Classical Values :: NEWS BLAST FROM THE PAST!

NEWS BLAST FROM THE PAST!

Via Drudge (and in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, with a blaring headline) I see that 377 tons of explosives were missing in Iraq when American troops went in:

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?"

According to this logic, if WMDs were discovered to have been moved to Syria (which some experts have alleged), that too would be just another example of Bush's "irresponsible" blundering.

Now that I think about it, saying the WMDs were moved to Syria might not be a bad way to promote Kerry as NeoHawk.

Well? Since when was consistency one of the rules?

Besides, Kerry could argue that he wasn't inconsistent at all:

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."

- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

See? I told you Kerry knew they were there all along!

MORE: According to Drudge, "60 Minutes" planned to recycle this news in an election eve report, but that apparently fell through once it was learned that the explosives had been moved before the invasion:

60 MINS PLANNED BUSH MISSING EXPLOSIVES STORY FOR ELECTION EVE

News of missing explosives in Iraq -- first reported in April 2003 -- was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode.

Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of 60 MINUTES, said in a statement that "our plan was to run the story on October 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold..."

Elizabeth Jensen at the LOS ANGELES TIMES details on Tuesday how CBS NEWS and 60 MINUTES lost the story [which repackaged previously reported information on a large cache of explosives missing in Iraq, first published and broadcast in 2003].

The story instead debuted in the NYT. The paper slugged the story about missing explosives from April 2003 as "exclusive."

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

It is not clear who exactly shopped an election eve repackaging of the missing explosives story.

We'll have to stay tuned for more last minute October surprise shopping.....

MORE: The Kerry campaign has responded:

The reporter who was actually traveling with the 101st Airborne in the report cited by the Bush campaign has clarified that the unit was not there to secure the massive weapons complex and it was merely a 'pit stop' on their way to Baghdad.

Redstate (Via Michael Totten.) has more, and concludes that the cited NBC story "does not effectively debunk the New York Times."

It occurs to me that whether the unit was "there to secure the complex" is not relevant to what was missing -- or whether there was anything to secure.

(I still think Kerry ought to get more agressive with his second guessing -- and say that Bush missed the WMDs......)

AND MORE: According to this report, Kerry can truthfully state WMDs were missing from al Qaqaa! (Via a comment at Redstate.)

Fighting over old news is nothing new.

MORE: For readers who aren't bored by such things, here's how the Philadelphia Inquirer chose to report the story.

Kerry used the rally to criticize the Bush administration's handling of Iraq on a day when the International Atomic Energy Agency disclosed that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were missing from the former Al-Qaqaa military installation, about 30 miles south of Baghdad.

"George W. Bush talks tough and brags about making America safer, but once again he has failed," Kerry said. "His incompetence, step after step, has put our troops at greater risk."

The crowd answered Kerry's criticisms with a chant of "Bush must go! Bush must go!"

Kerry began the day with a rally in New Hampshire, where he attacked Bush on the explosives loss, calling it, "one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration."

Bush spokesman Scott McClellan played down the threat. He said the administration's first concern was whether the missing weapons posed a nuclear-proliferation threat, and he said they did not. "We have destroyed more than 243,000 munitions," he said. "We've secured another nearly 163,000 that will be destroyed."

Last night, the Bush campaign, citing an NBC News report from April 2003, said the explosives were already missing from the depot when U.S. troops arrived there one day after the fall of Baghdad.

"John Kerry's attacks today were baseless," Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt said. "He said American troops did not secure the explosives when the explosives were already missing."

Joining Kerry and Clinton on stage in Philadelphia were the top Democrats in the city and state, including Gov. Rendell and Mayor Street.

Singer Patti LaBelle, a Philadelphia native, sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" before Clinton and Kerry arrived and a long line of local politicians and candidates spoke to the crowd.

"Nobody was better to the city of Philadelphia than Bill Clinton," Rendell told the crowd, which the Fire Department estimated at 80,000 to 100,000. "As the 44th president of the United States, John Kerry has the ability to top him."

Kerry, who has criticized Bush's economic policies, praised Clinton for leading America "to the strongest economy we ever had."

Energetic but looking thin and pale, Clinton said over the cheering crowd: "If this isn't good for my heart, I don't know what is."

How typical of that mean, dishonest Bush campaign! How dare they cite an NBC News report from April 2003! If the Bush campaign cited the report, it must be wrong!

(Which is why they buried the mention of the NBC news story as a Bush campaign line on page A17....) What's important for every Inquirer reader is what's in the big frontpage headline: Iraq explosives missing; Kerry faults President.