The usual suspects

By Carol Devine-Molin
web posted November 1, 2004

Didn't we just go through this recently? Well, to coin a phrase,
it's déjà vu all over again. Now let me see, CBS is again up to its
eyeballs in efforts to damage President Bush. Nothing astonishing
here. Only weeks ago, CBS was proved to be thoroughly
disreputable when it tried to pass off forged documents that
falsely accused Bush of failing to fulfill his National Guard
service. Now we find that CBS is part of an orchestrated
attempt to discredit the Bush administration regarding 380 tons
of powerful HMX and RDX explosives that went missing at the
Al Qaqaa facility in Iraq. Reportedly, CBS planned to air its
"take" on this politically-charged matter on Sunday's "60
Minutes." But apparently, this was not quite soon enough for the
Left-leaning crowd.

Lo and behold, the New York Times beat CBS to the punch on
this Bush-bashing story, and the "Gray Lady" ran with its slanted
reportage on the front page on October 25. Yes, and just in time
for the Kerry camp to glom onto it and hype it during the last full
week of the campaign. Sorry to be so jaded, but the Left is so
extraordinarily heavy-handed that you almost have to laugh.
We're experiencing an "October Surprise" flashing with neon
lights. The Kerry camp is exhibiting a considerable amount of
desperation as it grasps at straws just days before the
presidential election. The march-in-lockstep Lefties comprised of
Democratic politicos, UN apparatchiks, Euro-weenies, and the
mainstream media are out-and-about disseminating the "Big Lie"
that Bush is to blame for the missing explosives.

It's a close election, and the mainstream media is only happy to
oblige by teasing-up a fraudulent story for the Democrats to
exploit. Suffice it to say that Republicans are always cognizant of
the particularly close relationship between media elites and their
ideological soulmates, the Democrats. And for the Left, spinning
propaganda always trumps truth. CNN, MSNBC, ABC and
CBS ran big-time with the distorted news piece, which wrongly
castigated the Bush administration for failing to safeguard the
HMX and RDX explosives upon the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
And, in likewise fashion, Senator Kerry and John Edwards were
also out on the campaign trail trashing President Bush to the hilt.
Kerry also charged that Bush was "hiding" the theft of the
explosives from the American people. What poppycock!

As to Senator Kerry unconscionable behavior in recent days,
President Bush noted: "Now the senator is making wild charges
about missing explosives, when his top foreign policy adviser
admits, quote, ‘We do not know the facts'. The senator is
denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field
without knowing the facts." President Bush is absolutely right. It
should be apparent to Americans by now that John Kerry is a
morally challenged individual who will say and do anything to win
this election. Lynne Cheney is spot-on when she says of Kerry
"He's not a good man." Moreover, John Kerry is essentially
devoid of a positive vision for this nation. Instead, we're all
supposed to be satisfied with a nebulous "plan" for this or that
issue, which either lacks substance or is a co-opted version of
Bush ideas.

According to a piece at the Fox News website, Pentagon
officials advised: "U.S. forces searched several times last year
the Iraqi military base from which 380 tons of explosives
vanished -- including one check a week before Saddam Hussein
was driven out of power. But the military saw no signs of a huge
quantity of munitions." But what about the bigger picture? In
truth, President Bush has had phenomenal success in grappling
with much of the munitions left behind by the Iraqi regime.
Approximately 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives have
already been secured or destroyed in Iraq. And this only
substantiates the point that Saddam Hussein was indeed a
"dangerous tyrant" who was armed to the teeth and needed to be
taken down.

In any event, there's a pesky problem that CBS, the New York
Times and the other assorted Lefties will have to face, whether
they like it or not: This story being flogged by the media and the
Kerry camp is predicated upon a false assumption. The
underpinnings lack merit. It has not been established that the
explosives in question vanished after the toppling of Saddam
Hussein. Without proper investigation, Mohamed ElBaradei,
who is the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), alleged that 380 tons of HMX and RDX disappeared
from Al Qaqaa after Saddam Hussein's government fell. Thus,
Mohamed ElBaradei was blaming the Bush administration, which
had assumed responsibility for securing Iraqi munitions once
Saddam was ousted.

However, the more we learn, the more likely it appears that the
explosives were actually moved prior to the Iraq War at a time
when Mohamed ElBaradei was still in charge of securing
munitions sites, including Al Qaqaa. Elements of the Army's
Third Infantry Division were the first troops to arrive at the scene
at Al Qaqaa, and they engaged in a two-day battle with the
Iraqis at the facility before subduing them. Third Infantry soldiers
then conducted a brief inspection – and found no sizable caches
- before moving on to Baghdad. The 101st Airborne Division,
which arrived a few days later, made a similar observation as to
weaponry. Frankly, I take the Pentagon at its word that there
were no indications "of a huge quantity of munitions" at Al
Qaqaa. It's very difficult to believe that our troops could have
overlooked a 380-ton cache of explosives or that terrorist
thieves could have moved the booty once coalition troops were
on the scene. No, in all probability the explosives were moved
before the war started. And Mohamed ElBaradei has his own
agenda and is attempting to shift blame to the Bush
administration. If ElBaradei acknowledged that the explosives
were taken during the run-up to the war, then he would have to
admit that he and the IAEA failed to do their duty.

As noted in a stunning piece by Bill Gertz of the Washington
Times, "Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam
Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria
in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military
operation…John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense
for international technology security, said in an interview that he
believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence,
"almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went
missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad." If Shaw
is right about the timetable of events, then Mr.ElBaradei and the
IAEA were clearly at fault for not adequately securing these
caches of weaponry, including the explosives.

Moreover, the NewsMax website unearthed some pivotal
information that bears noting: "On February 15, 2003, the Times
reported on an address to the United Nations Security Council
by Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN's chief nuclear
watchdog…ElBaradei shared his concern about the removal of
high explosives from facilities like Al Qaqaa: ‘We have also
continued to investigate the relocation and consumption of the
high explosive HMX', ElBaradei explained a month before the
US invasion." Oh, how rich! ElBaradei was well aware that
powerful explosives were being pilfered during his watch, prior
to the invasion of Iraq. Then how can he make the claim - with
any reasonable degree of certainty - that 380 tons of explosives
disappeared after the toppling of Saddam Hussein and, hence,
under the auspices of American troops? Often, Leftist elites (and
I certainly would include a UN bureaucrat and globalist such as
ElBaradei in this category) accuse others of precisely what they
themselves are guilty of. That's why it always pays to listen
closely to the Left's accusations.
 
In sum, the political Left thinks that it can slander the Bush
administration in any manner it chooses in the hopes that some of
their garbage will stick. But even though there's only one day to
go before the election, the Republicans and their allies intend to
denounce the Left's lies and distortions at every turn.

Carol Devine-Molin is a regular contributor to several online
magazines.

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