DUBAI (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden burst into the U.S. election campaign on Saturday, releasing his first video tape in more than a year to deride President Bush and warn of possible new Sept. 11-style attacks.
Okay, so I spoke too soon. Bin Laden is alive, it would seem, and still the same crafty politician he always was in releasing his October surprise videotape just days before the election. The tape is recent too, as he references Kerry - "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your hands."

OBL: You American people, my speech to you is the best way to avoid another conflict about the war and its reasons and results. I am telling you security is an important pillar of human life. And free people don't let go of their security contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. He should tell us why we didn't hit Sweden for instance. Its known that those who hate freedom don't have dignified souls.like the 19 who were blessed. But we fought you because we are free people, we don't sleep on our oppression. We want to regain the freedom of our Muslim nation as you spill our security, we spill your security.
Why didn’t they attack Sweden? Maybe it’s because Sweden is filled with socialists who would gladly capitulate to terrorists rather than confront them, maybe it’s because the US is the biggest dog on the block, but either way it is irrelevant – bin Laden’s comments seem as disingenuous as they are politically motivated. He’s pretty much endorsing John Kerry. So much the better.

Bin Laden cites Lebanon and Palestine, specifically the 1982 Israeli invasion, as the moment that solidified his need to act. Not cited by bin Laden are the following: US liberation of Afghans from the Soviets. US liberation of Kuwaitis. US liberation of Yugoslav Muslims. You get the picture. Bin Laden isn’t as much unhappy about oppression or else his Jihadists would have been attacking Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq a long time ago. Bin Laden is only unhappy that the Jews still rule Israel. Moreover, it doesn’t matter what we do. Bin Laden attacks us because we separate mosque from state, because we promote individual liberty over the rule of religious leaders or Allah.

Bin Laden’s commentary strikes me as a man who realizes that his September 11 plot backfired – instead of reducing our presence in the Arab-Muslim world we have increased it. Bin Laden seems to be implying a peace treaty should Americans only elect Kerry and change our foreign policy:

We didn't find difficulty dealing with Bush and his administration due to the similarity of his regime and the regims in our countries. Whish half of them are ruled by military and the other half by sons of kings and presidents and our experience with them is long. Both parties are arrogant and stubborn and the greediness and taking money without right and that similarity appeared during the visits of Bush to the region while people from our side were impressed by the US and hoped that these visits would influence our countries. Here he is being influenced by these regimes, Royal and military. And was feeling jealous they were staying for decades in power stealing the nations’ finances without anybody overseeing them. So he transferred the oppression of freedom and tyranny to his son and they call it the Patriot Law to fight terrorism. He was bright in putting his sons as governors in states and he didn't forget to transfer his experience from the rulers of our region to Florida to falsify elections to benefit from it in critical times.
Tell me Osama bin Laden doesn’t pay attention to Democratic rhetoric! Had I not known any better I would have thought I was reading a press release from the Democratic National Committee.

Well, Bush wasn’t president in 1993 when the 9-11 masterminds nephew bombed the WTC; Bush wasn’t president in 1998 when Bin Laden bombed the American embassies in Africa; nor in 2000 when bin Laden bombed the USS Cole. Clinton was. The Democrats controlled the Senate.

But bin Laden, like the Democrats, figure if they repeat the lie that September 11 happened because of Bush enough times it will sound with the voters.

Bin Laden goes on – again, sounding just like the Kerry campaign – to ridicule Bush for “listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting” (continuing to read to the Sarasota Booker Elementary class after the first plane struck tower one) and saying that al Qaeda never intended to kill so many Americans. What’s this! Osama bin Laden, who once gloated on video about the number of deaths he caused, is now saying the high death toll was unintentional?

This is weakness. Indeed, the most important element of this audiotape is that it is so very different than previous tapes. In the past bin Laden and other Jihadists used video to denounce America as a wicked evil that must be erased, yet now he implies that peaceful coexistence is possible should only we not reelect Bush and change our policy (that is, leave Afghanistan and Iraq). It is a tell tale sign that bin Laden miscalculated, is on the ropes and is most certainly losing this war.

This video is a mark of pure desperation.

Andrew Sullivan has more pathetic “evidence” to continue his promotion of the Al Aqaa “missing explosives” story – boy, I may disagree with Sullivan on a lot of things, but I never thought I’d see the day where he became as bad as the mainstream media in his lack of objectivity.

[UPDATE: The NY Times has also picked up on this story, using the same video from an ABC News affiliate to confirm that "explosives" were present after the US invasion.

A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The tape, broadcast on Wednesday night by the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, appeared to confirm a warning given earlier this month to the agency by Iraqi officials, who said that hundreds of tons of high-grade explosives, powerful enough to bring down buildings or detonate nuclear weapons, had vanished from the site after the invasion of Iraq.

But the NY Times makes the same mistake as Andrew Sullivan - they fail to differentiate explosives admittedly found on site by the US military from the 380 tons of UN-labeled HMX and RDX explosives reported missing by the IAEA which the military never found. Keep reading. Meaning, the Times and Sullivan are skewing the story - it's a pathetic attempt that will work in some circles because the Times can effectively bait and switch types of explosives.]

Some of this may seem redundant to you, so just bear with the post. Sullivan wrote:

MORE DATA: This televised evidence lends credence to the notion that al Qa Qaa was indeed looted after the occupation, and not before. But there's a question: why does the Pentagon not know for sure? Why is their investigation ongoing? The missing armaments have been known to the Pentagon for well over a year. The very fact that they still don't know what happened - or even when the site was looted - by itself proves negligence with respect to this issue. And it's worth reiterating that this is no indictment whatsoever of the troops. They were doing what they were told. The only people scapegoating the troops are, yes, the Republicans. Et tu, Rudy?
The “televised evidence” is a local ABC affiliate newscast recapping what one of their embedded reporters found in Al Aqaa on April 18, 2003 (note that date). According to the story the cameraman captured “bunker after bunker of material labelled "explosives." From this, Sullivan is concluding that it must be our missing 380 tons of explosives.

Just a few half-dozen or so problems with the reports and analysis by Sullivan and the Times. Most importantly, the IAEA wasn’t talking about just “explosives” but high-grade HMX and RDX explosives, used for detonating nuclear bombs and other actions which require particularly lethal force. They are comparing “explosive” apples and oranges. The ABC “video evidence” article concerning the 101st discovery report that soldiers found “explosives” but never mentions HMX and RDX or UN labels. This is in synch with previous reports noting that US military units never found any UN-sealed material, HMX and RDX explosives included – they only found supplies of less lethal explosives and weapons.

[UPDATE: Also this morning the Pentagon released video footage of convoys of Iraqi trucks shipping equipment and weapons from several suspected sites such as Al Aqaa to the Syrian border:

The photographs indicate that Iraq was moving arms and equipment from its known weapons sites, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. According to one official, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as NGA, "documented the movement of long convoys of trucks from various areas around Baghdad to the Syrian border."
Next, Sullivan and the NY Times fail to mention yesterday’s ABC News article reporting that the IAEA recorded only 3 tons – not 380 tons – of HMX and RDX at the facility on January 14, 2003. I have a hard time believing that a news hound like Sullivan missed that one. The same article says that the IAEA admitted only checking for the presence of seals where close to 200 tons of HMX and RDX were supposed to be stored, not actually breaking the seals and looking inside. Thus the IAEA took the word of Saddam Hussein over their own eyes. This is truly incompetent considering that the IAEA admitted that the “slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals…”, meaning Hussein could have withdrew the material. All the IAEA had to do was look. But they didn’t – why not, were they scared of what they might not find? Were they scared of the confrontation and handing ammo to Bush? Considering the UN’s record with Oil-for-Food it’s worth asking.

Next, the Third Infantry division entered Al Aquaa on April 4th and "searched the place with the intent of discovering dangerous materials nearly six days before [the 101st arrived]." The Army 75th Exploration Task force searched all 32 bunkers on May 8, 2003 and found no IAEA-marked material (May 8 is 10 days before Sullivan’s silly “video evidence” report).

Even better, Army Col. David Perkins, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, called the chances of material being taken from under the Army’s noses “highly improbable,” especially considering these roads were log-jammed with US military traffic, and that it requires “that the enemy sneaks a convoy of 10-ton trucks in and loads them up in the dark of night and infiltrates them in your convoy and moves out," he said. "That's kind of a stretch too far."

Apparently, it’s not a stretch to Andrew Sullivan, the NY Times and other Kerry cheerleaders.

Finally, as former Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (now author) points out, the US owned the skies – we would have seen any movement of any convoy. (I’ve posted his entire article below). Indeed, you may recall a story about a Russian convoy fleeing Iraq right after the war began. Wonder what they were carrying. You can’t assume it’s the same explosives but the question is worth asking.

As far as Sullivan’s pathetic charge that the Republicans are “scapegoating” the military, that dog just don’t hunt. The military has seized 400,000 tons of explosives from more than 1000 different sites – many that were unknown to our intelligence services, meaning the military did a good job. Yet, it is Kerry, not Bush, failing to ever mention this while campaigning.

Allow me to pat myself on the back. As predicted the CIA and FBI confirmed the newest al Qaeda video as authentic (okay I was wrong on the timing), and - I believe - they did so because they always authenticate these tapes because to not do so just opens the door for them to be criticized should they call something false and it occur as promised. On second thought, maybe I shouldn't pat myself on the back, because the media (and the CIA) are just so damn predictable.(The second way I was right in a moment):

[Drudge] One senior federal official alleged ABCNEWS is now holding back from broadcasting any portion of the video out of fear it will be seen as a political move by the network during election week. One ABC source, who demanded anonymity, said Thursday morning, the network was struggling to find a correct journalistic "balance." "This is not something you just throw out there while people are voting," the ABC source explained. A second ABC source told DRUDGE Thursday morning: "ABCNEWS has shared this tape with both the CIA and the FBI as part of our reporting process. ABC News is committed to accurate, credible and complete journalism and is applying the same scrutiny to this tape that we apply to all raw information. ABCNEWS continues to report this story aggressively."
No, no. We're not that stupid, ABC News.

As I stated a few days ago, the reason why ABC not releasing portions of this tape that threaten consequences should Bush be reelected is because they worry that the al Qaeda video-threat could actually help Bush. Who doubts that if they thought this tape would hurt Bush ABC News would delay its release? Please! Who ya fooling? Ironic, isn’t it, that 60 Minutes and the NY Times were running an exaggerated “missing weapons” story to hurt Bush, while ABC News is withholding this full videotape because it helps Bush.

[ABC News] While CIA officials say they have not been able to authenticate the 75-minute tape, an agency spokesman says it "appears to have been produced by al Qaeda's media organization, al Sahab productions." The tape is marked with the same logo and graphics seen on previous videos released by al Qaeda. The man on the tape is identified only as "Azzam the American." U.S. officials say they had not previously known of the nom de guerre. His face is never fully visible and he makes no reference to where in the United States he might have lived.
"No, my fellow countrymen you are guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. You are as guilty as Bush and Cheney. You're as guilty as Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and Powell," he says in what he calls his message to America. "After decades of American tyranny and oppression, now it's your turn to die. Allah willing, the streets of America will run red with blood matching drop for drop the blood of America's victims."
My gut feeling is that Americans don't like to be told "Vote for so-and-so, or else," which is exactly what this tape does.

Besides, releasing this tape just before the election reminds voters that the threat of terrorism is still very real - something of which Kerry, despite all his improving numbers, still has trouble convincing voters that he is the better choice.

This is yet another high-profile videotape that does NOT feature Osama bin Laden. Comic relief, dear readers. I’m back to thinking the guy is long dead. I’m even beginning to wonder about Ayman al-Zawahiri – not even he appears on this tape. Just some dude we’ve never heard of before today.

[Washinton Post] For the Kerry campaign, a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency to the U.N. Security Council Monday on the missing explosives has buttressed Kerry's arguments that the Bush administration has mismanaged the war in Iraq, in part by failing to dispatch enough troops to secure sensitive sites and stop looting.
This is where charges of liberal media bias are simply indisputable – since that IAEA report came out there has been report after report released countering the IAEA and Kerry criticisms, but the Washington Post just ignores them.

Asked what he will do if George W. Bush wins another term, [George] Soros lamented, “I shall go into some kind of monastery. If we endorse him [Bush], my next question will be ‘what’s wrong with us?’”
Not us, Mr. Soros. You.

Even the liberal Washington Post editorial board suspects that the United Nations Mohammed ElBaradei was motivated by political purposes:

It's worth noting, meanwhile, that the sensation over the missing explosives emanates from the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose director, the Egyptian Mohamed ElBaradei, has been an adversary of the Bush administration on Iraq since well before the war. This month Mr.
ElBaradei delivered a report to the U.N. Security Council complaining of "widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement" of dual-use equipment at sites once related to Iraq's nuclear program -- at least some of which apparently was done by the U.S. mission itself. News of the missing explosives then leaked to the U.S. media within days of its receipt by his agency. On the same day that it appeared in the New York Times, Mr. ElBaradei took the unusual step of submitting a second letter to the Security Council confirming the report. The fact that he was providing easy fodder for Mr. Kerry's campaign just eight days before the presidential election evidently did not deter this U.N.
civil servant.
If Bush wins this election - and I pray he does simply to begin paying back all of our treacherous so-called allies - he needs to come out swinging and expose the United Nations for what it is. He needs to put his crosshairs on ElBaradei. He needs to publicly and vocally condemn UN corruption of the Oil-for-Food program, and preferably do so in front of the General Assembly. He needs to point out that one-fourth of all UN costs are paid by the American taxpayer and the UN can either clean up its act or no longer be funded.

Because politics is politics, he won't do these things. But he needs to.

SHOULD the United Nations decide who be comes our president? Sen. John Kerry wouldn't mind. He's shamelessly promoting the lies that the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency is telling about Iraq.
Indeed. As promised above, these are the comments of former Lt. Col. and author Ralph Peters. He blasts Senator Kerry for becoming the willing dupe of the United Nations. If Kerry is trying to distance himself as being a candidate puppet of the United Nations he's doing a lousy job.

Peters makes 11 important points regarding the incredible logistics feat that would have been necessary to move 380 tons of explosives.
Here's a few of the last ones:

Eight: If the Iraqis had used military transport vehicles of five-ton capacity, it would have required 80 trucks for one big lift, or, say, 20 trucks each making four trips. They would have needed special trolleys, forklifts, handling experts and skilled drivers (explosives aren't groceries). This operation could not have happened either during or after the war, while the Al-Qaqaa area was flooded with U.S. troops.

Nine: We owned the skies. And when you own the skies, you own the roads. We were watching for any sign of organized movement. A gaggle of non-Coalition vehicles driving in and out of an ammo dump would have attracted the attention of our surveillance systems immediately.

Ten: And you don't just drive high explosives cross-country, unless you want to hear a very loud bang. Besides, the Iraqis would have needed to hide those 400 tons of explosives somewhere else. Unless the uploaded trucks are still driving around Iraq.
Read the whole thing.

This WSJ editorial is so good and so important I'm not just going to say "read the whole thing," I'm going to post it too - you don't even have to click. Just read. While reading, also consider the number of Iraqis who died to fill the coffers of our corrupt “allies.”

Saddam Hussein exploited the [UN Oil-for-Food] program to run the largest bribery scheme in the history of the world.

Yes, we mean that literally. Total turnover between 1996 and 2003 was about $97 billion, or $64.2 billion in oil sales and $32.9 billion worth of food and other "humanitarian" goods. Crucially, Saddam was able to manipulate the program largely because U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan--who was given more or less complete discretion to design Oil for Food by the Security Council resolution that created it--allowed him to pick and choose the buyers of his oil and the sellers of the humanitarian goods.

This meant the Iraq dictator could reward his friends and political allies with oil at below market prices and goods contracts at inflated ones. In the middle of the program, he also started demanding kickbacks on the contracts to add to the stream of unmonitored revenue he was already getting from oil smuggling.

It can't be stressed enough that both the Duelfer and Volcker investigations confirm that this global web of corruption is no mere allegation trumped up by Ahmed Chalabi and "neoconservatives," as U.N. officials tried to pretend in January when Iraq's al Mada newspaper published a list of the oil voucher recipients.

Mr. Duelfer's list of recipients--which more or less confirms al Mada's--was compiled based on information from current and former Iraqi officials and lists maintained by former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan (now in U.S. custody) and the former Iraqi Oil Minister. Mr. Volcker's lists--which include the 248 companies that bought Iraqi oil under the program and the 3,545 companies supplying humanitarian goods--are compiled from the U.N.'s own records and cross-checked against Iraqi and other sources, including the French bank BNP Paribas that administered program revenues.

High-level officials of Saddam's regime have told investigators that oil and goods contracts were always awarded with an eye to helping Saddam politically, particularly to promote the lifting of the sanctions. The Volcker data bears this out. Iraq's top customer was Russia, whose firms bought $19.2 billion worth of Iraq oil and exported $3.3 billion in humanitarian goods. Fellow Security Council member France was a distant but significant second, at $4.4 billion and $2.9 billion respectively. China is also high on the list.

Oil voucher recipients are alleged to include the Russian presidential office, former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, and even former Oil for Food program director Benon Sevan of the U.N. Just this week our news side colleagues reported that French authorities have placed under formal investigation a top official of French oil giant Total, for possible misuse of funds including payment of the Iraqi kickbacks. Before the war Total was also openly courting Baghdad for the rights to develop two large Iraqi oil fields.

Against this backdrop, it is impossible to take Secretary-General Annan seriously when he calls it "inconceivable" that this could have affected the Security Council's handling of Iraq. "I don't think the Russian or the French or the Chinese government would allow [themselves] to be bought," he said recently. But even in the unlikely event that they weren't too worried about the possible financial losses, they surely never wanted this information to see the light of day.

Mr. Annan would be on stronger ground pointing out that Saddam was seeking agents of influence within the U.S. as well. The very first oil voucher recipient under Oil for Food appears to have been Texas tycoon Oscar Wyatt, who had tried to save Saddam from U.S. force before the first Gulf War. The records allege that Mr. Wyatt and his company took 71.8 million barrels of oil under Oil for Food for a profit of $22.8 million. According to a weekend story in the Los Angeles Times, since 1991 he and his wife have given more than $700,000 to federal candidates and PACs (about 75% to Democrats) and Saddam may have regarded him as a way to get to the Clinton Administration.

Another name appearing on the Duelfer and Volcker lists is a politically connected Detroit-area businessman named Shakir al-Khafaji. Our Robert L. Pollock reported on Mr. al-Khafaji's oil vouchers back in March, based on the al Mada list and information from an Iraqi intelligence source. Mr. al-Khafaji later conceded taking such vouchers, so his appearance on the Duelfer list is not surprising.

More interesting is the appearance of his South African-based Falcon Trading Group on the Volcker list of humanitarian goods suppliers. At about $50 million, he did a serious amount of business. What's more, a source on Representative Henry Hyde's House International Relations Committee tells us Falcon was on the so-called "exempt" list, which was meant for highly valued individuals and companies that were allowed to circumvent normal Iraqi contract procedures.

Why might Mr. al-Khafaji have been highly valued? Could it be because he financed an anti-sanctions documentary by former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter to the tune of $400,000? Or brought Mr. Ritter to Baghdad to address Saddam's rubberstamp parliament? Or brought a U.S. Congressional delegation including former House Minority Whip David Bonior, and Democratic Representatives Jim McDermott and Mike Thompson to Baghdad in late 2002 to denounce President Bush's Iraq policy? Or because he did the same with South African politicians, possibly influencing that country's pro-Saddam stance? Mr. al-Khafaji did not return a call this week seeking comment.

Trading with Iraq under Oil for Food wasn't necessarily illegal (at least if you weren't paying the kickbacks). And we're not suggesting Mr. Ritter and the Congressmen were anything other than useful idiots. But it is surely a matter of concern that Saddam may have been able to use the Oil for Food scheme to advance his interests even within the United States. We hope federal authorities have been looking into this activity, as well as the other Iraqi-American (Samir Vincent) on these lists.

Now, let's step back and put this all in context--the context offered by Mr. Duelfer's report. The news there isn't that there appear to have been no large stockpiles of WMD in Iraq at the time of the March 2003 invasion. That's been clear for more than a year. Rather, the news is that we now know straight from Saddam himself, his scientists, and his fellow high-level detainees that Saddam intended to restart his weapons program the second U.N. sanctions were lifted. And we now know that he would never have unambiguously come clean on his WMD programs because he wanted his enemies (especially the U.S. and Iran) to believe he had them.

In other words, had the weapons inspections been allowed to continue, as Mr. Kerry says he wanted, a U.S. President would have eventually faced the same uncertainties and the same agonizing choice that Mr. Bush did when he decided to commit the U.S. to war. Remember, too, that the final round of inspections was won only with a build-up of U.S. troops in the Gulf, and that a decision to accept as satisfactory the desultory cooperation that Saddam gave these inspectors would have meant overwhelming international pressure for immediate lifting of all sanctions.

There were reasonable arguments against having gone into Iraq. But in light of this latest evidence, the arguments Mr. Kerry and his team have been making--that more inspections might have yielded something, and that the real coalition of the bribed at the Security Council might ever have supported force--don't pass the laugh test, never mind the global one.

Dr. Brian Ziegler wrote a guest column for FloridaToday.com on Amendment #3. All I need to know is that the trial lawyers are against it. But for the rest of you here are some facts by Dr. Ziegler.

The facts about Amendment 3 are that the only thing it addresses is limiting outrageous attorney contingency fees in malpractice cases so the injured patient, the one who truly deserves compensation, will be the one who gets most of the money.

Fact: Attorneys will still get ample compensation for their work. All of their expenses will be paid first, and they would then make $150,000 on the first million dollars of a settlement or verdict, then an additional 10 percent of any excess amount.

Fact: This amendment places no limit on verdicts or settlements, and in no way interferes with a patient's right to sue.

Fact: This amendment will not affect availability of attorneys to represent injured patients. It is modeled after legislation that has been in place for years in California, and there is no shortage there of lawyers representing malpractice victims.

On Wednesday, another FLORIDA TODAY guest columnist, who happens to be a local trial attorney, felt this amendment did not belong in the Constitution. What he failed to tell you is that the Florida Supreme Court has already ruled that the Legislature does not have the power to regulate lawyer's fees.

Thus the only remedy for outrageous fees that take advantage of the most vulnerable portion of our population is the initiative process currently under way.

Why is this important?

Currently, unscrupulous trial lawyers will pursue meritless malpractice cases, banking that a sympathetic client, be it a child or a deceased patient, will sway a jury to ignore the facts that show no medical malpractice was involved.

All they need to do is hit the jackpot just once, and their take-home reward will keep them supplied for many more attempts. Limiting their fees to a reasonable amount and making sure the injured patient gets most of the money will help stop this runaway lottery system.

Tell the trial lawyers enough is enough. Vote "yes" on Amendment 3.

Folks, this is a concerted effort by the United Nations to try and defeat Bush in the November election. Turns out the UN gravely exaggerated the amount of "missing" explosives.

But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported. The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility. But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported. The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the start of the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003.
3 tons. Not 380. Not even 30. Just 3. And that was likely missing by the time the US got to the facility. This is a coverup. The UN's Mohammed ElBaradei - a long time critic of the war - had these documents and knew the truth, but proceeded exaggerate the am0unt of "missing" explosives in order to hurt Bush, and in order to cover up the fact that the UN didn't do its job in securing these explosives (which could have been used, among other things, ask test detonators for any future nuclear program in Iraq).

Meanwhile, Mr. Kerry, what's next? Which exaggerated or forged document will you rely on next to try and win? What fabricated news story will you focus on?

I'm not going to alledge that Kerry campaigners, UN officials, foreign leaders, liberal billionaire activists and media representatives are all meeting in a smokey room somewhere, but clearly there are a lot of people so eager to bring down Bush that they will say, or fabricate, anything at this point to try and defeat him.

Oh, and I missed this last paragraph...

The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.
Just like everybody had been criticizing - the UN didn't bother to actually break the seals and look inside, they just saw the seal was there and continued on, thus taking the word of Saddam Hussein over their own eyes.

Did Russia move the high explosives "missing" from Al Aqaa before the war? Did they move Iraqi WMD? The Washington Times believes the answer to the first question is yes. This report his jogged my memory big time - I recall, and will search for, previous stories related to the Russian role of covering up Iraq's intelligence and weapons secrets before the war. They were, after all, Iraq's main military supplier for many, many years. According to this latest report the Al Bashair Trading Co. was the main business fron t for this transaction. This isn't the first time that Al Bashair's name has come up (the company is related to the Syrian president, Bashir Assad. But more on that later).

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 involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.

"That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."

The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.

... Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.
Very interesting, no?

Although Russia denied it, the Australian media reported in 2003 that Russian officials fled from Baghdad with Iraqi intelligence documents for the purpose of "protecting Russian interests in post-war Iraq; in determining to what extent the Saddam regime may have financed Russian political parties and movements; and in providing Russia access to intelligence that Iraqi agents conducted in other countries."

Romanian Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking Soviet bloc intelligence officer ever to defect to the West, wrote in the Washington Times in August 2003 that Russia was the most obvious suspect for removing Iraqi WMD because it was the partner who supplied Iraq in the first place. Pacepa said that when he was in the Soviet intelligence sphere the Russians had a similar plan to evaculate Libyan WMD, called "Sarindar, meaning "emergency exit."" The purpose was to prevent linkage of WMD sales back to the Russians. Pacepa says that former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, a friend of Saddam Husseins, informed him of the plan for Iraq before 1991 from Gen. Yevgeny Primakov, the Russian in charge of Iraqi-Russia WMD program.

Russia also trained Iraqi agents as recently as September 2002, even while Russia was opposing US military involvement in Iraq. Russia also spied on UK Prime Minister Tony Blair for the Iraqis. In 2003 the UPI reported that Russia had advised Saddam Hussein on the American war plan, helping him prepare and defend for the invasion. And here you thought the Cold War was over.

Finally, as heavily detailed in the past by both the UPI and LA Times, the Bashir Trading Co. and SES International Corp. have both been involved in assisting arms to and from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. This military ring also implicated the North Koreans, who conducted business deals with Hussein's government at Bashir HQ in Syria. The UPI also reported in February 2003 that Bushra al Assad, Bashir Assad's sister, and her husband Gen. Assaf Chawkat, the second in command of Syrian military intelligence, accepted millions of dollars in return for hiding Iraqi WMD before the war.

According to Matt Drudge ABC News was waiting for just days before the election to release what they believe is an al Qaeda videotape threatening to fill the streets with blood because it elected George W. Bush as president – a clear threat to the country should it elect Bush again next week. That ABC News may have been purposely holding the tape to skew political outcomes is in itself just the latest – and now almost daily – occurrence of the media pulling for a Bush defeat, but the question remains whether, if true, such a video threat would hurt Bush. Indeed, it might help him.

The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11. "The streets will run with blood," and "America will mourn in silence" because they will be unable to count the number of the dead. Further claims: America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Al Qaeda. ABCNEWS strongly denies holding the tape back from broadcast over political concerns during the last days of the election.The CIA is analyzing the tape, a top federal source tells the DRUDGE REPORT. ABCNEWS obtained the tape from a source in Waziristan, Pakistan over the weekend, sources tells DRUDGE. "We have been working 24 hours a day trying to authenticate [the tape]," a senior ABCNEWS source said Wednesday morning, dismissing a claim that ABC was planning to air portions of the video during Monday's WORLD NEWS TONIGHT.The terrorist's face is concealed by a headdress, and he speaks in an American accent, making it difficult to identify the individual. US intelligence officials believe the man on tape may be Adam Gadhan - aka Adam Pearlman, a California native who was highlighted by the FBI in May as an individual most likely to be involved in or have knowledge of the next al Qaeda attacks. According to the FBI, Gadahn, 25, attended al-Qaida training camps and served as an al-Qaida translator. The disturbing tape runs an hour -- the man simply identifies himself as 'Assam the American.'
Yahiye Adam Gadahn is from California (but of course!) and worked for an environmental newspaper called EcoNews (but of course again! The extreme Left marriage to fundamentalism continues.) Frankly, I don’t see how a tape that reminds Americans about the threat of Islamic terrorism is harmful to Bush! It makes you wonder if ABC News really decided to sit on the tape while debating just that – um, maybe we should release it after the election...

In any event it sounds like the CIA is unsure what to make of the tape. They probably don’t want to be involved in anything political before next Tuesday, but I’d imagine that eventually they will verify this tape as accurate – mainly because it’s a lose-lose situation if they do not: they don’t want to deny it and have something later blow up in their face, and they don’t want to make any argument downplaying the threat of terrorism in general. They have nothing to lose by saying that the tape is “probably” true (note, like your local meteorologist, they always use such qualifiers).

Fortunately, the MSM [mainstream media] did not account for the cumulative braking effect of the new media, thanks to which we already know the knowable, salient facts. Less than 400 tons of the high explosives HMX and RDX were last physically eyeballed at al Qaqaa, an Iraqi munitions facility associated with Saddam's nuclear program, in January 2003 by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, headed by Mohammed El-Baradei, a motivated opponent of the Bush administration. The explosives may still have been there in March 2003, before the American invasion of Iraq.

On that score, we must say "may" rather than "were" because the IAEA inspectors did not actually inspect the explosives. Rather, they assumed the explosives were still there because the IAEA seals previously placed on them had not been broken. Thereafter, according to the Times, the American Third Infantry Division engaged Iraqi forces at al Qaqaa on April 3, but proceeded forward without securing the facility. The 101st Airborne also passed through the facility around April 10, spending a day, performing at least a cursory search, and not locating any containers with IAEA seals.
Thus, writes former US prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, it's pretty simple to conclude that while Iraq only may have possessed the explosives prior to March 2003, they were definately gone by April 3 because military forces did not spot any UN seals whatsoever.

McCarthy adds, "It is amusing to find the same media outlets who blare that "Bush lied" about Saddam's possession of WMDs leaping to conclusions about their whereabouts of these explosives on these facts.

McCarthy's final note is just as disturbing - the UN didn't bother to break the seals in March 2003 to even check to see if Saddam Hussein had cleverly removed the explosives and replaced the seals, rather they just took a dicatator with a history of lying at his word. This same UN now is involved with moderating arms disputes with lying regimes in Iran and North Korea. Who is the incompetent party in this?

Oh, and thanks to Bush, not Kerry, 400,000 tons of Iraq's high explosives have been seized.

Meanwhile the media keeps trying to get Bush in an October surprise.

Here's more evidence of the Kerry-Mainstream Media coalition's overzealous glee to damage Bush without the evidence to support them. The NBC embedded reporter with the 101st Division wasn't the only reporter to print a story on the Al Qaqaa facility being empty. CBS' David Martin was with the 3rd Infantry Division when they also entered Al Qaqaa on April 4.

According to Martin's CBS report the 3rd ID found thousands of boxes of white powder thought first to be chemical or biological agents but later thought to be explosives (but not the 380 missing tons of HDX and RDX).

(Curiously, it should be added, was the packaging the 3rd ID discovered - "Peabody [Col. John Peabody] said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare. He also said they discovered atropine, used to counter the effects of nerve agents.") Even if this material was no longer there it clearly was occuring under the nose of the UN inspection teams from late 2002 until the US invasion.

In fact the CBS story never mentions HDX or RDX, giving more evidence the missing explosives were not there by the time the US arrived. But the CBS story makes clear that the facility had been tampered with before the US arrived.

Belmont Club writers correctly acknowledge that the NY Times story - so eager to pin missing weapons on Bush - interviewed the wrong military leader when they learned from Col. Joseph Anderson of the 101st that his unit was under no orders to specifically search for weapons. The Times should have interviewed somebody from the 3rd ID, which "searched the place with the intent of discovering dangerous materials nearly six days before."

As many pundits clarified yesterday, the United Nations and particularly its nuclear watchdog of the IAEA have little room to criticize any US failure to seize explosives from Iraq (and the US has seized some 400,000 tons since the war began) considering the international body had years of opportunity to seize or destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapon caches. Indeed, just before the war began, and after the UN admitted that Iraq had already misplaced 38 tons of these explosives, the IAEA went to inspect the Al Aqaa weapons facility and just took at face value that because a few seals were in place the explosives on site must still have been present – one heck of an assumption, and foolish not to break the seals and check the facility first hand considering Saddam Hussein’s record of lying and obstruction.

Well, it grows deeper. According to the current head of the CIA’s Iraqi Survey Group Charles Duelfer, himself a former UN inspector, that the IAEA failed to destroy or seize the high explosives from Iraq even after ordered to do so in 1995.

The chief American weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, told The New York Sun yesterday that in 1995, when he was a member of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq, he urged the United Nations' atomic watchdog to remove tons of explosives that have since been declared missing.
Mr. Duelfer said he was rebuffed at the time by the Vienna-based agency because its officials were not convinced the presence of the HMX, RDX, and PETN explosives was directly related to Saddam Hussein's programs to amass weapons of mass destruction.

Instead of accepting recommendations to destroy the stocks, Mr. Duelfer said, the atomic-energy agency opted to continue to monitor them.

By e-mail, Mr. Duelfer wrote the [NY] Sun, "The policy was if acquired for the WMD program and used for it, it should be subject for destruction. The HMX was just that. Nevertheless the IAEA decided to let Iraq keep the stuff, like they needed more explosives.
The head of the IAEA at that time? None other than Hans Blix, the former head of UNMOVIC, a vocal critic of the war in Iraq, and the man most responsible for inaccurately reporting Iraq as not having a nuclear program before the 1991 Gulf War.

Now, however, the Kerry campaign admits that the information that is the basis of Senator Kerry's statements and his campaign advertisement may not even be true. Pressed on Tuesday afternoon about the accuracy of the allegations on Fox's Big Story with John Gibson, Richard Holbrooke, a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign, said: "You don't know the truth and I don't know the truth." He later underscored this point: "I don't know the truth."

That minor issue hasn't kept the Kerry campaign from creating a television ad based on what may well be untruthful claims. The ad, called "Obligation" shows John Kerry speaking solemnly about the responsibilities of a president.

"[The ad claims]... In Iraq, George Bush has overextended our troops and now failed to secure 380 tons of deadly explosives."

The claim is, well, explosive. John Kerry says the Bush administration's incompetence is killing U.S. soldiers. Reporting from a variety of news sources suggests that the explosives may have been gone before the U.S. troops arrived. In any case, Kerry's top advisers have conceded that their claims may prove false.

Yet, Kerry has leveled an extraordinarily harsh wartime charge against President Bush.

Shouldn't he at least make sure that such a charge is true?
-- William Kristol

Mr. Bush believes in the "transformational power of liberty"; that "freedom is on the march"; that the spirit of liberty that created America in 1776 has brought freedom and opportunity to Afghanistan and will bring it to Iraq and every other nation that grasps its principles. It is a powerful message that Americans understand. Mr. Kerry believes we are imposing democracy on people, instead of which we must bring everyone together in international forums where America's decisions must pass a "global test." As the New York Times noted, Mr. Kerry "sees himself as an ambassador president," intending his first act in office to be a speech to the United Nations to recast American foreign policy.
-- Pete Du Pont

Read this report by MEMRI... these UN and antiwar leaders from the world are dirty with Saddam’s blood money. It’s sick what little attention this story receives compared to other media focuses. MEMRI – the Middle East Media Research Institute – a translator of Middle Eastern media reports that the Iraqi newspaper Al Mada, which broke the story of 270 global leaders and entrepreneurs implicated in a bribery scheme with Saddam Hussein through the UN Oil-For-Food (UNOFF) program, has now published a follow up story designed to differentiate those individuals and conglomerates that had a logical vested interest in the UNOFF program versus those who had nothing to do with the oil industry. The new Al Mada report also reconciles discrepancies between it’s previous report and the final report by Charles Duelfer of the CIA’s Iraqi Survey Group.

Al-Mada differentiates between "end-users" and "not-end users," the latter term referring to voucher recipients who had no refineries and, in many instances, were not in the oil business to start with. According to Al-Mada, its list is limited "to non-end users and to intermediary companies." It is this list in Al-Mada that has triggered multiple investigations.

a. The number of barrels allocated vs. the number of barrels lifted. According to Duelfer, by the end of the final phase of the Oil for Food Program, Iraq had allocated 4.4. billion barrels of oil to approved recipients. However, only 3.4 billion barrels were actually lifted (loaded and exported). [a difference of 1 billion barrels]

b. Contracts that had been signed but listed as "not performed," meaning that the transaction was formally concluded but no oil was lifted, for reasons that were not given.

... The names of some oil voucher recipients stand out. One such person is Mawlana Abd Al-Manan who was allocated a total of 43.2 million barrels, most of it lifted by the Swiss branch of the Russian company Lukoil. One shipment was lifted by "Jordan Grain," whose name is unusual.

The intriguing part about Al-Manan is a reference made about him by the Iraqi intelligence service in a letter dated September 15, 1999. The letter referred to an instruction, delivered by phone, by "His Excellency the Director of Intelligence" to M5/15/2 instructing him to host "the Bangladeshi Mulana Muhammad Abd Al-Manan and his son Muhammad Mu'een at the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad at the expense of the Mukhabarat."

Another person who was directly involved in terrorism is Abu Al-Abbas, who was allocated a total of 11.5 million barrels, some of which was lifted by Vilma Oil Consultant, a Spanish company. Abu Al-Abbas has also sold 1.5 million barrels through Ayad Ammora and Partnership (Syria), which is also listed as a recipient of vouchers for 18 million barrels.
Abu Al-Abbas was first mentioned in a "top secret and personal" letter (No.110/2/43 of 25 January 1993) from the Iraqi intelligence service to the secretary of the president of the republic. The letter listed the terrorist organizations that could be employed by Iraq to carry out sabotage and terrorism activities against American interests in the Arab world.
Sabotage and terrorism... but wait, I thought Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with terrorism?

There is also the case the of the Syrian author Hamida Na'na', who wrote a biography of Iraq's former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, and was reportedly engaged in writing a biography of Ali Hassan Al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali. Ms. Na'na had done her oil business though Gemmar (a Swiss company), Devon Petroleum (a Panamanian company), and was also listed with African Petroleum Ltd (Namibia). Her last contract has "not performed."

Gemmar was also the trading company used by the Iraqi-French Friendship Society (15.1 million barrels), the former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua (12 million barrels), and the Lebanese Alias Al-Farzali (multiple vouchers), who was listed under France.

The most intriguing of all is the case of Benon Sevan, the UN director of the Oil for Food Program. Mr. Sevan, who was identified in the lists with the United Nations but listed under African-Middle East (Panama), has received several vouchers. The last one for 1.5 million barrels appears to coincide with Mr. Sevan's visit to Iraq and his meeting with Iraq's Deputy President Taha Yassin Ramadan in February, 2002. At the meeting, Mr. Sevan was quoted by Babil, the daily which was owned by Saddam's son Uday, as stating that the program "suffers from paralysis." Following his meeting with Sevan, Ramadan declared: "We call on the United Nations to exercise its role to ensure proper implementation of the memorandum of understanding on the Oil for Food Program."
Just sick. And we’re arguing about explosives that were already gone? And Kerry dares argue that containment was working? Yeah, working for Saddam Hussein, apparently. He used billions of dollars in oil money to prop up his regime and thumb his nose at the world. This wasn’t containment – it was a payoff operation that would make a mafia don blush.

Joe Brown of the Tampa Tribune explains why it is so necessary that Floridians vote yes to amendment #2, designed to make it more difficult to pass amendments. It's because of our "Califoriniacation" of our amendment process we now are staring in the face the mammoth and expensive tasks of class room size and high speed bullet trains which Floridians would never support on a daily basis.

They [amendments] included such nonsense as lowering the voting age to 16, legalizing marijuana, abolition of alimony obligations, labeling of foods that are genetically engineered, making legislators spend four days a year as substitute teachers, and limiting school bus rides to two hours each way.

In the state constitution!

And they would have likely passed since most voters don't study the amendments and, after going through a long list of candidates, don't feel like reading the 50 to 75 words of even one, much less eight. So they just vote ``yes.''

Indeed, the Florida Constitution, which is five times longer than the Constitution of the United States, is being cluttered with garbage. While the U.S. Constitution has been amended only 27 times in 215 years, Florida's has been amended 95 times since 1970.

The current process to amend the Florida Constitution requires gathering 488,722 validated signatures of registered voters throughout all state congressional districts, and language review by the Florida Supreme Court. Then it's put on the ballot.

It sounds so grass-roots, but it's mostly limited to well-financed special-interest groups, and there's no debate. Once an amendment passes, it must be implemented, regardless of cost, feasibility or conflicting interests.

Amendment 2, the proposed ``No Surprises'' provision on the November ballot, is the first step in bringing some sanity to this mess.

Currently, signatures gathered through the citizen initiative process are due only 91 days prior to the election, leaving little time for education and discussion of proposed amendments. Amendment 2 would move the signature deadline to Feb. 1 of the election year and require the Supreme Court to review it by April 1.

Earlier this year, Marian Johnson, executive director of the Florida Chamber of Commerce Political Institute, explained why this process needs reforming:

``Special interest groups have created an atmosphere of amendment madness with 51 pending petitions ready to follow the bullet train, fishing nets and rules for pig farming into the fundamental governing document of our state. This needs to be addressed before our state becomes ungovernable ... and before our economy and business climate are shredded beyond repair like California.''

58,000 absentee ballots are missing in Broward county, a heavily Democratic county and one of three counties made infamous by the 2000 election. They represent 5 percent of the electorate. However, Broward deputy supervisor of elections Gisela Salas wanted to emphasize that while the absentee ballots are missing, never delivered to recipients, those persons who have not yet received a ballot but suspect they should have may still vote before or on November 2.

Salas said the missing absentee ballot forms did not yet represent a major election problem because people had the option of voting early before next Tuesday, when Bush is being challenged by Democratic Sen. John Kerry.

Poll workers will be able to cross-check through lap top computers hooked up to a central database whether voters had already sent in absentee ballots. On election day itself, those who requested absentee ballots will only be able to vote in person if they bring the blank absentee forms with them.

"A lot of people are very concerned because they think that just because they requested an absentee ballot, now they're stuck in a limbo situation where they don't have their ballot and they can't vote," Salas said.

"So most definitely we want to get the message out that yes they can go to an early voting site and cast their ballot and that's what we would encourage them to do," she said.
Just like an election worker in a Democratic county to forget that this solution does no good to those in military service – traditionally conservative voters – who will have no way to recast votes. Consider the percentages. Then consider the likelihood that the party which unsuccessfully sued to disqualify military ballots in 2000 just happens to be the same county where in this election over 58,000 absentee ballots are lost. It smells. Bad.

Headliene: Thousands Of Lawyers Prepare For Battle In Florida

Oh, were they only fighting to the death! We could arm them with swords, line them across from one another and have them fight for survival like Braveheart. Such a glorious sight may be the only way to eliminate friviolous and innumerable lawsuits before we drown from them.

Did Russia move the high explosives "missing" from Al Aqaa before the war? Did they move Iraqi WMD? The Washington Times believes the answer to the first question is yes. This report his jogged my memory big time - I recall, and will search for, previous stories related to the Russian role of covering up Iraq's intelligence and weapons secrets before the war. They were, after all, Iraq's main military supplier for many, many years. According to this latest report the Al Bashair Trading Co. was the main business fron t for this transaction. This isn't the first time that Al Bashair's name has come up (more on that later).

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 involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.

"That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."

The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.

... Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.
Very interesting, no?

Although Russia denied it, the Australian media reported in 2003 that Russian officials fled from Baghdad with Iraqi intelligence documents for the purpose of "protecting Russian interests in post-war Iraq; in determining to what extent the Saddam regime may have financed Russian political parties and movements; and in providing Russia access to intelligence that Iraqi agents conducted in other countries."

Forged memos... false draft scares... and “missing” explosives that were never missing. In a span of just six weeks CBS News is now guilty of fabricating or skewing three major stories with intent to damage George W. Bush’s chance for reelection. First, there was the notorious forged National Guard documents; which CBS followed by using an already debunked Internet hoax to persuade viewers that Bush was going to implement another military draft; and now it has been discovered that CBS planned to run the 2003 story of “missing explosives” on October 31, just days before the election. Unfortunately, the NY Times beat them to the punch and published the story yesterday. And, unfortunately for both of them, an NBC News reporter embedded with the US military one day after Iraq’s liberation was with the Army in Al-Qaqaa reported that no explosives cache was seen on that day. Thus it is highly unlikely that the weapons were looted after the US took the base. And, to top that, something can’t be missing if its owners – in this case our enemy the ex-Baathists – took the weapons before the US got there.

Nonetheless, you gotta love how NBC admits the facts while trying to spin controversy where there is none:

An NBC News crew that accompanied U.S. soldiers who seized the Al-Qaqaa base three weeks into the war in Iraq reported that troops discovered significant stockpiles of bombs, but no sign of the missing HMX and RDX explosives.

Reporter Lai Ling Jew, who was embedded with the Army’s 101st Airborne, Second Brigade, said Tuesday on MSNBC TV that the news team stayed at the Al-Qaqaa base for about 24 hours.

“There wasn’t a search,” she said. “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 headed 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.”
Keep looters away from what? Apparently nothing. We’re talking about 280 TONS of explosives! It doesn't matter if the official mission of the soldiers wasn't to search for these conventional explosives - when they found them they automatically seized them. It's a running order. 280 tons of anything, let alone explosives, sits there like an elephant in the room – our soldiers would not have had to search for it very hard because it would have been pretty obvious were it present. And this reporter is really spinning that soldiers found “significant stockpiles of bombs” at the same location but somehow missed 280 tons of explosives? Who ya foolin? This isn’t 1000 liters of anthrax you can hid in a spider hole somewhere, it’s 280 tons of bulky explosives.

Next point: this material, over which the IAEA is screaming bloodly murder, was so very important to the UN watchdog that they admittedly never bothered to label it with a UN seal. According to the UN’s own documents it did nothing to secure these armory sites from the time it reentered Iraq in late 2002 to January 2003, at the time of this report. So, it seems to me that if someone was negligent it was the yahoos at the UN – the very group who reported just before the war began that Iraq was in violation of hiding “8,500 liters of this biological warfare agent” [said by Hans Blix, btw.]

And next point: According to CNN, coalition forces have found “10,033 weapons caches and destroyed 243,000 tons of munitions… [and] Another 162,898 tons of munitions are at secure locations and awaiting destruction, he [State Department spokesman Adam Ereli] said.” How many Americans knew this? How many times has the media celebrated this fact? How often has the Kerry team praised our military forces for the weapons they have seized? Once again, good news makes the back pages, if it makes the news at all, and bad news is front and center, especially if it can hurt Bush.

Will there ever a point where everyday Americans say “enough” to mainstream media bias? Or is today’s liberal media just a reflection of the marketplace – that is, liberals watch ABC-NBC-CBS-CNN-MSNBC nightly news and conservatives listen to talk radio and watch Fox News? It’s probably the latter, but I would hope that when 80 million Americans, by latest statistics, watch the big three networks for a half hour every night they do so with a grain of salt.

Yassir Arafat backs him, North Korea backs him, and now the Iraqi insurgents have admitted throwing their force - literally - behind John Kerry's presidential campaign:

BAGHDAD — Leaders and supporters of the anti-U.S. insurgency say their attacks in recent weeks have a clear objective: The greater the violence, the greater the chances that President Bush will be defeated on Tuesday and the Americans will go home.

"If the U.S. Army suffered numerous humiliating losses, [Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John] Kerry would emerge as the superman of the American people," said Mohammad Amin Bashar, a leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, a hard-line clerical group that vocally supports the resistance.

Resistance leader Abu Jalal boasted that the mounting violence had already hurt Mr. Bush's chances.

"American elections and Iraq are linked tightly together," he told a Fallujah-based Iraqi reporter. "We've got to work to change the election, and we've done so. With our strikes, we've dragged Bush into the mud."
That's a direct quote from one of the insurgent leaders, not some overanalyization by a intellectual "expert" at some university. Why would the insurgents be hoping for a Bush defeat if they did not believe that he was committed to Iraq but that Kerry was not? The insurgents, correctly or not, are under the impression that Kerry will withdraw US forces from Iraq because Kerry sends so many contradictory and waivering messages to the Iraqi people - I'm prowar but antiwar. I voted for additional funds before I voted against them. The Iraqi prime minister is a puppet for Bush, but victory in Iraq is now essential. No wonder the terrorists think that Kerry is committed, so do I and so do most Americans, including those backing Kerry because they were against the war in Iraq!

I thought Democrats didn't believe in the preemption policy?

Democrats in Florida already are pursuing nine election-related lawsuits, accusing state election officials of conspiring to disenfranchise minority voters. The suits say Republican officials refused to count provisional ballots, improperly disqualified incomplete voter registrations, established overly restrictive rules to disproportionately hurt minority voters and actively sought to disenfranchise blacks.

One suit challenges a ruling by Mrs. Hood to throw out forms on which new voters had failed to check a box indicating whether they were U.S. citizens, and another argued that although only 17 percent of the voters in Broward County and 20 percent in Miami-Dade County were black, more than a third of the voter-registration forms that were determined to be incomplete and invalid in both counties involved black voters.

"What you're seeing is an attempt, through lawsuits and through intimidation, by Democrats to convert their allies' registration fraud into voter fraud on Election Day," he [Ken Mehlman] said. "What you're going to see is an attempt by them, regardless of what the outcome is, to say: 'It's unfair. We're going to sue.' "
Democrats aren't upset that large percentages of minorities aren't correctly filling out registration forms - they're counting on it. Nonetheless, we ask so little from our citizens to vote in this country. It took me all of 5 minutes to complete my registration and mail it in. If people aren't filling out the forms properly, and if people who aren't citizens are not checking the US citizen box, they shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Had Democrats spent this much time on informing their constituents on how to fill out the registration correctly instead of lawsuit prepartation they wouldn't need the lawsuits. But again, they were counting on this. It's part of their plan. They use liberal activist judges to subvert democracy in the same manner that they use them to go around the legislative branch of government.

But they're creating a monster. In time the Republicans will catch up, and then both parties will be doing it, and we'll all be a lot worse off for it.

Dick Cheney: "If our troops had not gone into Iraq as John Kerry apparently thinks they should not have, that is 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that would be in the hands of Saddam Hussein, who would still be sitting in his palace instead of jail... [Kerry does not mention the] "400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that our troops have captured."
Well, it’s better than not refuting – like they did with all that Tora Bora garbage – but you’d think they could do better than this. The media is on a Jihad against them. They can’t afford to be nice anymore.

NYC taxi cab drivers who express opinions positive of Bush get fined...

[Wa. Post] Kenneth Edelle Foster, 51, a retired Army sergeant whose wife lost her life at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, died Oct. 10 at his home in Arlington, Tex., of pulmonary fibrosis and congestive heart failure. He had lived in the Washington area since 1972 and moved back to North Texas, where he grew up, in 2003... "He could have got over his physical ailments, I believe," his mother said, "but he just didn't want to live. He died of a broken heart. We all know that."

Who do you think is more upset right now after Ariel Sharon’s unprecedented legislative victory to by 2005 close all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza, evacuate 8,100 Israelis and withdraw the troops protecting them, the true Zionist Jews or the Palestinian Authority. Certainly, the most right-wing Israelis view Sharon as a Benedict Arnold, turning his back on Israeli security and enticing Jihadists to view the move as weakness.

I could be wrong in my prediction but I believe that Ariel Sharon is setting up the Palestinians for a huge fall. Either way, Sharon, assuming he can survive the political atmosphere, could be in a win-win situation. If Sharon’s gamble to withdraw from Gaza truly reduces violence against Israel and calms the region down Israel wins. But should the Palestinian Authority be unable or unwilling to prevent suicide bombers from attacking Israelis, even after Israel’s monumental expression of good will, it will give Sharon both a public relations victory (if he plays it right and acts upon it aggressively) and an opportunity to crush the Palestinians.

I’ve always argued that given the current anti-Israeli climate expressed by almost the entire world the Israelis could do themselves a tremendous (albeit very risky) favor by withdrawing from the 1967 territories and thus pulling back the curtain and revealing the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian terror groups for what they are – people not so much in search of a homeland as they are desirous to destroy Israel. If the Palestinians still attack Israel once it returns to pre-1967 borders (and they would) what person could honestly continue to defend the Palestinians without admitting that they too back Israel’s destruction? What pretext would the Palestinians have for continued attacks other than to validate Israel’s long suspicion that its enemies seek not a state but their destruction.

This event is the single biggest yet least reported news of the day – it truly has the ability to alter our future down a road of peace or Armageddon. That’s not exaggeration, either. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has many players on the field, and many of them with very dangerous intentions. For the Arab and particularly Jihadist community at large, whether in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran or even Yemen, the Palestinian suffering is their most convenient scapegoat for every problem.

Sharon’s victory isn’t without its risks. The very reason Israel kept territory from the 1967 war was because on too many occasions before Israel was almost overrun by Arab military forces. Indeed, even with that buffer zone Israel came within a hair’s length of using nuclear weapons because it was so close to defeat – largely because the Soviet Union became a little too involved in backing Syria and Egypt.

Sharon’s view is long-term, and besides, at this point he may have figured that he and Israel had nothing to lose.

A couple of weeks ago Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, shamelessly promised that if elected “people like Christopher Reeve will walk again.” Then last week Kerry promised that under his leadership America would never suffer an attack on the homeland. The third unkeepable promise came yesterday when Kerry implied that as president no mistakes would be made in Iraq, or would have been made had he been president.

The WSJ calls Kerry on the last ridiculous assertion:

Implicit in this accusation is the assumption that the Bush Administration has faced a series of easy decisions in Iraq, and somehow blown them all. Come to think of it, this has been a staple of the criticism from all of those sunshine hawks, such as Mr. Kerry, who supported the war before it began but have since had second thoughts. Toppling Saddam Hussein seemed like a good idea at the time, but the Bush Administration messed it up by not heeding their sound counsel.

…Yet to acknowledge these blunders [Baathist terrorism, Fallujah, Muqtada al-Sadr, quicker political handoff] in hindsight doesn't mean anyone else would have done better. From the decision to disband the Iraqi army, through the complex negotiations over the Iraqi Constitution, to the calibration of force employed in Najaf, the Administration has faced one hard call after another. We know now of the consequences of those calls, good and bad, but how certain are we that the alternatives would have turned out better?

Also welcome would be a bit of historical perspective. Prior to September 11, Americans had grown accustomed to swift and certain victories in places like Panama, Kuwait and Kosovo. The brilliant campaign in Afghanistan also posed some difficult choices--topple the Taliban, join with the often unsavory Northern Alliance?--that were fiercely argued at the time. But because they turned out well, Mr. Kerry is able to say in hindsight that that is the kind of war he likes.
The truth is that war is nearly always a trial-and-error business in which bad decisions and failure tend to precede good ones--and victory. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln hired, then cashiered, Generals Scott, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker and Meade before settling on Grant. That took about two years, during which the catastrophes of Bull Run (Union casualties: 2,896), Fredricksburg (13,353) and Chancellorsville (18,400) intervened. How's that for poor Presidential personnel choices leading to unnecessary loss of life?

Or consider the Allied campaign in Europe during World War II. This too contained its share of squandered opportunities (the failure to seal the Falaise Gap, through which the bulk of the German Army escaped France in August 1944), fiascoes (Operation Market Garden of "A Bridge Too Far" fame) and costly diversions (the invasion of Italy). By these historical benchmarks, the Bush Administration has done reasonably well in Iraq.

If there be no connection to Saddam Hussein and fanatical Islam than why are there connections? Mickey Kaus explains:

In that Saddam Hussein will not have to stand trial for direct complicity in the crimes of 11 September 2001, it is now being freely said that he was not really a friend of jihadist fanaticism at all. The two cases in point are Abdul Rahman Yasin, a crucial member of the team that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and Abu Musad al-Zarqawi, currently the leader of a very deadly and ruthless group known as Monotheism and Jihad, operating in central Iraq.
An equally interesting question is Zarqawi's connection to the Baathist underworld. It is known that he was in Iraq before the invasion, though our intelligence is so bad (yet again) that we don't know if this was for medical treatment or not, or even whether he had lost part of a limb in or around Tora Bora. His main pre-war activity was directed at the Kurdish leadership in that part of northern Iraq that was outside Saddam Hussein's immediate control. It is evident that he can penetrate very well-guarded parts of Baghdad and other major cities, that he has more than one safe-house, and that he disposes of a huge amount of money. His network, of local and foreign recruits, is taken very seriously by all observers.

In order to believe that Zarqawi is or was innocent of al-Qaida and Baathist ties, therefore, or in order to believe that he does not in fact represent such a tie, you must be ready to believe that:

1) A low-level Iraqi official decided to admit a much-hunted Jordanian—a refugee from the invasion of Afghanistan, after Sept. 11, 2001—when even the most conservative forces in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were keeping their distance from such people and even assisting in rounding them up.

2) That this newly admitted immigrant felt that the most pressing need of the holy war was the assassination of Kurdish leaders opposed to the rule of Saddam Hussein.

3) That a recently arrived Jordanian, in a totally controlled police state, was so enterprising as to swiftly put himself in possession of maps, city diagrams, large sums of cash, and a group of heavily armed fighters hitherto named after the Iraqi dictator—the Fedayeen Saddam.

I can only say that you are quite welcome to believe all of that if you wish. But you must be able to wish quite hard. The same is true of Abdul Rahman Yasin, who was at least an Iraqi passport-holder when he skipped bail from New Jersey in 1993 as one of the most wanted men in the United States and made it through Jordan to Baghdad in a matter of hours. Peter Boyer in The New Yorker of Nov. 1 is the latest to see nothing especially odd in this. (Boyer does concede, as the New York Times did once report, that Saddam may have hoped to use Yasin as a "bargaining chip." Indeed. And to bargain about what? My friend Rolf Ekeus, the eminent Swedish diplomat who originally founded the UNSCOM inspectorate, told me that Tariq Aziz, Saddam's slimy foreign minister, once asked him to act as intermediary. In return for an easing of sanctions, said Aziz, Iraq had a lot of information about the whereabouts of terrorists that it was willing to trade …)

NEW YORK: Kofi Annan's involvement in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal is to be investigated after it emerged the United Nations Secretary-General had a hand in some of the most controversial aspects of the discredited humanitarian program.

Although there is no suggestion he personally benefited from the program, his actions may have helped others, including Saddam Hussein, to defraud the oil-for-food scheme. Set up by the UN in 1995, the scheme allowed Saddam to sell controlled amounts of oil to buy humanitarian supplies. However, it is now alleged that the scheme was abused by the Iraqi dictator to "buy" political influence around the world while pocketing billions of dollars.

Iraqi government adviser Claude Hankes-Drielsma said yesterday: "The Secretary-General carries the ultimate responsibility for the scheme and the problems with it were repeatedly drawn to his attention, yet he chose to do nothing. "Everyone who allowed this scheme to operate in the way it did is guilty, irrespective of whether they personally benefited."
The man Mr Annan hired to run the program, Benon Sevan, who reported directly to him, is also under investigation for allegedly making more than $US1million ($1.34million) from selling Iraqi oil. He denies the accusations.

Would it make the front page papers if it was determined that in 1971 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese officials had control of either George Bush or persons associated with him? Does that question even need to be asked? World Net Daily reports that it has seen documents tying the North Vietnamese to John Kerry, via his association with Vietnam Veterans Against the War. So this will be in the NY Times tomorrow morning, right? Don’t hold your breath.

One freshly unearthed document, captured by the U.S. from Vietnamese communists in 1971 and later translated, indicates the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese delegations to the Paris peace talks that year were used as the communications link to direct the activities of Kerry and other antiwar activists who attended.

Jerome Corsi, a specialist on the Vietnam era, told WND the new discoveries are the "most remarkable documents I've seen in the entire history of the antiwar movement." "We're not going to say he's an agent for Vietnamese communists, but it's the next thing to it," he said. "Whether he was consciously carrying out their direction or naively doing what they wanted, it amounted to the same thing – he advanced their cause."

Corsi, co-author of the Swift Boat Vets and POWs for Truth best-seller "Unfit for Command," and Scott Swett, who maintains the group's website, have posted a summary of the discovery on the website of Wintersoldier.com. Corsi says the documents show how the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong, the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice, the Communist Party of the USA and Kerry's VVAW worked closely together to achieve the Vietnamese communists' primary objective – the defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam.

The two documents also connect the dots between the Vietnamese communists and the radical U.S. group People's Coalition for Peace and Justice through the person of Al Hubbard, a coordinating member of PCPJ and the executive director of VVAW while Kerry was its national spokesman. "Al Hubbard and John Kerry were carrying out the predetermined agenda of the enemy in a coordinated fashion," Corsi said. "It's a level of collaboration that exceeded anything we had imagined."
You can read the rest itself. As far as the Vietnam angle goes Kerry wisely took Bill Clinton’s advice, and frankly, any Vietnam attacks upon Kerry have likely reached the point of diminishing returns. But my point in posting this story was more to note that the media applies despicable double standards to the recipients of their “October surprises,” depending of course upon political affiliation.

The Washington Post is running a series on “The Bush Record,” because after all this is an election and the media has a responsibility to put under a microscope the actions of every Republican candidate... Republican, not Democrat. John Kerry, meanwhile, has a 20-year record in the Senate and I’m still waiting for the Post to run a lengthy expose of his record. You’ll let me know when they get to that, won’t you?

It’s reminiscent of Kerry’s demand that Bush own up to his mistakes in the past four years, and the media parroting that very line to the point that it even became a question in the Bush-Kerry debates, while Kerry never has to admit mistakes in his dismal 20 years in the Senate, and certainly does not have to answer questions on the subject by the media.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has officially ruled the November 2001 crash of American Airlines Flight 587 an accidental crash caused by co-pilot err. NTSB says that the copilot’s response to turbulence was “unnecessary and aggressive.” The NTSB also determined that American Airlines improperly trains its pilots to use the rudder in such situations, but that this practice causes more harm than good. While the black box voice recording seems to rule out terrorism just two months after 9-11 it should be remembered that the Canadian intelligence agency recently claimed a captured al Qaeda suspect, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, told them that Abderraouf Jdey downed the aircraft using a shoebomb.

Also as previously reported the NTSB’s finding does not confidently square with reports from witnesses to the crash. For example, “52% specifically reported seeing a fire while the plane was in the air.” That doesn’t mean the NTSB is wrong, just that it’s not that confident of a finding.

You know those 380 tons of explosives "missing" from Iraq? NBC News reported last night they were likely gone before the US invasion occurred. If this be true then the explosives were never "missing," you see. Rather, the enemy, who owned them, took them to fight us. This is exactly the question that the rest of the media failed to ask of the United Nations - exactly when were the explosives taken? Kudos to NBC for actually doing their job - that's where the kudos end though, because as of this morning NBC has yet to post the story on their Internet sites.

Nonetheless, yesterday was spent blaming Bush for not securing explosives that, apparently, were never present. ABC ran the story at least 4 times, CBS 7 times, MSNBC 37 times, and CNN 50 times, according to Drudge's count.

According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived. "The U.S. Army was at the site one day after the liberation and the weapons were already gone," a top Republican blasted from Washington late Monday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers. Dem VP hopeful John Edwards blasted Bush for not securing the explosives: "It is reckless and irresponsible to fail to protect and safeguard one of the largest weapons sites in the country. And by either ignoring these mistakes or being clueless about them, George Bush has failed. He has failed as our commander in chief; he has failed as president."

A senior Bush official e-mailed DRUDGE late Monday: "Let me get this straight, are Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards now saying we did not go into Iraq soon enough? We should have invaded and liberated Iraq sooner?"

Top Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart fired back Monday night: "In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame. Instead of distorting John Kerry’s words, the Bush campaign is now falsely and deliberately twisting the reports of journalists. It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous."

Why is the U.N. nuclear agency suddenly warning now that insurgents in Iraq may have obtained nearly 400 tons of missing explosives -- in early 2003?

NBCNEWS Jim Miklaszewski quoted one official: "Recent disagreements between the administration and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency makes this announcement appear highly political."
OH, do ya think so? Boy you can't pull anything over these journalists...

This story also underscores that the media, long ago outed - from the CBS forgeries and Newsweek and ABC News admissions of bias - as partisans for Kerry, will now shameless produce and repeat stories that are damaging to Bush for that sake alone.

You know those 380 tons of explosives "missing" from Iraq? NBC News reported last night they were likely gone before the US invasion occurred. If this be true then the explosives were never "missing," you see. Rather, the enemy, who owned them, took them to fight us. This is exactly the question that the rest of the media failed to ask of the United Nations - exactly when were the explosives taken? Kudos to NBC for actually doing their job - that's where the kudos end though, because as of this morning NBC has yet to post the story on their Internet sites.

Nonetheless, yesterday was spent blaming Bush for not securing explosives that, apparently, were never present. ABC ran the story at least 4 times, CBS 7 times, MSNBC 37 times, and CNN 50 times, according to Drudge's count.

According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived. "The U.S. Army was at the site one day after the liberation and the weapons were already gone," a top Republican blasted from Washington late Monday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers. Dem VP hopeful John Edwards blasted Bush for not securing the explosives: "It is reckless and irresponsible to fail to protect and safeguard one of the largest weapons sites in the country. And by either ignoring these mistakes or being clueless about them, George Bush has failed. He has failed as our commander in chief; he has failed as president."

A senior Bush official e-mailed DRUDGE late Monday: "Let me get this straight, are Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards now saying we did not go into Iraq soon enough? We should have invaded and liberated Iraq sooner?"

Top Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart fired back Monday night: "In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame. Instead of distorting John Kerry’s words, the Bush campaign is now falsely and deliberately twisting the reports of journalists. It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous."

Why is the U.N. nuclear agency suddenly warning now that insurgents in Iraq may have obtained nearly 400 tons of missing explosives -- in early 2003?

NBCNEWS Jim Miklaszewski quoted one official: "Recent disagreements between the administration and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency makes this announcement appear highly political."
OH, do ya think so? Boy you can't pull anything over these journalists...

This story also underscores that the media, long ago outed - from the CBS forgeries and Newsweek and ABC News admissions of bias - as partisans for Kerry, will now shameless produce and repeat stories that are damaging to Bush for that sake alone.