THE WEAPONS ARE LONG GONE – AND JOHN KERRY KNOWS IT
by David Sisler
Almost before the presses had stopped running at the New York Times, the Kerry campaign had an ad on the air accusing President George W. Bush of losing 380 tons of high grade explosives in Iraq.
Almost before the echoes of the first showing of that ad had faded from the airwaves we knew that the weapons had disappeared more than a year ago – before, in fact, U.S. troops ever reached the Al-Qaqaa munitions depot near Baghdad.
And that is the story you are not hearing. And that is the story John Kerry and his liberal media allies know is true.
But why should they say otherwise? Their demagoguery has no shame. It certainly has no integrity. Heck, I looked it up – that is the definition of a demagogue.
Incidently, the Black Eye Network (formerly known as CBS) wanted to break the story as an election eve broadcast, an “October Surprise,” calculated to turn voters away from President Bush. But still smarting from their last foray into partisan politics (you remember, they wish you did not, the bogus National Guard documents), CBS let the Times throw the first sucker punch.
Matt Drudge reported that ABC mentioned the Iraq explosives at least 4 times, CBS 7 times, MSNBC 37 times, and CNN 50 times.
Mark Lane wrote a controversial book about the assassination of President John Kennedy, accusing the Warren Commission of reaching their conclusions too quickly. He entitled it, “Rush To Judgment.” When the story of the New York Times and CBS and the rest are published following this election season, it should be called “Rush To Smear.” Or “Rush To Deceive.” Or “Rush To Lie.” Or “Rush To Defeat.” Or – well, you get my point.
Folks, we knew in 2002 that more than 35 tons of HMX (high-melting-point explosives) were missing, and that’s the last time we were certain where any of those explosives were.
According to a Times source in 2003, U.S. troops “went through the bunkers, but saw no items bearing the International Atomic Energy Agency seal.”
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that “NBC News, which was embedded with the 101st Airborne when it arrived at Al-Qaqaa on April 10, 2003 – the day after the fall of Baghdad – reports this week that back then it found no sign of the explosives either” [emphasis added by me].
They didn’t find them because Saddam moved them.
While Saddam was playing patty-cake with the inspectors, giving them a bone to gnaw on with the 35 tons, he got rid of the rest of it.
Does that statement also apply to the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction – weapons that three presidential administrations, and everyone who looked at the evidence, knew was there?
The facts of the missing weapons story will not support John Kerry’s presidential campaign, so they are ignored. Or hidden. Like the missing explosives.
Pause with me here for a moment to take a different look at the newspaper which brags that they publish “all the news that’s fit to print.”
On March 4, 2003, a 59-year-old American Baptist, William P. Hyde, was among 21 people killed by a suicide bomber in Davao in the southern Philippines. The New York Times headlined the story on the front page, and ran a picture of Hyde, and of another American, Barbara Stevens, who had been slightly wounded in the attack.
The paper wrote a knee-jerk editorial, “Fighting Terror in the Philippines.”
The next day, March 5, 2003, another American Baptist was blown up by a terrorist bomb. This time the victim was 14-year-old Abigail Little, one of 16 people killed by a suicide bomber on a bus in Haifa, Israel.
The Times ran the story on the bottom corner of page one, with no picture of Abigail, and no mention of her name. Neither was there a corresponding editorial entitled “Fighting Palestinian Terror in Israel.”
The continuing political agenda of the New York Times is exposed – for all to see – in the stories of these two deaths.
Writing for the National Review, Tom Gross says, “The paper [continually] downplays Israeli suffering.”
(Read Gross’s incredible – and disturbing – column in its entirety by clicking here).
Continuing with their slimy editorial politics, the New York Times ramrodded the missing Iraq weapons story to the front of the news where it was picked up, as they knew it would be, and plastered around the world.
What that Times story did not tell you, what the corresponding broadcasts did not tell you, was – the weapons were long gone. And anyone who spent a few minutes digging, found that out. In typical “get Bush” fashion, it wasn’t reported for days.
Saddam Hussein secured supplies of RDX (rapid-detonation explosives) and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, from a variety of sources. Among the more notorious were France and Russia. Does anyone remember who two of the loudest protestors and non-supporters of our invasion of Iraq was? Coincidence?
Bill Gertz, writing in today’s The Washington Times, says, “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.
Explosives and other weapons were moved out as part of a carefully designed program. “The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict,” Mr. Shaw said.
As we now know, John Kerry blasted the Bush administration for its failure to “guard those stockpiles.”
As we now know, John Kerry harangued, “This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration.”
It is very difficult, Mr. Kerry, to guard stockpiles of weapons that have already been secreted to other nations.
And you know that.
And knew it.
But why bother with the truth at this late stage of the campaign?
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LATE BREAKING:
Fox News reported on October 29 that a team from the 3rd Infantry Division took 200 tons of explosives out of Al-Qaqaa in mid-April. Click here to read the entire story.
Copyright 2004 by David Sisler. All Rights Reserved.
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