Palm Beach Slams BushCo: Bush bunker collapsed

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2004/11/01/a20a_weaponsedit_1101.html

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief." So said the commander in chief who invaded Iraq in 2003 because he knew for a fact that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. But when President Bush made that remark last week, he wasn't talking about himself, at least not intentionally. President Bush, trying to control damage from the Oct. 25 New York Times story about nearly 400 tons of high explosives looted from the Al-Qaqaa weapons complex, was attacking John Kerry.

But Sen. Kerry merely had been pointing out the obvious: The Bush administration's poor planning and refusal to listen to outside advice had created conditions in Iraq under which explosives sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency could be looted and used against U.S. troops. The Bush administration also attacked the Times, a switch from pre-invasion days when the paper fell for planted stories that bolstered the push for war. Unlike those reports, the missing munitions story has held up.

Attacking was the administration's second choice. Coverup was the first. Administration officials had known for 10 days, if not longer, that the Iraqi interim government had reported to the IAEA that Al-Qaqaa had been looted after Baghdad fell in April 2003. Why didn't President Bush say anything? His aides said the administration was just waiting to ascertain all the facts.

Finding and publicizing the facts has not been a Bush administration hallmark, and it has not been a hallmark of President Bush's response to the missing explosives. First, the administration claimed that an NBC report proved the explosives were gone before U.S. troops arrived in early April. When ABC and military sources debunked that claim, the administration tried to obscure the facts.

...more...

(last line is the best)

Mods: I know that this is an "editorial" and you may lock this thread at your discretion, but it is a thoroughly good debunking of the just a few of the lies and misteps that BushCo has made in the past week.

Thanks!

This is a pretty hard-hitting editorial. Did the paper endorse Kerry earlier?

thanks

s_m

endorsed a presidential candidate in the past month or so. :shrug:

has referred to this paper as right wing.

They are a pretty balanced newspaper in reporting, BUT, they endorsed Gore in 2000, and Kerry in 2004. Editorials usually lean liberal. Randi has an "issue" with the Palm Beach Post.

Not Communists or Anarchists, but the did endorse Kerry/Edwards.

:wtf:

I had to go to work after I posted that. I like whimsical humor. If you took it seriously, I'll try and steer clear of you. If you smiled slightly, let's have a brew.

(I was stretching the meaning of "liberal" to absurd conclusions. Kind of like the Woody Allen joke about his friend's parents who were so conservative, that in the 1948 Dewey-Truman election they voted for Hitler.)

Edited for further clarification.

:cry:

Excellent editorial, very factual.

Palm Beach voters take a look!

and not just the times but just about every single whoring media outlet in this country. I have to wonder if they 'fell for' anything or just went along with the plan.

Excellent editorial UIA! thanks :hi:

...it was all about ratings. War is exciting to the unwashed masses, which translates to higher ratings, which translates to increased ad revenue. They wanted this war soooo bad because it meant more $$$ in the corporate coffers.

If the race doesn't look neck-and-neck, and it's pretty obvious that Stupidhead is going to get dumped on his overprivileged keister, "nobody" is going to tune in for the white-knuckle election night coverage.

It's absolute nonsense, of course, but these whores are trained to plump for a story, no matter how absurd. That's why they've been wetting themselves over speculation of what might happen in case of an electoral vote tie. Preposterous on its face, but it sure fills up the news time.

responsible for killing our troops?

"On Friday, Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita dragged Maj. Austin Pearson before reporters to declare that on April 13, 2003, his troops had destroyed 250 tons of munitions from Al-Qaqaa. So he destroyed on April 13 the explosives that the Pentagon said Hussein had moved on March 17? And if he destroyed them, how were they still there April 18? Mr. Di Rita said, lamely, that he never meant to imply that Maj. Pearson's unit had accounted for the missing explosives."

Sure, they always find some low level officer and put him on national TV, just for the heck of it.

I loved the last paragraph:

Just as insulting was Rudolph Giuliani's claim Thursday that "no matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there." None of the Bush campaign's backpedaling since those comments changes the desperation to blame anyone but President Bush. A candidate who jumps at any chance to avoid responsibility is not a person you want as your commander in chief.

Great article