Year: 2004

The twisting and turning of the missing weapons story continues. The premise of the original story on Monday has not survived to today, and now the NYT attempts to include new accurate information while simultaneously keeping the older story alive for Kerry.

The guys on Fox News this morning are debating the missing weapons story. They do not deny that the weapons are indeed missing. They question why the old news was suddenly resurrected last Wednesday, and who was the source. They focused on folks at the IAEA, and also democratic operatives who work within the Kerry camp. Now yes, this is FOX news and not ABCNBCCBSPBS. But, if the MSM slowly changes the debate of this story and talks about why this 18 month old news came out again as new news just days before the election, the “October Surprise” will continue to backfire on the Democrats. The discussion will keep going if there isn’t another big story that comes out between now and this weekend. The last thing the dems want is to talk about this misfire on the Sunday shows.

UPDATE: It gets better – the TODAY show opens with the debate over the political motivations of the weapons story.

BUT: TODAY’s Nora O’Donnell attempts to spin the story as something the Bush campaign is trying to run from, put behind them, etc. (OK, so I was hopeful for a moment.)

Ace covers a last gasp attempt to bring George W. Bush’s military service back into question.

The Kerry Spot has more on Mohamed El Baradei, who’s now insisting that the Al Qa Qaa weapons were taken after the invasion…like he’d know.

The Kerry/Edwards campaign released an ad today (viewable online) which now includes the questionable information about missing weapons. Is this their October Surprise and will they continue to attempt to run with the story?

The Daily Recycler has video of the NBC report that blew the whole NYT/CBSNEWS/Democrats “October Surprise” story to shreds.

Cliff May over at the National Review’s “The Corner” reports today…

“Sent to me by a source in the government: “The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The US is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

I didn’t know that Mohammed El Baradei worked for the New York Times, or CBS News for that matter…interesting.

Scoundrels!

MORE: The Truth Laid Bear has a good wrap of all the events.

Weeks after the release of the Duelfer report, France has put out their denial that they had anything to do with the Oil-for-Food UN scam.

Today, the NYT reports on how their missing weapons story released yesterday (now known to be bogus) has become an issue in the campaign. Gee, isn’t that amazing. Imagine that! The main stream press throws out a story that is at least 18 months old, passes it off as “breaking” news geared to expose Bush as being incompetent, hand delivers a pulpit for John Kerry to stand on and preach from, and SHAZAAM, it’s become an “issue” in the campaign.

By the way, the NYT has not yet reported on their error. Do I expect them to? No way. If they do issue a correction, it’ll be buried on page A-21 in the November 3rd edition.

Scoundrels!

There’s news out today in the Denver Post that Kerry has canceled his ad buys in the state of Colorado.