Day: October 28, 2004

The Choice!

America faces a choice next Tuesday. And Jeff Goldstein, Bill at INDC, and the Daily Recycler are to help you make it!

The Russians Are Trucking

Bill Faith e-mails more on the Russia – Al Qaqaa connection, pointing out an op-ed penned by the former head of the Romanian intelligence service, who claimed in March 2004 that helped Iraq vanish its weapons:
The Soviet bloc not only sold Saddam its WMDs, but it showed them how to make them “disappear.” Russia is still at it. [Gen. Yevgeny] Primakov was in Baghdad from December until a couple of days before the war, along with a team of Russian military experts led by two of Russia’s topnotch “retired” generals, Vladislav Achalov, a former deputy defense minister, and Igor Maltsev, a former air defense chief of staff. … “I did not fly to Baghdad to drink coffee,” was what Gen. Achalov told the media afterward. They were there orchestrating Iraq’s “Sarindar” plan.

As we say in the biz, read the whole thing.

At least they spelled my name right

Tangible proof that the New York Times of my existence:
“A recent posting on DailyKos, a liberal Web site visited by more than 500,000 people daily, according to blog rankings posted on a site called The Truth Laid Bear…”
And hear I thought the NYT still sucked just because they hadn’t gotten my messages.
No excuse now, kids: shape up!
P.S.: “a site called The Truth Laid Bear”… no scare quotes? I was really hoping for scare quotes.
P.P.S.: “DailyKos, a liberal Web site visited by more than 500,000 people daily…” Er, no. Would somebody please explain why “daily visits” != “daily visitors” to the nice people at the Times?
P.P.P.S. Isn’t it kind of funny that the allegedly greatest newspaper in the world is presenting as fact something it essentially just found on some guys’ website? If I wasn’t the guy in question, I might be appalled…do they even know what the traffic rankings mean? (Ed: Apparently not; see above. Right.)

Fission is Hard!

Random question: why in the world does the International Atomic Energy Agency feel the need to have dedicated section for women?
Is it, like, where you go if you want to learn about the special female enriched uranium? Or are trying to avoid those nasty male fission reactions?
PS: Yes, I’m poking around the IAEA site. Never know what might turn up…

What’s a few hundred tons among friends?

I have to admit I am just baffled by the ABC News story this morning on the possible discrepancy in the amount of RDX explosive stored at Al Qaqaa.
Let’s keep this simple. Here’s ABC News story:
International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings” indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported.
The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing

Explosivesgate Roundup: Day III

It just keeps getting worse for Senator John Kerry (D-UN). There have been several huge developments on the story, none of them good for him, and leading me to suspect that by the time this is all over, we’ll find that there are satellite photos of Kerry and Edwards in December 2002 personally hauling explosives out of Al Qaqaa while Mohamed El Baradei and Kofi Annan sit waiting in the trucks.
Some folks might be thinking “wow, this story is moving amazingly fast,”, and I’ll admit that was my first reaction. But the reason this story looks like it is moving quickly is because other news organizations are now doing the work that the NYT should have done in the first place. And it is going fast because, frankly, it wasn’t all that damned hard.
Here’s the latest, in more or less reverse chronological order (because that’s how we bloggers do it, by golly):
On the nutty fringe, the Guardian reports this morning that a terrorist group, the Al-Islam’s Army Brigades, to be in possession of a large portion of the missing explosives:
The group, calling itself Al-Islam’s Army Brigades, made the claim in a video broadcast today and warned that it will use the explosives if foreign troops threaten Iraqi cities.
Its video statement said:”Heroic Mujahideen have managed by the grace of God and by coordinating with a…number of the officers and the soldiers of the American intelligence to obtain a very huge amount of the explosives that were in the al-Qaqaa facility, which was under the protection of the American forces.”
The choice of whether to apply ‘nutty fringe’ to The Guardian, the terrorists, or both is left as reader’s choice.
The other major revelation of the morning is that ABC News is now reporting that the amount of explosives reported by missing by the Iraqi interim government may be wildly overstated:
International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings” indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported:.
The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing