October Surprise
Red State has a good look at the Al Qaqaa missing explosives story from the New York Times, and the doubts about it raised by NBC News and others. Doubts and questions abound.
But that doesn't stop Scripps Howard News Service columnist Martin Schram from plowing ahead and calling it "a news scoop so stunning and troubling that nobody could have predicted it and nobody can take comfort from it," proof that "U.S. government blunders half a world away have made us all less safe at home than we needed to be. Less safe than we can afford to be."
"Here's what we know for sure: A huge arsenal of powerful explosives has vanished in Iraq — including some powerful enough to detonate a nuclear bomb." Scary! Except it really doesn't take much in the way of explosives to set off a nuclear bomb. You can do it with a decent plastic explosive compound that can be made in your basement. That's not the hard part. The hard part is getting the material to put IN the bomb, and setting it up right to kick off the chain-reaction.
Belmont Club points out that the explosives (if they were there) likely disappeared during the Coalition liberation, in the chaotic conditions caused by the success of the attack and the absence of the 4ID, which was supposed to secure the north of the country via Turkey, which required the other units to keep pushing north rather than securing sites around Baghdad.
Roger L. Simon wonders if the NYT will name its sources on this one:
But that doesn't stop Scripps Howard News Service columnist Martin Schram from plowing ahead and calling it "a news scoop so stunning and troubling that nobody could have predicted it and nobody can take comfort from it," proof that "U.S. government blunders half a world away have made us all less safe at home than we needed to be. Less safe than we can afford to be."
"Here's what we know for sure: A huge arsenal of powerful explosives has vanished in Iraq — including some powerful enough to detonate a nuclear bomb." Scary! Except it really doesn't take much in the way of explosives to set off a nuclear bomb. You can do it with a decent plastic explosive compound that can be made in your basement. That's not the hard part. The hard part is getting the material to put IN the bomb, and setting it up right to kick off the chain-reaction.
Belmont Club points out that the explosives (if they were there) likely disappeared during the Coalition liberation, in the chaotic conditions caused by the success of the attack and the absence of the 4ID, which was supposed to secure the north of the country via Turkey, which required the other units to keep pushing north rather than securing sites around Baghdad.
Roger L. Simon wonders if the NYT will name its sources on this one:
If the reports that Mohammed El Baradei or someone close to him is behind the leak of the putative documents that caused the new NYTrogate Scandal regarding missing explosive in Irag, the implications are staggering.
Consider this: That means a high official of the United Nations... and not just an ordinary high official but one empowered with preventing nuclear weapons proliferation... is trying to influence a US election. And we thought we had seen everything with the Oil-for-Food scandal!
