision to go to war.

He did something very similar when he previously recited a false story on the Senate floor about an illegal mission into Cambodia, using it as a basis for criticism of Ronald Reagan's intent to provide aid to the Nicaraguan contras.

These aren't exaggerations. This isn't a case of lying about sex. It's a story about a man that's pathological enough to look a nationally televised audience of 55 million people in the eye and tell them a manufactured story, and then use it to propose a conclusion about a deadly serious matter of foreign policy.

This isn't a misused accusation that "KERRY LIED!" by virtue of his previous declarative statements about the "unacceptable threat" from Iraq's WMD programs. This isn't akin to Lawrence O'Donnell's tirade of, "LIAR LIAR LIAR," about items deemed unworthy of public debate.

This is just a "lie." Take it for what its worth.

UPDATE: Please read and absorb this post by the Truth Laid Bear:

Without lapsing into blogger triumphalism, countering the mainstream media's tendency to ignore Kerry's flaws is, after all, what we're here for, isn't it? (Or Bush's flaws, for that matter, but others have that beat covered pretty well.)

I'll admit, my first reaction was a bit of a yawn myself. But then I thought about why that was, and I think it comes down to the fact that I expect Kerry to exaggerate and outright lie when it serves his political purpose of the moment. But the fact that he's a serial exaggerator is exactly why this story should receive attention, not why it should be shrugged off.

So let's not treat Mr. Kerry with the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that I'm sure his squishly little liberal heart would find so offensive. The standard is a simple one: tell the damned truth. It would appear he didn't in a crucial discussion of one of the most critical policy decisions made in years.

So let's make sure that everyone we possibly can reach knows that. And let's not conclude that Teflon John is going to get away with this one just yet --- because the one thing that is true is that if the blogosphere doesn't light a fire under this one, he will walk...

UPDATE: Roger Simon:

Is John Kerry a sociopath? That's an extreme statement but it would seem he has sociopathic tendencies if the new report by Joel Mowbray in the Washington Times turns out to be correct. We all remember the Senator's bizarre (and to date unsubstantiated) claim that he spent Christmas in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Well, he appears to have gilded the lily once again, this time, incredibly, before our very eyes during the second presidential debate.

A commenter brings up a reasonable point - Kerry "meant to communicate" that he only met with the permanent members of the Security Council, not "all of them," as he specified on two occasions. I don't believe that this interpretation invalidates the significance of Kerry's statements, but in any case, I've been told that verification regarding the permanent five is in the works as well. We'll see. I await further detail with everyone else.

UPDATE: I'll try to muster up some commentary on the commentary tomorrow. Suffice it to say that there is an appropriate reaction that lies somewhere between "the world revolves around this" and "yawn."

Predictably, Captain Ed has some of the best analysis.

UPDATE: Remember, a spokesman for France's chief U.N. representative at the time said that Kerry did not have a single group meeting, rather several smaller, even one-on-one meetings. But here's a third instance of Kerry being very specific with his assertion, this time in a December 10, 2003 interview with the Boston Globe:

Secondly, I spent a lot of time before the vote looking at this issue. I went up to the United Nations at the request of some friends. And I met with the entire Security Council in a room just like this at a table like this. I spent two hours with them. (inaudible), just me and the Security Council, asking them questions. The French ambassador, "Is there a time when President Chirac would be ready to come on board? What do we need to do to move the French people to a place where they understand the stakes? Are you prepared to spend money? Do you believe we might have to use force in order to disarm Saddam Hussein? At what point would you be ready to do that?" I went through that with all of them. And I left there convinced that the U.N. was prepared to be deadly serious about this.

(Emphasis mine)

UPDATE: Read Redstate's comprehensive round-up:

... go ahead and re-read the quoted lies above. Notice a surprise guest at the table in Kerry's imaginary international conference? Germans. Kerry is manufacturing a Security Council meeting involving nations that weren't on the Security Council in 2002.

UPDATE: And more from Captain Ed:

Yes, it reveals nothing that we haven't seen before, but in this case the lie is particularly egregious in that he's using it to undermine our foreign policy and diplomacy in a time of war. It's another indication that nothing, not our security or the lives of our troops, comes before his own overwhelming ambitions to seize power and live out the life of his boyhood idol, John Kennedy. And the fact that he's established a firm pattern of deceit and self-aggrandizement shouldn't be treated with a round of indifference; it should be heralded to the American electorate so that they can see Kerry for the prevaricating narcissist that he so clearly is.

"In order to pass the global test, the prepared student must be willing to cheat:"

THE ROLE of Kofi Annan in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal is to be investigated after it emerged that the United Nations secretary-general was in charge of some of the most controversial aspects of the discredited humanitarian programme. Annan, 66, the Ghanaian-born head of the UN and Nobel peace prize winner who is due to retire in 2006, is “co-operating” with the independent commission set up to look into the scandal. He has agreed to waive his diplomatic immunity and face legal action if any wrongdoing is uncovered.

(Via Heard Here)

I've always rejected the notion that John Kerry is an "intellectual," and this seems to go a long way towards dispelling the notion:

To Bush-bashers, it may be the most infuriating revelation yet from the military records of the two presidential candidates: the young George W. Bush probably had a higher I.Q. than did the young John Kerry.

That, at least, is the conclusion of Steve Sailer, a conservative columnist at the Web magazine Vdare.com and a veteran student of presidential I.Q.'s. During the last presidential campaign Mr. Sailer est