The original story was about a specific amount of explosives and a specific type. Even if the original story had been 100% accurrate if put in perspective with the vast amount of weaponery and the vast number of dumps,conventional and unique, the story would still be overblown. But the original story was wrong.It is amazing how the MSM comes out with very specific amounts and then when the story begins to fall apart they begin to lower the bar of proof. If the original story had been some weapons and explosives, the amounts and types is uncertain, have gone missing, then the story would be accurate. Then of course it would not be a campaign issue and Kerry, with the help of certain portions of the MSM, would not have anything to pontificate about. What you say is prooving beyond a shadow of a doubt is not what the original story stated. If I write a story thats says you raped a women and later I proove that you did have a date with her this does not proove the rape. Yet you seem to have such a low threshold of accountability that you try to use these tapes to justify the original story when they in no way do this.Re-read the specific points that are laid out in this thread, all of them. I think they make the original story look ridiculous.How do the tapes you refer to show that the specific amounts and types of explosives that the original story claims went missing. They don’t.This thread ,none of the better posts are written by me, show that the Times story that the Kerry campaign is using to hype this story out of proportion is widely innaccurate and full of assumptions that are not accurate and that these smoking gun tapes that you refer to do not support the wild claims that the Times made. Since you are a former journalist go through this thread and answer the specific charges that are made in this thread and debunk them.

It’s still enough to give the insurgents a motherlode for years to come. Now we have the video footage from ABC proving beyond doubt (according to David Kay, who is no lover of the liberals) that the explosives indeed disappeared after the invasion. So I suggest you give it a rest and go a bit easier on the mainstream media. They do a good job overall (I used to be a member) and there is no conspiracy to fool or delude their readers. Most of the things you read in the papers that you don’t want to believe, like the fact that we outsourced Tora Borta or that we intentionally decided not to get Zarqawi when we could have, are confirmed in both the conservative and liberal media (specifically, in the two cases I just cited, the Wall Street Journal did the confirming recently). In other words, it’s simply the truth, it’s simply what happened. The media did the same thing to JImmy Carter back in 1980, suffocating him in bad news, and for damn good reason — because the bad news was true. When we were winning in Iraq, that was reported too, and we were all delirious with joy and the scent of victory. The media follows the smell of blood, be it Clinton’s or Bush’s or whoever’s. A few bad apples aside (on both the left and the right) they do a good job and are to be commended.

This subject is the exact reason why so many people are turning to the blogs to get their information on serious subjects instead of the MSM.When Swopa and his crowd see the picture of the labels and cry smoking gun, it’s proves it is the missing expolsives. Then we find out from people on this site that this label could be one of 79 different types of materials and not all of them are similar to the explosives that the NYT claims were there after the Army has arrived. “oh but the films shows seals being broken”, the smoking gun that proves the original story is correct.” Then we find out from this site that many of the bunkers could be entered without breaking the seals and the last time the UN force was at the bunkers they only checked the seals, not the contents of the bunkers.

My quick recap of the many numerous posts above is superficial and I will not spend time going over the many specific and seemingly irrefutable points made above. Unfortunetly the MSM won’t examine the detailed points either. They operate from the assumption that the original Times story is basically spot on and then cover the story from a process angle instead of examinng the details of the story. They are to lazy to even use the detals listed above, check with experts to debunk or verify the specifics, and then use this knowledge to enlighten their readers.they blather on about how this helps or hurts Bush and thus help cement a superficial and sloppy piece of journalism and help the writers of the Times achieve their goals of influencing the election.

To see Swopa’s paper thin logic get torn apart is enjoyable but it is sad to think that his original post could get printed above the fold of the NYT and passed off as credible journalism and a valid story. The fact that Times can print such a obvious last second propaganda attack from a spurned UN official who is pissed at the Bush administration for not supporting his third term and have it dominate the final days of a US election is a stunning indictment of the state of the traditional journalism and a sign that if they don’t clean up their act they will soon pass into the dustbin of history.

Saddam had 150 ammo dumps in Baghdad alone. Not even a million men can be everywhere at once.

Besides if you had your way nobody would have any control over any of it. Except Saddam and his wacko sons and their friends.

And who sold most of it to him? The Peace Camp. Gotta love that.

But here’s the basic skinny: a Tradesports contract is $10. As of a few seconds ago, more than 14000 contracts — $140,000 — have traded since midnight UK time (about 6PM yesterday Mountain Time), 8000 of those since about 10AM MDT today. (It’s 1336MDT as I type this.)

As Don Luskin points out, there is massive selling against the contract, but the contract won’t stay down. So someone is dropping $50K or so to try and drive the price down.

I mean this in the kindest posssible way: you might want pause in your flight to orbit around this passage for a few moments (from Hugh Hewitt). (Scroll down a bit.)

Here is one of those small signs of Beltway conviction that Kerry is a loser.ÔøΩ Anthony Cordesman is no friend of the Administration, but the senior analyst at the Center for International Security is one of the “go-to” experts admired by the press.ÔøΩ The Washington Post puts him on the front page this morning:

“There is something truly absurd about focusing on 377 tons of rather ordinary explosives, regardless of what actually happened at al Qaqaa,” Anthony H. Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in an assessment yesterday. “The munitions at al Qaqaa were at most around 0.06 percent of the total.”

Jamie Irons

Glad you Swoped in, sort of like a bat out of heaven to enlighten us.

Your premise seems to be that we either should have guarded all the widely dispersed and infinitely various ordinance in Iraq after we got there, and to do that should have had “enough soldiers on the ground.” (Whatever that number would have been — I’m not sure their is sufficient infantry in the entire world to carry out that task).

But guarding this stuff is not like guarding the gold in Fort Knox, which is in a central, well-defined location in a friendly surrounding environment.

Please consider the arguments of Ralph Peters and others on some of these questions.

Jamie Irons

First of all, I should have been more specific. I should have explicitly stated that the venue you ‘talked’ about this issue was one with some traffic. Like Roger’s site. Not like your site (with its’ grand total of 2 comments, you might as well posted it on the wall of your closet). I should have also explained in detail that linking to the New York Times does not constitute ‘talking’ or ‘discussing’ an issue in a meaningful way. I realize it’s all you can do, but linking is linking, not talking, not thinking.

Second of all, it doesn’t change the main thrust of my original post…which is that for all your huff and puff about other people’s integrity, you’re the one doing the unabashed whoring around here. I couldn’t help but notice you simply avoided any attempt to justify the apparent contradiction of bemoaning this issue when you have steadfastly refused to get credence to the concept that WMD in Saddam’s hands ever constituted a danger to the USA. It is no surprise that you remain oblivious to your own lack of credibility, but you really ought to try to think these things through once in a while.

…but I do know this: a trip across that country revealed one huge weapons depot after another. There were more missiles, mortars, guns, grenades, and ammo in Iraq than you could ever possibly imagine. The stuff was everywhere: in schools, hospitals, mosques, bunkers, abandoned buildings, holes in the ground, and homes under construction.

Something painfully, and very dangerously, similar to this is true of Pakistan, Afghanistan, numerous other -stans, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, and no shortage of other places. This stuff wasn’t put there by Karl Rove or George Bush or Halliburton or the CIA or the Evil American Weapons industry or any of the other favorite scapegoats of the Barking Moonbats. It was sold or handed out like candy to Islamomurderers and other thugs by the Progressive Egalitarian Societies of the FSU, PRC, NK and the like in their never-ending effort to create Social Justice.

Mr. Levanthal describes the world Barking Moonbats like you, Swopa, have so fervently wished for. Now you’ve got it and you’d like to blame it, and the pain and difficulty of cleaning it up, on everyone else. ESAD, you loathesome bigots!