Bush throws a hissy-fit over Kerry's criticism; seems casual over missing explosives

The President is throwing around whoppers on the campaign today. Big, fat stinky fish are landing on Bush audiences. Observe, from Ohio:

Ever since that day, I've waken up every morning trying to figure out how to better protect our country. I will never relent in defending America, whatever it takes.

We have all heard this one. He's been spouting it for months. It lands with a particularly annoying thud in light of all those missing explosives. What if defending America takes a little humility? What if defending America takes attention to detail? What if it takes, oh, say, abandoning simple ideological wishes in favor of the mature advice of your experts? Maybe the President is being ironic when he says this. But before you can say, "benefit of the doubt," out pops this gem from the same speech:

A President needs to get all the facts before jumping to politically-motivated conclusions.

I look for a raised eyebrow. A knowing grin. There is none. I wonder when the President will receive the signal from the thingy on his back that he didn't exactly have all the facts straight before he jumped to the politically motivated decision to, um, invade Iraq. I thought for sure he was demonstrating his cute, tin ear for political humor. I thought another where-are-the-weapons-of-mass-destruction PowerPoint was on the way. But no. Unfortunately, the President thinks he is in command of the facts.

It's a good thing Mr. Bush wasn't alone in distributing full, fruity paragraphs of the kind of smoke one normally blows up a friend's patooty when one wish's to deceive said friend. Rudy Guliani appeared on TV to issue insane commentary that the missing explosives were the fault of negligent troops:

No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?

Isn't that quaint? After Rudy's remarks, Bush stood next to Tommy Franks as he said that Kerry denigrates the troop by questioning how 380 tons of high grade explosives were left unguarded. Of course that's a lie. Kerry never denigrated the troops. He denigrated the President. This is a common mistake for Bush. He believes he's one of the troops, not the guy who ordered them on a wild goose chase. Maybe he should tell Rudy to shut up, that he's sick of the blame rolling down hill, that the buck stops with him. But he won't do that. That would be going to any length to protect America.

The Vice Ogre was also in fine form. He said that Kerry will say anything to get elected. He called Kerry's criticism of the way bush handled the war a "cheap shot." Cheney needs to avail himself of Bush's thought machine. He needs to listen to the voices from beyond.

You'd think Kerry said something like, "If I am elected, I will make soda pop run out of all the drinking fountains in Iraq!" or maybe, "President Bush kissed another guy in a skull and bones initiation at Yale!" If Kerry said one of those things, I would think, geez, that Kerry, he'll say anything to get elected. But remarking on the fact that the President is responsible for the missing 380 tons of explosives seems to be pretty well within the bounds of reason. I mean, if Ken Lay is responsible for the details of the Enron Crisis...If Nixon was responsibible for Watergate, Reagan for Iran/Contra. It seems like it isn't that much of a stretch to think that the Commander In Chief would be responsible for the actions he initiates.

It's kind of remarkable that the President doesn't take more responsibility than he does. A mature man would. But again, addressing the problem in a real manner with the American Public he is so fond of "protecting" would require him to go to any length. It would require him to get honest. Naturally, Bush can't do that now and he won't do it in his second term. But that's understandable. If you are going to tell a whopper, you might as well go all whopper, all the time. A little truth sticks out like a sore thumb.

Terrorists campaign for Bush, Kerry

The Reverend Moon's rag has a strange little puff piece masqerading as "reporting." Evidently, Terrorists hope to defeat Bush through Iraq violence.

I guess the homegrown insurgents have been campaigning for Kerry by blowing things up, while the foreign extremists (aka Al Qaeda) have been campaigning for Bush by blowing things up. What an insightful article. Perhaps it is the product of the waking delusions of a man recently crowned the Emperor of the United States.

I mean seriously.

380 tons of disaster: Bush's folly floats blindly on

The missing 380 tons of explosives in Iraq has immediately developed into an aggressive he said/she said. The President and his supporters are busy crying "foul." They say that the weapons were moved before our troops arrived at Al-Qaqaa. They say that this story is primarily political, the Kerry will "say anything," and that it could very well blow back to harm the senator's chances on Tuesday. That's wishful thinking. Such an egregious blunder deserves to be front page news until Kerry is sworn in next January. Bush has a lot to answer for.

Predictably enough, some Bush supporters are using the evidence of massive amounts of conventional weapons as some sort of reverse rationale for going to war in the first place, and the fact that said conventional weapons are missing as "evidence" that Saddam could have moved his WMD.

When is enough enough? Saddam couldn't have moved his WMD because he didn't have any. We always knew that Saddam had these munitions. We knew about them for over a decade. It wasn't a rationale then and it isn't now. It won't be in the future, either. If it were, we would be obliged to immediately invade about 40 countries.

In other efforts to detoxify the story, the Emperor of the United States' newspaper, the Washington Times, asserts that Russian special forces helped Saddam move the munitions. There is a small stink coming off that story, however. Set aside the fact that the central source, Jack Shaw, is a Bush patsy under investigation for contract fraud by the FBI. Most notably, in the months leading up to the war Al-Qaaqa was under constant surveillance. It's pretty unlikely that US Signals Corps would have missed a 40-truck convoy cruising out of a suspected Nuclear Development site in what was then a peaceful Iraq. The White House is saying that they didn't know that the stuff was missing until they were informed this month. The Russians? Crawling all over Iraq before the war? I don't believe it, and I bet the White House and the rest of the media runs from this story. It will be interesting to see what the Russians say. But really, the most glaring discrepancy is that the confirmed flow of human interaction with the the site indicates that the explosives were looted after the invasion:

Timeline [Miami Herald Subscription]

1991

The International Atomic Energy Agency places a seal over storage bunkers holding conventional explosives known as HMX and RDX and PETN at the Al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad as part of U.N. sanctions that ordered the dismantlement of Iraq's nuclear program after the Gulf War. HMX is a "dual use" substance powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction

2003

- January: IAEA inspectors view the explosives at Al-Qaqaa for the last time. The inspectors take an inventory and again place storage bunkers at Al-Qaqaa under agency seal.

- February: IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei tells the United Nations that Iraq has declared that "HMX previously under IAEA seal had been transferred for use in the production of industrial explosives." This apparently didn't include the HMX that remained under seal at Al-Qaqaa.

- March 9-15: Nuclear agency inspectors visit Al-Qaqaa for the last time but apparently don't examine the explosives because the seals aren't broken. The inspectors then pull out of the country.

- March 20: The U.S.-led coalition invades Iraq.

- April 3: The Army's 3rd Infantry Division reaches Al-Qaqaa, fights with Iraqi forces, occupies the site and leaves after two days for Baghdad without searching for high explosives.

- April 9: The 3rd Infantry Division captures Baghdad.

- April 10: Troops from the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade spend 24 hours at the site, search for chemical weapons - but not high explosives - and then head to Baghdad. An NBC reporter embedded with the unit said there's no talk among the 101st of securing the area after they leave.

- May 3: The nuclear agency purportedly notifies the U.S. Mission in Vienna of its concerns about the Al-Qaqaa facility.

- May 8: An American site survey team arrives to inspect the Latifiyah Phosgene Facility - part of Al-Qaqaa - and finds the plant heavily looted.

- May 11: An American site survey team arrives to inspect Latifiyah Missile and Rocket production facility, also part of Al-Qaqaa. The team assesses the facility as non-operational but with possible dual use.

- May 27: U.S. troops search specifically for high explosives. The troops find the seals have been broken. It's not clear whether they did a further accounting of the materials themselves.

2004

- Oct. 10: Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology tells the nuclear agency that 377 tons of explosives has disappeared from the Al-Qaqaa facility. The Iraqis say the materials were stolen after the April 9, 2003, fall of Baghdad because of a lack of security.

- Oct. 15: The IAEA informs the U.S. mission in Vienna about the disappearance. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is informed days later, and she informs President Bush, according to White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

- Oct. 23-24: The Pentagon orders the U.S. military command in Baghdad to investigate the IAEA report.

- Oct. 25: ElBaradei reports the explosives' disappearance to the U.N. Security Council after The New York Times reports the cache is missing.

Most of the time it is impossible to wring the truth out of the mainstream media. Sometimes one has to make broad conclusions. In this case, I conclude the following:

Regardless of when the explosives went missing, they are missing. Before the invasion, they were sealed in the hands of our enemy and we knew where they were. Now, in all likelyhood, they are in the hands of our enemies and we do not know where they are. The change of status was directly caused by the invasion of Iraq. Once again, Bush's folly has made the world less safe.

Delay is clown crawling out of grub Bug

Tom Delay is a fantastic disgrace. He's going down and I can't wait to see him land in jail.

Mother Jones has a thorough article on the pending cases against the Delay machine. This line cracked me up:

Earle has the somber countenance of a hanging judge and a sense of humor as arid as his West Texas origins. Investigating the TRMPAC case [a Delay PAC]has been slow, he says, because it's like "watching clowns climb out of a Volkswagen. There are a lot more in there than I imagined."

Maybe we can stuff that clown back in the Volkswagen.

Fair time goes down the drain

It is interesting to me, with all the talk about liberal bias in the media, that you don't see many tv stations coming forward to offer Kerry large blocks of air time.

Wouldn't it be a sunny day if our stations acted as objective stewards of the public trust instead of partisan hacks?



Broadcaster Donates $325,000 to GOP

What gives them the right? You do.

Missing explosives - the buck stops with Bush

Doubtless you have heard of the sheer idiocy of allowing 380 tons of high-grade explosive to go missing. The GOP spin meisters are telling us that it can't be laid at the President's doorstep. I watched Peggy Noonan say that war is hell and bad things happen on Lou Dobbs. It's just another bump in the road to the spread of freedom, right?

Let's just consider the logistical problem of moving that much explosive. In one scenario, the bad guys back up a truck or ten and load it on and drive off into the night. In another scenario, the thieves would need to make about 1,500 installments of 500 lb. to get rid of it all. Either way, it is an astounding heist. It really illustrates how simple the Bush strategy was in Iraq and how little control we really have over the events that will occur there. It's simply put, a disgrace.

Juan Cole has the best analysis I read.

Whistle blowers unite

The more we learn about the events in Iraq, the more I believe that the layers of corruption will continue to be revealed the further we get from the Bush presidency.

This does nothing to dissuade me from that belief.

Jes keepin track...

My buddy Green Boy over at Needlenose is keeping a list of
Republican perfidy during this election season. Contribute if you must...

Memo to the undecided: Listen to your inner conservative

This info is too good not to crosspost: (oh you beautiful Repubs with integrity)

Whose going to give Kerry the Whitehouse? Republicans with the courage to admit that the GOP has floated free of its conservative moorings and into reactionary waters. There are a lot of them. As the prospect of 4 more years of Bush secrecy, cronyism, ham-handed terrorist-manufacturing foreign policy and government insolvency truly dawns on Republican leaders - the chads will fall for Kerry. Here's a partial list, thanks to Republican Switchers. My prediction: common sense and common decency will rule the day on November 2.

John Eisenhower, lifelong Republican son of Republican President Dwight D. (Ike) Eisenhower --"Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance."

Marshall Wittmann,
former McCain aide, Bull Moose Republican wants Kerry for President."But the Bush administration has betrayed the effort to create a new politics of national greatness in the aftermath of 9/11."

Clyde Prestowitz, Reagan administration veteran , explains that four years of Republican rule have put the country on the wrong track."I think that we are less safe today than we were three or four years ago. And I’ll tell you something else: I have recently had discussions with several former national security advisors -- people who were national security officials in former Republican administrations -- who have told me they feel the same way. They fear that the administration’s policies are further endangering and undermining the security of the United States."

William Milliken, former Repub. Gov. of Michigan will vote for Kerry: "The truth is that ... Bush does not speak for me or for many other moderate Republicans on a very broad cross section of issues."

Ballard Morton 50 year straight-ticket republican voter and son of the former national GOP chair Thurston Morton.

Anne Morton Kimberly, Ballard's aunt and the widow of five term Republican Congressman Rogers C.B. Morton, concurs.

Brent Scowcroft top security advisor to first President Bush criticizes George W.; calls Iraq war a "failing venture"

Charley Reese,a staunch conservative columnist writes: "Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the world of any president in my memory."

Robert L. Black,retired Republican judge from Ohio says "The record of this incumbent president is a history not only of repeated violations of ... our democracy, but of the core values of the Christian faith."

Russel E. Train, Nixon EPA Chief will vote for Kerry: "It's almost as if the motto of the (Bush) administration...is...polluter protection."

Elmer L. Anderson, (of course)
Republican ex-gov of Minnesota: "Kerry has ... far superior intellect and character than Bush. He speaks honestly to the American people, his ethics are unimpeachable and, clearly...he has far better credentials..."

Pete McCloskey, former Republican congressman: "In truth, John Kerry and John Edwards come far closer to the Republicanism of Teddy Roosevelt, Earl Warren, Barry Goldwater, George Bush the elder and, yes, even Richard Nixon, than does the present incumbent."

Kevin Phillips, a longtime Republican, a former Nixon aide and Republican strategist: "(The Bushes) display no real empathy for anyone who is not of their class."