Centerfield

This story from the New York Times is 377 tons of Qa Qaa.

My god, I have seen a new low. This "The Russians did it" story has gone straight from Drudge to the Washington Times to Centerfield with no attempt to confirm information in between. And not even Larry Di Rita, the official Pentagon mouthpiece whose weak explanations the right wingers have been taking as gospel, has embraced an explanation that weak.

And yet, somehow, you're trying to spin this to say that, if Bush's pal Putin did do it, it's somehow Kerry's fault, and on his shoulders to explain it? What color is the sky in your world?

I wrote that this may be a sucker play by the Bush guys. They were too quiet while Kerry jumped on this.
If the charge is false, the plan would be to hold back defending the charge and make Kerry look silly when the truth comes out. Bush will try to react to "rush to war" with a "rush to judgement." We'll still have to wait and see who's right.

Our a good question for the Bush administration would be,

How the hell did you miss this tidbit of news in the run up to the war? The same group that missed this is the ones you were counting on to make the decision to invade.

You're kind of pushing one line or one set of facts about this. Which is understandable -- I do the same thing sometimes when I'm arguing for a point of view.

I just want to point out that there are a lot of facts out there already. I don't sense that the media is really digesting them all, or presenting them all, when they cover it. The first stories leaned heavily against the administration in their tone. Some of the current stories lean against Kerry (like what's being discussed on Fox or CNN). Some still lean against Bush, like the New York Times piece that got picked up by the Columbus Dispatch this morning.

It would be interesting to see what you come up with if you pulled all the facts together and considered them in context.

Here's one new piece of the puzzle to chew on. Take a look at this video shot by the local ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, and the accompanying story.

FYI: Joe Gandleman of The Moderate Voice has a roundup on this. I wouldn't call it even-handed, necessarily, but I would say he's at least open minded about the issue. That is, he doesn't seem to have an axe to grind on either side of it.

William,

I'm still having trouble with the terminology that is being used here. How any take on this story possibly "lean against Kerry?" Perhaps some versions of the story "lean against Bush" more than others, but this isn't some issue on which Dems and Repubs have different views about how best to chart a course. This is the loss of large amounts of explosives (158 tons, even by the most generous count by the "this is no big deal" crowd), probabably into the hands of the terrorists. We may differ on the extent to which this points to Bush's incompetence, but I don't think by any stretch of the imagination we could pretend this reflects poorly on Kerry.

To repeat my earlier remarks, it's probably best to ignore any late-breaking stories like this one in making a decision. We have 4 years of demonstrable failure of the Bush Administration (with the exception of the Afghan campaign, its only success). No need to incorporate breaking news which may have errors in it.

I think Kerry is making a mistake pushing this angle, because even if the facts are as portrayed by liberals, it doesn't reflect badly on Bush so much as Tommy Franks. I'm not convinced by the argument that it demonstrates there were too few troops. There WERE too few troops, but that is mostly reflective of the post-war occupation. There was a rush to Baghdad, and if there were more troops, they would probably have been thrown at Baghdad rather than Al-Qaqaa.

Kerry should get back to fundamentals.

I think the reason you could say one version of it "leans against Bush" and another "leans against Kerry" is that Kerry is out there accusing Bush of incompetence on it, and Bush is out there saying Kerry is making "wild accusations".

The real facts might end up supporting Kerry's position or Bush's. And, certainly, the news stories seem to reflect those themes -- it's either Kerry making unwarranted claims about Bush, or Bush having done something that put explosives in the hands of the bad guys.

I suspect, based on what we currently know, that a reasonable interpretation would be different.

On the one hand, it's clear that dangerous weapons were in so many storage facilities in so many places that there's no way the administration could guard all (or even most) of them. This particular facility was given a "medium" priority -- so it wouldn't have been the first place they try to guard. It was probably pretty far down the list.

On the other hand, this illustrates a basic dilemma with the Iraq war. We went in primarily because we thought Saddam had WMDs. But we went in with a relatively small force, by historical standards, and without the capability (and perhaps not the desire) to increase the security force to a level that makes it possible to establish order.

That being the case, there was quite a significant likelihood that if Saddam had chemical weapons, or other WMDs, they would get looted and find their way into the wrong hands directly because we went to war in Iraq.

There's your question. Which is more likely -- that Saddam would give WMDs to terror groups at some point, or that they would get them by virtue of the incredibly lax security environment in the aftermath of the war?

Did taking down Saddam make WMD terrorism more likely or less?

I am surprised that CBS is not taking more heat given that it has admitted that it intended to hold this story until 48 hours before the election and then to spring it during 60 Minutes and without time for the actual evidence to be evaluated.

Interestingly, Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita is not supporting the "Russians ate my homework" theory. Says DiRita: “I am unaware of any particular information on that point.”

Why is that, do you think?

Possibility 1: the Administration knows the Russians did not take the explosives.

Possibility 2: The Russians took the explosives, which the administration knows, but it would be embarrassing or impolitic to admit that.

Possibility 3: The administration does not know whether the Russians took the explosives.

Which one of these reflects credit on the Administration's postwar planning?

Gertz's Russian story may be true, but he's going to need a lot more than one undersecretary without documentation and some unnamed "other defense officials" and "foreign intelligence agencies" to show it. I'm totally unimpressed by it at this point. So far it has even less checkable evidence backing it than the original NY Times story! Very, very thin stuff.

The ABC story is very well sourced and explains why the IAEA didn't manage to (or maybe didn't bother to) check on the RDX in March. They already knew it wasn't there. It also illustrates what a wonderful font of veracity El Baradei is when his back is against the wall.

Expect soon to see milintel satellite photos of major truck activity at Al QaQaa during the months of January to March, 2003, especially in the period right before the invasion.

The reason CBS isn't taking that much heat on the story is that they never had the chance to actually do the nasty. The NYT beat 'em to the punch, and the NYT will take the heat. But by coming out several days earlier, there's time to start checking the evidence rather than just waving the bloody shirt 36 hours bfore the polls open.

Tangential but in the same vein--Our Neighbors to the North find out how helpful it is to have the French "assisting" them in Afghanistan in keeping weapons depots out of the hands of others.

Weapons cache stuns Canucks

I'm getting whiplash.

Maybe it isn't such a bogus story after all:

http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1

This does NOT prove that the ammo disappeared under US watch. What it DOES suggest is that at this point: no one's 100% sure what happened, yet, and it's too soon to say the the NYT is full of crap (or isn't).

And yet: the venom coming from so-called centrist posters. Geez.

Anonymous:
"And yet: the venom coming from so-called centrist posters. Geez."

Yeah, the atmosphere on this issue is kind of rough.

You know, anonymous, quite honestly I find most of the venom coming from YOU, in the form of calling us venomous and partisan.

My sense is that the vast majority of us, the skeptical centrists, seem well aware of and quite focused on which facts are in evidence and which are not, and have stressed which facts are and are not in evidence.

Perhaps you'd care to explain why you disagree with the notion that Kerry has jumped to unproven conclusions for the obvious opportunistic reasons.

Perhaps you'd also like to cite chapter and verse on the things we've said that you consider "venomous." If not, perhaps you'd be willing to stop quacking like a troll.

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