Month: October 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

Waiting for Kos: Kerry’s UN Meetings Not So “Easy” to Prove After All?

On Sunday, I Markos Moulitsas’ defense of Kerry’s imaginary meeting with the entire U.N. Security Council on Iraq, where he quite firmly declared:
But there is a punchline — The story is wrong. Kerry did meet with everyone… I know I haven’t sourced the assertion that Kerry met with everyone. When we see the story, with the names of the ambassadors who claim not to have met with Kerry, then it’ll be easy enough to refute the allegations.
So it seems only reasonable that I should respond to his post providing the very refutation that was promised.
Well, I would. Except over two days later, there isn’t one.
Not a single post or main-page update on the subject since Sunday night, in fact.
Hmph. Perhaps not so “easy” after all?
Or perhaps the tiny-yet-boastful acorn that is Kos falls not far from the mighty oak of Kerry’s self-aggrandizing tree?

Explosivesgate Roundup

Jim Geraghty has an interesting e-mail from a serviceman who to have been on site at the time:
You are correct in your bottom line conclusion. Here is a second follow up.
I was serving as a [identifying information removed by the Kerry Spot] staff member during the time in question. The Commander on the site had complete real time intelligence on what to expect and possibly find at the Al-QaQaa depot. The ordinance in question was not found when teams were sent in to inspect and secure the area. When this information was relayed, Operational plans were adjusted and the unit moved forward. Had the ordinance in question been discovered, a security team would have been left in place.
Roger Simon lays it out in simple terms for us all to understand:
Let’s review. As Belmont Club notes, Watson, there are three possibilities. 1. The RDX was gone before the war started. 2. It disappeared in the early days between the arrival of the Third Infantry and 101st Airborne. 3. It disappeared later. Now since it would have taken some forty highly-visible trucks to decamp with these supposed 380 tons of explosives and since Saddam and his Baathist cronies had at least six months to do what they wanted with this stuff during the prolonged Security Council bla-bla-bla and since no such explosives have apparently been used to attack US troops during the entire insurgency, even a twelve-year old boy making his first shave with Occam’s original razor would undoubtedly pick ONE – THIS HAPPENED BEFORE THE WAR STARTED.
JustOneMinute runs down the politics of the IAEA, and Mr. El Baradei:
Perhaps the Times could find space for a few more sentences:
It was reported at the end of September that the US would oppose Dr. ElBaradei’s bid for a third term. Dr. ElBaradei’s letter requesting an update on the status of the Al QaQaa explosives was sent to the President of the Security Council on October 1.
Captain Ed is all over the story:
– He ‘does the math‘ and shows just how hard it would be to loot 380 tons of explosives:
Bottom line this operation would take the resources of AN ENTIRE COMPANY (approx. 100 men) OVER TWO WEEKS, good Intel to know exactly where the “right” explosives were hidden and a means of breaching huge steel doors and concrete of an ASP.
– He shows that CBS news and Fox News reported that the Al Qaqaa facility was clearly searched and under scrutiny by the U.S. military in April 2003 — but no 380 tons of explosives were found:
…it appears that the [Third Infantry Division] performed much more than a cursory search and came up with laboratory samples of the HMX and/or RDX, but not the massive amounts the IAEA claimed was stored at Al Qaqaa. Fox reported that the Army had plenty of suspicion about that site and thought it likely that the Iraqis had either manufactured or stored WMD there.
– And he demolishes the NYT’s latest attempt at salvaging the story by interviewing a U.S. commander, who unfortunately for the NYT, is the wrong commander.
(Give it a rest, Ed; leave some story for the rest of us!)
James Glassman at TCS points out the obvious contradiction in the liberal outrage on the explosives story:
But far more important, Kerry’s complaints about Bush only enforce Bush’s reason for invading Iraq. Think about it.
Kerry and Edwards say that Bush didn’t do enough to prevent the disappearance of the explosives, which could be used against Americans here at home. But the very existence of such explosives — whether defined as weapons of mass destruction or not — was the reason Bush led the nation into Iraq in the first place.
Belmont Club goes further into the reports of the Third Infantry Division’s inspection of the site:
The contemporaneous CBS report, written before anyone knew al Qa Qaa would be a big deal, establishes two important things. The first is that 3ID knew it was looking through an IAEA inspection site. The second was that the site had shown unmistakable signs of tampering before the arrival of US troops. ..”
Dean Esmay weighs in, wonders what the next fake story attacking Bush will be, and refers us to
John Cole, who provides additional perspectives on the quantities involved, with pictures!

If the explosives were looted, why haven’t they been used?

Another aspect of the NYT story that, logically, doesn’t hold up for me is if the explosives were looted by terrorists, why haven’t they been used yet?
Note the following in latest MSNBC story:
“But other Pentagon officials, also speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested that the explosives could have been hidden elsewhere before the war. They also stressed that there is no evidence HMX or RDX have been used against coalition forces in Iraq.”
My assumption — and I’d appreciate if those who know such things would verify or correct me on this — is that if these particular explosives were used in Iraq, then the U.S. military would be well aware of it. I assume that they spend quite a bit of time and energy analyzing the methods and means of attack which the terrorists are using against us, and that if this particularly potent type of explosive was used, the techniques and technology are available which would lead to it being identified.
So if these assumptions are correct: how plausible is it that eighteen months after these explosives were allegedly looted by terrorists now locked in a life-and-death struggle with Iraqi and U.S. forces, none of the 380 tons of explosives have been used?
If terrorist groups did indeed loot it, and they have it, what could they possibly be saving it for?

Spoons Endorses Bush!

How big a deal is the NYT explosives story scandal?
So big that it has gotten Spoons to declare voting for Bush! It’s the endorsement of the week! Now that he has sewed up the vital pissed-off-conservative- with-a-blog-named-after- silverware demographic, a Bush landslide is now assured!
Some guy named Andrew also endorsed today, but nobody really gives a damn who’s he’s voting for anymore…

NYT’s October Surprise Collapses

Yesterday, the New York Times did a fine service for the Kerry campaign by publishing a timed hit piece describing how tons of explosives have gone missing from a site in Iraq.
This morning, the story is imploding, with NBC News leading the charge to point out that the explosives were already gone when U.S. troops arrived just a day after the fall of Baghdad. (Bizarrely, CNN has this as their lead story online, and it is nowhere to be found on MSNBC’s front page. Update: Here’s the MSNBC story.).
But the Times didn’t just do a shoddy job of reporting and failed to identify the possibility that the explosives were gone before our troops arrived. It’s worse than that: they did find that out, they just buried it deep in the story and, apparently, never bothered to follow up on it.
Here’s Page 1 of the online version of the NYT story yesterday, where they wonder why nothing was done by U.S. forces to protect the site:
The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.
And then, buried on Page 3 of the story, we find the answer:
A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces “went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal.”
This matches perfectly with the NBC story:
NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad.
While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional explosives, they did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that reportedly went missing, according to NBC.
This morning, the NYT appears bent on continuing the error, running a story titled Iraq Explosives Become Issue in Campaign (gee, wonder how that happened). In that story, the Times is forced to acknowledge that they did, in fact, know about their error in advance:
On Monday evening, Nicolle Devenish, the spokeswoman for the Bush campaign, noted a section of the Times report indicating that American troops, on the way to Baghdad in April 2003, stopped at the Al Qaqaa complex and saw no evidence of high explosives. Noting that the cache may have been looted before the American invasion, she said Mr. Kerry had exaggerated the administration’s responsibility.
“John Kerry presumes to know something that he could not know: when the material disappeared,” Ms. Devenish said. “Since he does not know whether it was gone before the war began, he can’t prove it was there to be secured.”
But still they won’t give up, and run with the bogus story in this morning’s editorial, which sniffs:
James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger reported in The Times yesterday that some 380 tons of the kinds of powerful explosives used to destroy airplanes, demolish buildings, make missile warheads and trigger nuclear weapons have disappeared from one of the many places in Iraq that the United States failed to secure. The United Nations inspectors disdained by the Bush administration had managed to monitor the explosives for years. But they vanished soon after the United States took over the job. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was so bent on proving his theory of lightning warfare that he ignored the generals who said an understaffed and underarmed invasion force could rush to Baghdad, but couldn’t hold the rest of the country, much less guard things like the ammunition dump. (Emphasis mine)
The reporters’ names who worked the original story are right there, but the other name that bears mentioning is Jill Abramson, the Times’ Managing Editor. Ensuring that a story like this is properly vetted falls squarely in the ME’s realm of responsibility, so I think it’s fair to ask Ms. Abramson what happened here, and why she’s allowing her news pages to become an adjunct to the Kerry camapaign’s attempts to smear Bush’s record on Iraq.
More from:
Jim Geraghty at Kerryspot
Captain Ed
Hugh Hewitt
Roger Simon
Belmont Club
PowerLine
JustOneMinute
Michelle Malkin
Proving that the media cycle has become compressed beyond all recognition, Polipundit has already run a poll to name this new media scandal
Latest Update: Cliff May at The Corner drops a true bombshell which, if true, could escalate this story to utterly catastrophic proportions for the U.N.-loving left in general, and the Kerry campaign in particular:
BOMB-GATE [Cliff May]
Sent to me by a source in the government:

Digression: Google Desktop Search

Apropos of nothing: if you haven’t downloaded Desktop Search, go do it, right now.
It takes a little while to index your hard drive the first time, but after that, delivers unbelievably fast searches of all your files and, if you use Outlook, all your emails.
Working with the Ecosystem, I’ve developed a pretty healthy appreciation of search performance and indexing. And I can safely say I haven’t the foggiest clue how the hell Google Desktop Search does what it does.
This isn’t a reasonable evolutionary step towards better functionality/performance. This is, like, space alien technology. I have no idea how it works, but it doesn’t even appear to be playing by the same rules as every other search technology I’ve seen…

Kerry’s Fictional Diplomacy: Waiting for Kos

After spending a few paragraphs making fun of the significance of last night’s revelation that lied about meeting with the entire U.N. Security council on Iraq, Daily Kos had this to say:

But there is a punchline — The story is wrong. Kerry did meet with everyone…
Update: I know I haven’t sourced the assertion that Kerry met with everyone. When we see the story, with the names of the ambassadors who claim not to have met with Kerry, then it’ll be easy enough to refute the allegations.
As I pointed out late last night, the story is now out, as are the names of several Amabassadors who state they didn’t meet with Kerry:
Andres Franco, Columbia
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico
Stefan Tafrov, Bulgaria
Kos is now on the record quite flatly declaring that he can debunk the heart of this story (and it will “be easy”, in fact!). I’m waiting to see his followthrough.
Folks, I can’t say for sure if lefty activists like Kos really don’t think this story is a big deal (they are quite self-deluded enough to believe that), or if they’re spinning. I’m inclined to think the latter.
This story is a major threat to Kerry, and I think the left knows it. Here’s why:
– It is recent: this isn’t a case of differing recollections about something that happened in the jungle 30 years ago.
– It is relevant: This isn’t a case about lying about sex (as Bill pointed out): it was a lie right at the heart of Kerry’s key foreign policy argument: that Bush failed to involve allies adequately in the war, and that Kerry would do better.
– It is simple. There’s no confusing details; you don’t have to learn the specifications of a Swift Boat or the precise qualifications required to receive a Purple Heart . He said he met with the entire Security Council. The representatives of the Security Council say he didn’t. Period. Easy.
All these factors add up to a straightforward and clear story that most definitely could damage Kerry — and should damage Kerry — in the critical last week before the election.
Again, I’d ask my colleagues on the right side of the blogosphere — yes, I’m talking to you — to keep this in mind. Don’t let Kerry off the hook on this one, or we might end up with nobody but ourselves to blame next week.
More from:
Michelle Malkin: “I don’t agree with critics of the story who sniff that there’s “nothing new” in exposing Kerry’s lies and that therefore the story is a dud.”
Hugh Hewitt: “There is clear Bush momentum that is going to accelerate as the non-meeting with the Security Council story gets legs and reminds voters of Kerry’s magic hat, his never falling down on the ski slopes, and his gun running to the anti-communists of Cambodia…”
Red State, where it all started, rounds up historical Kerry quotes…

Kerry’s Mythical Security Council Meeting

The much-rumored Washington Times piece on Kerry is out:
Council members deny meeting Kerry
U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq…
Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the “real readiness” of the United Nations to “take this seriously” because he met “with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein.”
But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries’ U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.
Inital reactions from those opposing Kerry in the blogosphere seem muted, such as this from Kevin at Wizbang: “I must say I’m underwhelmed at this juncture as well. It rings of the “imaginary foreign leaders” flap. With the media in his corner Kerry is like Teflon.”
Without lapsing into blogger triumphalism, countering the mainstream media’s tendency to ignore Kerry’s flaws is, after all, what we’re here for, isn’t it? (Or Bush’s flaws, for that matter, but others have that beat covered pretty well.)
I’ll admit, my first reaction was a bit of a yawn myself. But then I thought about why that was, and I think it comes down to the fact that I expect Kerry to exaggerate and outright lie when it serves his political purpose of the moment. But the fact that he’s a serial exaggerator is exactly why this story should receive attention, not why it should be shrugged off.
So let’s not treat Mr. Kerry with the “soft bigotry of low expectations” that I’m sure his squishly little liberal heart would find so offensive. The standard is a simple one: tell the damned truth. It would appear he didn’t in a crucial discussion of one of the most critical policy decisions made in years.
So let’s make sure that everyone we possibly can reach knows that. And let’s not conclude that Teflon John is going to get away with this one just yet — because the one thing that is true is that if the blogosphere doesn’t light a fire under this one, he will walk…
More from:
Matt Margolis, who shares Kevin’s disappointment.
Bill, who — bless his heart — seems to feel more as I do: “These aren’t exaggerations. This isn’t a case of lying about sex. It’s a story about a man that’s pathological enough to look a nationally televised audience of 55 million people in the eye and tell them a manufactured story that has no basis in either subjective analysis, wishful interpretation or fact, and then use it to propose a conclusion about a deadly serious matter of foreign policy.”
Bill Quick is not impressed.
But Captain Ed thinks it could cost Kerry a few points
Not much from the PowerLine crew as yet… must be bedtime in Minnesota!
Roger Simon asks: “Is John Kerry a sociopath?”. Good question!
Spoons yawns. For the record, I agree with him that the pre-story rumors on this piece were a dumb idea, and have proved extremely counterproductive…
And on the other side of the blogosphere, Kos, not surprisingly, downplays the story. (Note to my erstwhile colleagues on the right who don’t think this story is worthwhile: you’re agreeing with Kos. Might want to consider that a bit of a warning sign…) But more interestingly, he makes a rather bold statement:
But there is a punchline — The story is wrong. Kerry did meet with everyone…
Update: I know I haven’t sourced the assertion that Kerry met with everyone. When we see the story, with the names of the ambassadors who claim not to have met with Kerry, then it’ll be easy enough to refute the allegations.
Well, the story is out, and names three ambassadors:
Ambassador Andres Franco, Columbia
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico
Stefan Tafrov, Bulgaria
If there’s a refutation to be had, I’m listening. The floor is yours, Kos…

Ecosystem Self-Service Interface: Part I

Folks:
I’ve been hinting at a new self-service interface for a long while now, and tonight the first piece of it is finally ready.
The challenge that I have faced is that I wanted to develop a system that would accomplish two major goals:
– It would not require manual intervention on my part (slow, tedious, unreliable)
– It would prevent abuse and ensure that only a blog’s true owner could make a change
I think I’ve settled on a system that works on both counts. The first feature to be implemented and operational is the ability to change a weblog’s URL — tonight, in certain limited cases, later, in all.
Tonight’s functionality allows you to change your weblog’s URL in the Ecosystem if you have not added a duplicate entry in the Ecosystem for your new blog’s URL. If you’ve already done that, and therefore have two URL’s in the Ecosystem, fear not: I will be implementing the code to handle that, and ‘merge’ the history of your two URLs. Just, er, not tonight.
So: the way to tell the Ecosystem about your new URL depends on whether or not you have ‘gone live’ with your new URL or not.
If you have turned on your new URL, and are automatically redirecting traffic to it from your old URL, then add the following tags to your new URL’s front page in the header section:
&lt link rel=”DCTERMS.replaces” href=”http://www.myoldblogurl.com” /&gt
&lt meta name=”DC.Identifier” content=”http://www.mynewblogurl.com”&gt
Make sure that ‘http://www.myoldblogurl.com’ matches the old URL that the Ecosystem is tracking exactly.
If you have not turned on your new URL, or are not automatically redirecting traffic from your old URL, you can simply add the following tag to your old URL’s front page in the header section:
&lt link rel=”DCTERMS.isreplacedby” href=”http://www.mynewblogurl.com/” /&gt
The tags will be picked up on the next evening’s nightly scan, so check back the following morning and you should see your URL updated all nice and neat. And if you don’t, please let me know.
Once the URL swap has occurred, you can remove the tags. But I have tried to create the tags based on proper Core metadata standards, which means that any other application that understands Dublin Core could also understand them. So you can also leave them there, if you like.
Anyway: enough for tonight. Coming soon, I’ll get the ‘merge’ code implemented, as I know many of the URL switches that need to happen already have duplicate entries…
PS: I’ve also started cleaning out a lot of the obvious duplicates blogs that show up on the Traffic Ranking pages. Only got through the top 250 tonight, but it’s a start…

Farenheit 9/11 & Syria

So perhaps some of the more legal-minded folks of the blogosphere can help me understand something.
Point 1: Currently, the US has in place on Syria which impose a “Prohibition on the export to Syria of products of the United States, other than food and medicine” .
Point 2: Michael Moore’s film, Farenheit 9/11, a product of the United States, is being distributed in Syria (and elsewhere) by the UAE based company Front Row Entertainment, which has obtained international distribution rights to the film.
So: Is the fact that F9/11 isn’t being directly exported to Syria (but is being routed through a UAE-based company) enough to avoid violating the sanctions?
And if not…?

The Blogosphere Daily News Returns

Some of you might remember The Blogopshere Daily News, a feature on TTLB a ways back which I eventually put on hiatus.
Well, guess what: it’s back!
On the News page, you’ll find a roundup of the most popular weblog posts in the blogosphere, updated each morning.
The page is currently a work in progress, but I think it is stable enough to do a ‘soft launch’ and let folks start playing with it. Feedback, as always, is most welcome…