Awesome statement today from Wesley Clark on Bush’s half-assed response to the missing explosives controversy (via Atrios) :

Today George W. Bush made a very compelling and thoughtful argument for why he should not be reelected. In his own words, he told the American people that “…a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your Commander in Chief.

President Bush couldn’t be more right. He jumped to conclusions about any connection between Saddam Hussein and 911. He jumped to conclusions about weapons of mass destruction. He jumped to conclusions about the mission being accomplished. He jumped to conclusions about how we had enough troops on the ground to win the peace. And because he jumped to conclusions, terrorists and insurgents in Iraq may very well have their hands on powerful explosives to attack our troops, we are stuck in Iraq without a plan to win the peace, and Americans are less safe both at home and abroad.

By doing all these things, he broke faith with our men and women in uniform. He has let them down. George W. Bush is unfit to be our Commander in Chief.

I wonder which role Clark will end up getting in Kerry’s cabinet?

While I enjoyed Slate’s Presidential Endorsements (Kevin’s got a good summary), I was much more impressed with the accompanying article and it’s commentary on media bias :

Fairness, in the kind of journalism Slate practices, does not mean equal time for both sides. It does not mean withholding judgment past a reasonable point. It means having basic intellectual honesty. When you advance a hypothesis, you must test it against reality. When you make a political argument, you must take seriously the significant arguments on the other side. And indeed, Slate writers tend to be the sort of people who relish opportunities to criticize their own team and give credit to their opponents. Or so we’d like to think. By disclosing our opinions about who should be president, we’re giving readers a chance to judge how well we are living up to these ideals.
. . .
The case most commonly made against fuller disclosure of opinion at “straight” news organizations like CBS?as opposed to journals of opinion like Slate?is that the information would be misused by media critics on the right. Movement conservatives would seize on the revelation that most journalists vote senate to discredit professionals who are doing their conscientious best to be fair. But wait?conservatives already dismiss the press as biased against them, on the well-supported assumption that most journalists at national news organizations are liberal. Is denying a cheap shot to critics really a good enough reason to withhold information that many news consumers would deem not only interesting, but useful and relevant?

What’s more, greater transparency of opinion, if it became a trend, would make it harder for conservatives to use surreptitious liberal bias as a license for their own malignant imitation of what they understand to be that practice. CBS journalists, whatever their politics, are professionals who aspire to be fair and resist bias. Many of those at Fox News Channel, on the other hand, aspire only to advance the fortunes of the conservative movement, even as they parrot the laughable slogan, “fair and balanced.” Fox is not biased because it is a conservative network. It is biased because of the intellectually dishonest way it proclaims its neutrality while loading the dice for the GOP and for George W. Bush.

With that in mind, now’s as good a time as any to officially announce my endorsement of John Kerry for President. I know this may come as a surprise for those of you who are illiterate or have never seen this site before today, but I think it’s time for a change of course. John Kerry is the right man to accomplish this task. Through his leadership we can be safer at home and respected in the world….

One thing that I’ve wanted to point out since the early days of the Iraq war (and that I should have made clear in my satellite photo post) is that Bush some supporters have gone through incredible amounts of rhetorical contortion in order to avoid admitting they were mistaken about Iraqi weapon sites. When it was obvious to everyone that there weren’t any WMD’s, the muttering from the right was about weapons being sneaked out into Syria. With the news of missing explosives, the word is that it was done before the invasion. With the reliance on satellite imagery for Colin Powell’s U.N. presentation, the Administration made clear that they can monitor suspect sites from space, yet war supporters still think letting weapons slip out of Iraq is perfectly reasonable as long as it happened before the troops were there.

Despite the fact that I staunchly opposed the war and that every shred of information points me toward the opposite conclusion, I still think there’s a small chance that Iraq did/does have weapons of mass destruction. If there were weapons and the conservative arguments hold any water, the possibility that the WMD’s that the Bush Administration was trying to protect us from slipped away because they weren’t watching those sites closely enough should be enough to keep Bush and his whole team out of public service for the rest of their lives. Launching a war with a flawed premise is bad enough, but if you launch a war whose premise is solid, but completely fail to accomplish its central objective, then you have no business being commander in chief.

And this is a little off topic, but this story really needs more attention. The thought that powerful explosives were taken by a bunch of thugs is pretty scary, but nuclear sites being dismantled for a year by experts and shipped off to god knows where is fucking terrifying. If we’d had a more competent Administration, you’d think they would have pointed their satellites at one of the dozens of sites and asked “Why does that weapons facility look like a construction site now? Maybe we should send some people over there and check it out.”

If you really think Bush is telling the truth here, I’ve got a bridge to sell you :

Some conservative groups expressed dismay Tuesday over President Bush’s tolerance of state-sanctioned civil unions between gay people ? laws that would grant same-sex partners most or all the rights available to married couples.

“I don’t think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that’s what a state chooses to do so,” Bush said in an interview aired Tuesday on ABC. Bush acknowledged that his position put him at odds with the Republican platform, which opposes civil unions.

“I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights,” said Bush, who has pressed for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. “States ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others.”

Bush is in serious trouble in the swing states. This is an obvious attempt to try to seem less extreme. If Bush supported civil unions, he would have mentioned his stance at least once in the past year while he was campaigning in favor of the constitutional amendment that bans civil unions. For a more realistic idea of how Bush feels about gay people, check out the Christian Coalition’s voter guide :

(via the Dead Letter Office)

Maybe I’ve lived in a blue state too long, because the gay people adopting thing was a little surprising at first. I guess I should know better than to underestimate the vitriol of homophobes.

I’m not joking around here or trying to start some internet conspiracy theory. This is a serious question. What’s up with Bush’s face today?

There a few more here. He looks bloated and rubbery and ill. Maybe there’s some truth to those rumors that Bush has some undisclosed health problems.

Goddamn. If you think the 380 tons of missing explosives are scary now, try putting it in context with this Reuters article from ten days ago :

Nuclear material taken by experts not looters, say diplomats

October 16, 2004

The removal of Iraq’s mothballed nuclear facilities took about a year and was carried out by experts with heavy machinery and demolition equipment, diplomats close to the United Nations have said.

The UN nuclear watchdog, which monitored Saddam Hussein’s nuclear sites before the US-led invasion last year, told the UN Security Council this week that equipment and materials that could be used to make atomic weapons had been vanishing from Iraq but neither Baghdad nor Washington had noticed.

“This process carried on at least through 2003 … and probably into 2004, at least in early 2004,” a Western diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency said.

US, British and Iraqi officials have downplayed the disappearance of the equipment, saying it was part of widespread looting after the March 2003 invasion, which the US, Britain and Australia said was to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

However, several diplomats close to the nuclear agency said on Thursday that this was not the result of haphazard looting.

They said the removal of this dual-use equipment - which until the war was tagged and closely monitored by the agency to ensure that it was not being used in a weapons program - was planned and executed by people who knew what they were doing.

“We’re talking about dozens of sites being dismantled,” one diplomat said. “Large numbers of buildings [were] taken down, warehouses were emptied and removed. This would require heavy machinery, demolition equipment. This is not something that you’d do overnight.”

Diplomats in Vienna say the agency fears these facilities, part of a pre-1991 covert nuclear weapons program, could have been sold to a country or militants seeking nuclear weapons.

Among the sites stripped were a precision manufacturing plant at Umm Al Marik, a site connected with nuclear weapons activities at Al Qa Qaa, and an engineering facility at Badr.

This wasn’t looted, it was carefully dismantled for a year. For an administration that mined the aluminum tubes for all they were worth, you’d think they would have done something to guard all the dual-use technologies. I was a doubter before, but I’m really starting to think the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud. And if that ever happens, we all know whose criminal negligence made our worst nightmares more likely.

Remember this satellite photo?

This is one of the photos that Colin Powell used in his U.N. presentation to “prove” that Saddam was a few minutes away from killing all of us. Yes, it all turned out to be complete bullshit, but take another look at the photo.

You can clearly make out ten or so buildings and a few cargo trucks. Keep that in mind when you read this :

“U.N. weapons inspectors Wednesday resumed their search for evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction by sending a missile team to the Badr Company, 30-38 kilometers (18-24 miles) south of Baghdad, near al Qaqaa. Chemical weapons inspectors were also believed to be headed to al Qaqaa. Teams have gone to the complex at al Qaqaa more than a dozen times, including several consecutive days since last week. ”

- CNN, Jan 22, 2003

Research & Development

Created special unit at Al Qaqaa for the production of high explosive lenses, detonators and propellants for nuclear weapons

Compiled large stocks of imported HMX and RDX and own operating RDX production plant

- Key Findings of IAEA’s Iraq Nuclear Verification Office

Al Qa Qaa was responsible for the explosive filling of long-range missile warheads.

Warhead processing facilities at the site were destroyed under UNSCOM supervision.

Iraq made significant progress in the development of the nuclear weapon implosion package, largely through efforts at the Al Qa Qaa establishment. The involvement of the Al Qa Qaa State Establishment in support of the development of the implosion package began in 1987.

- GlobalSecurity.org

Now if the military can keep their eyes on some “mobile weapons labs” from space, wouldn’t they at least keep an eye on a complex that consists of at least 87 buildings and was being closely monitored by the IAEA prior to the invasion? There were 40 tankers worth of powerful explosives that “disappeared”. How could this just slip through the cracks?

I know this is juvenile, but I gotta post something to break this “week before the election” tension. I dunno if it’s just me, but every time I see this state quarter I see an ass :

I know it’s supposed to be a Georgia peach, but surely somebody in the long process from designing the quarter to minting it stopped and said ” Dude, this is a butt quarter”. Then again, according the the U.S. Mint’s site, the design was chosen by Zell Miller. We all know what a lunatic he is.

Here’s what Donald Rumfeld had to say on April 11th, 2003 at the time those explosives were being looted (via Matt Yglesias) :

Declaring that freedom is “untidy,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday the looting in Iraq was a result of “pent-up feelings” of oppression and that it would subside as Iraqis adjusted to life without Saddam Hussein.

He also asserted the looting was not as bad as some television and newspaper reports have indicated and said there was no major crisis in Baghdad, the capital city, which lacks a central governing authority. The looting, he suggested, was “part of the price” for what the United States and Britain have called the liberation of Iraq.

“Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things,” Rumsfeld said. “They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here.”

Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. “Stuff happens,” Rumsfeld said.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed. “This is a transition period between war and what we hope will be a much more peaceful time,” Myers said.
. . .
Rumsfeld appeared irritated by questions about the looting, asserting that repeated images of Iraqi citizens ransacking buildings represented “a fundamental misunderstanding” of what was happening in Iraq.

“Very often the pictures are pictures of people going into the symbols of the regime, into the palaces, into the boats and into the Baath Party headquarters and into the places that have been part of that repression,” Rumsfeld said. “And while no one condones looting, on the other hand one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who’ve had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime.”
. . .
Asked about weapons of mass destruction — which the United States, Britain and other nations accused Saddam of harboring and developing — Rumsfeld said he did not expect coalition forces to find the actual weapons on their own.

“We are not going to find them in my view — just as I never believed the inspectors would — by running around seeing if they can open a door and surprise somebody and find something,” Rumsfeld said, adding that the focus was on “finding the people” who could help in that effort.

So y’see, they were more concerned with tracking down people who might know about weapons than tracking down the weapons they knew about. I guess this fits into their whole “Saddam himself was a weapon of mass destruction” thing.

Doesn’t it seem odd that the IAEA told them about these explosives and where they were, yet we’re only finding out about it a year and a half after the invasion? I’d think if a U.N. agency gave them a checklist of sites to check, it would have been checked within a month or so of Saddam’s fall. And why didn’t we find out about this through the inspections of Hans Blix, David Kay, or Charles Duelfer? We know the Administration was hiding this from us, but did they hide it from the weapons inspectors too?

I’ve been lax in my promised daily John Kerry quotes. I’ve got a good one lined up, I just have to get my shit together and transcribe it. In the meantime, here’s a thinly-veiled slap at Bush that makes me laugh :

There?s a famous old saying that all leaders tend to be either hedgehogs or foxes. A hedgehog knows one thing very well, and a fox knows a little about everything. I suspect I would qualify as a hedgehog who?s been around the field a few times. In the course of my public career, I?ve had the chance to master a range of issues?veterans issues after the war, crime as a prosecutor, economic development as a lieutenant governor, and then foreign policy, health care, intelligence, national defense, drug trafficking, technology, and education during nineteen years as a U.S. senator.

I don?t consider myself a policy wonk, but I was brought up to care about the big issues and to think for myself, not hire others to do the thinking for me.

And yes, Kerry’s straddle of the fox/hedgehog fence does bolster stereotypes people have of him a little. On the other hand, which one is the President?