posted October 27, 2004 11:13 AM            

Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004
Kristol: N.Y. Times and CBS 'Conspiring' With Kerry to Defeat Bush

What a treat on "Fox & Friends" this morning: William Kristol hammered the pro-Democrat New York Times and pro-Democrat CBS for "colluding" and "conspiring" with Sen. John Kerry to topple President Bush.

Even Kerry's own handlers now admit they have no proof to back up the issue the Democrats concocted with their media allies.

Kristol notes in his new column for Weekly Standard: "Pressed on Tuesday afternoon about the accuracy of the allegations on Fox's Big Story with John Gibson, Richard Holbrooke, a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign, said: 'You don't know the truth and I don't know the truth.' He later underscored this point: 'I don't know the truth.'

"That minor issue hasn't kept the Kerry campaign from creating a television ad based on what may well be untruthful claims. ... Shouldn't he at least make sure that such a charge is true?"

But in the Democrat playbook there's no entry for truth. The party's longtime strategy is to repeat a lie until people believe it. Thanks to their media collaborators, and President Bush's wimpy refusal to denounce the Times and "60 Minutes" and Kerry and John Edwards, the stunt could succeed.

At least a few voices are speaking out. "Kerry gins up his attack machine based on a flawed New York Times story," the Republican National Committee noted Tuesday.

posted October 27, 2004 11:47 AM            

My money's on utterly corrupt.

Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004 11:15 a.m. EDT
NY Times Flashback: Paper Reported Saddam Transferred High Explosives

The New York Times claimed this week that hundreds of tons of high explosives had been removed from the Al-Qaqaa weapons depot while the facility was under U.S. control.

But Times reporters knew way back in Feb. 2003 that the removal process was instigated - not by looters or insurgents after the U.S. liberation - but instead by the government of Saddam Hussein.

On Feb. 15, 2003, the Times reported on an address to the United Nations Security Council by Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN's chief nuclear watchdog. In quotes covered extensively by the paper, ElBaradei shared his concern about the removal of high explosives from facilities like Al Qaqaa:

"We have also continued to investigate the relocation and consumption of the high explosive HMX," ElBaradei explained a month before the U.S. invasion.
"As I reported earlier, Iraq has declared that 32 tons of the HMX, previously under I.A.E.A. seals, had been transferred for use in the production of industrial explosives, primarily to cement plants as a booster for explosives used in quarrying."

Baradei noted that Saddam's government had even confirmed the movement of the HMX, in quotes also picked up by the Times 21 months ago:

"Iraq has provided us with additional information, including documentation on the movement and use of this material, and inspections have been conducted at locations where the material is said to have been used.

"However, given the nature of the use of high explosives," ElBaradei said, "it may well be that the I.A.E.A. will be unable to reach a final conclusion on the end use of this material. While we have no indication that this material was used for any application other than that declared by Iraq, we have no technical method of verifying quantitatively the declared use of the material in explosions. . . . "