Presidential Race ctd 7

1. NYT's October Surprise collapses (truthlaidbear)
2. Invitation to a defrauding, take 2
   In today's Qaqaagate installment, the New York Times mentions that it is "working working with the CBS News program 60 Minutes" on the story: "No check of bunker, unit commander says." The Times interviews the 101st Airborne Division commander whose unit spent the night at al Qaqaa on April 10, 2003, but (according to the story) failed to search the site.
   Too bad the Times couldn't trouble itself to take a look at the story CBS filed on the 3rd Infantry Division's search of the site a week earlier: "U.S. searches 'suspicious' Iraqi site." (powerlineblog)
3. The Vanishing Story (nationalreview)
4. The Late Hit (john podhoretz, ny post)
5. U.S. Searches 'Suspicious' Iraqi Site: filed April 4, 2003! (cbsnews.com)
6. February 2003 U.N. Report: Saddam Moving Explosives From Al-Qaqaa
   The United Nations nuclear watchdog group first reported that Saddam Hussein had begun moving stockpiles of explosives from his Al-Qaqaa nuclear weapons facility a month before the U.S. invaded Iraq. (newsmax)
7. Urgent Warning on Iraqi Cache Issued in 1995: ignored by IAEA (ny sun)
8. Edwards Parrots New York Times' Fiction; '60 Minutes' Busted (newsmax)
9. 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 crisis 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..." (drudgereport)
10. Holbrooke: "I Don't Know the Truth" Even his campaign's senior foreign policy adviser can't vouch for the New York Times's "explosive" explosives story. But that isn't stopping John Kerry from using it as a political prop. (kristol, weeklystandard)
11. PBS Frontline: Spying on Saddam -- a defector's revelations: Iraq had a big problem on its hands, because it needed a new explanation for [Kamel's revelations]. And the explanation they hit upon was, "We are shocked, shocked, to discover that under our very noses, Kamel all this time has been hiding all kinds of weapons and documentation. We've discovered it on his chicken farm, and here it is. You may have it all."
    And they deliver to UNSCOM one million pages of newly-declared documents, which show a lot of biological weapons programs, which show a lot more chemical weapons programs, which show material shortfalls, which show missile stuff, which show nuclear stuff. But -- and it took a long time to do this -- as UNSCOM went through these million pages of documents, and hundreds of crates, they found that there were interesting gaps.
    For example, all the biological stuff was described as research. There was nothing on weaponization, that is to say, nothing on taking what you know to be a toxic bug -- anthrax say -- and putting it into a warhead that can be used as a military weapon. That's a big part of the problem. ... So in each case, Iraq kept back something important. Usually the most important thing.
    Hussein Kamel's defection tells UNSCOM that not only have they been missing something, but they've been missing a huge, huge amount of what they were supposed to be finding. Way more than they had ever suspected. Their worst nightmare scenario was eclipsed by the documents on this chicken farm, and it meant the beginning of a major new phase of biological, missile, chemical, and nuclear investigations. (pbs.org)
12. TERROR TAKES A STAND: "Kerry's rhetoric is giving the bad guys a thread to hang on," he wrote. "They're hoping we lose our nerve. They're more concerned with the U.S. elections than with the Iraqi ones." Let's review what's actually happening in Iraq.
    The terrorist stronghold of Fallujah is increasingly isolated. Night after night, precision weapons and raids by special-operations forces kill international terrorist leaders. Terrified, the local troublemakers are trying to play the negotiations card. They know the U.S. Marines are coming back. And this time the Leathernecks won't be stopped short. Allah's butchers are praying that they can bring down our president before terror's citadel falls.
    Meanwhile, the Iraqi people have been revolted by the terrorists' barbarities. They may not want U.S. troops in their streets forever, but they do not want to be ruled by fanatical murderers. Kidnapping aid workers and lopping off heads on videotape horrifies decent Muslims. The slaughter of 50 unarmed Iraqi recruits did not win hearts and minds.
    Every day, Iraqis are more engaged in defending their own country. Elections are still on track. The suicide bombings continue, but they haven't deterred Iraq's new government. Nor have they been able to stop the Coalition and Iraq's expanding forces from cleaning out one terrorist rat's nest after another.
    Muqtada al-Sadr is quiet as a mouse. Najaf is being rebuilt. Two-thirds of Iraq's provinces are quiet. We never see any headlines about our Kurdish allies in northern Iraq — because they're building a successful modern society in the Middle East. Good-news stories aren't welcome in our undeniably pro-Democratic media. (nypost)

Other

• John Kerry: few charitable contributions: As it happens, I have picked this particular bone with Kerry before. During his Senate re-election campaign in 1996, I wrote a column contrasting his denunciation of Republican greed and heartlessness with his own record of charitable giving. During the previous six years, it turned out, Kerry had given less than $5,000 to charity -- a minuscule seven-10ths of 1 percent of his gross income for the period. In some years he had given nothing at all; in others, his charitable donations added up to only a few hundred dollars. During the same six years, his Republican opponent, former Governor William Weld, had donated to charity nearly $165,000, or more than 15 percent of his gross income. "There is something very wrong with a man who makes more than $120,000 a year," I wrote then, "and gives only scraps to help those who are less fortunate than he." In the years since that embarrassing revelation, Kerry's charitable donations have increased significantly. On his tax return last year, for example, he reported giving $43,735 to charity. (jeff jacoby, townhall)