The Dish

I’ve long thought this was a ridiculous story. But check out these images. Some kind of bullet-proof vest or security device?

A useful map of al QaQaa, for those who still think there’s anything to clear up.

FLIP-FLOPS: Another Bush catalog. Kinda cute. (Keep clicking on the shoes).

NO FLU SHOT FOR ME: Even though I’ve got the Deadly AIDS Virus, I’m apparently way too healthy to get a flu shot. And my doc has run out. I’m blaming trial lawyers. And the Brits. And the troops. And the U.N. And the French. And Kerry. And the beagle. Do I sound like I’m looking for a gig on NRO?

The latest Zogby shows a big lead in Miami-Dade. The Miami Herald’s Jim Defede concludes:

According to the Herald poll, done by Zogby International, Kerry is positioned to win Miami-Dade by anywhere from 90,000 to 100,000 votes. A margin that large in Florida’s most populous county would be hard for Bush to make up across the rest of the state.
Now I realize if the poll’s margin of error were to fall in the president’s favor, Kerry would beat Bush, 53 to 46 percent (instead of 56-43). But even then, because of new voters, Kerry would still walk away with 50,000 more votes than Bush. But here is why the Herald poll rings true. Between 2000 and 2004, the split between Democrats and Republican is virtually the same in almost every category… The one group that is radically different — and it is why the poll makes sense — is a shift among non-Cuban Hispanics, who are backing Kerry almost two-to-one.

If Kerry wins Florida, Bush is really up against it.

The KSTP video seems to have the smoking munitions. Munitions found in April have the IAEA seal about as solid a proof possible that they had not been removed before the war. On Aaron Brown last night, David Kay confirmed it, calling it “Game, set and match”. Money quote from ABC:

Experts who have studied the images say the barrels on the tape contain the high explosive HMX, and the universal markings on the barrels are clear that these are highly dangerous explosives. “I talked to a former inspector who’s a colleague of mine, and he confirmed that, indeed, these pictures look just like what he remembers seeing inside those bunkers,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.
The barrels were found inside sealed bunkers, which American soldiers are seen on the videotape cutting through. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency sealed the bunkers where the explosives were kept just before the war began.
“The seal’s critical,” Albright said. “The fact that there’s a photo of what looks like an IAEA seal means that what’s behind those doors is HMX. They only sealed bunkers that had HMX in them.”
After the bunkers were opened, the 101st was not ordered to secure the facility. A senior officer told ABC News the division would not have had nearly enough soldiers to do so.

(My italics). What we’re seeing is the slow exposure of the reality of the Iraq war. No: not the incompetence of the soldiers. The incompetence of the president. He’s responsible. And this time, he cannot duck it.

THE OTHER SIDE: Here’s the alternative take on why this issue may not be completely resolved. I have to say it seems desperate and unconvincing to me. But make your own mind up.

Here is General Tommy Franks last night: “Now, I’ll tell you, I don’t know Senator Kerry’s plan for victory. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it is, but I do know — but I do know that his criticism of military conduct of our global war on terrorism denigrates, disrespects our troops.” Where has Kerry criticized the troops? Nowhere. Is Franks saying that any criticism of military policy is now out of bounds? Is he saying it is illegitimate to criticize his war-plan because it has failed so patently to do what it was supposed to do – prevent Saddam’s weaponry from getting into the hands of terrorists? Slowly, the bar for dissent is ratcheted up, isn’t it? I’m sad that we bungled this important liberation so badly. But I’m angry at the administration’s response: they reflexively accuse critics of blaming the troops. But for the past few months, Bush has blamed the commanders and generals and troops for any and all military miscalculations in the war. If we don’t hold him responsible next Tuesday, will we ever have another chance?

GERMANS FOR BUSH: The biggest newspaper in Germany supports Bush’s re-election. No kidding.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Although it clearly would be a huge psychological defeat, a Bush loss could also be a liberating moment. Conservatism has thrived when it was in opposition – ‘standing athwart history yelling stop!’ as the founder of the National Review put it. In the past decade since the Republicans took Congressional power, however, countless one-time conservative revolutionaries have merely become shills for corporate power. Note how tepid and ineffective the conservative opposition was to the big government and coporatist Medicare drug bill. Today, the lefties are as robust as the right once was. A Bush loss will allow conservatives to once again revel in the joy of being the besieged and aggrieved opposition. And the last time we had divided government, we enjoyed restrained spending, tax cuts and genuine entitlement reform. Sure, conservative big-shots will miss their visits to the West Wing following a Bush loss. But the movement might find that it is the best thing that could happen. ” – Marshall Wittmann, on his revived blog, Bull Moose. Yes, a Bush defeat would be a boon for conservatism. A Bush victory will result in its continued decline.

Jake and me and a whole load of others.

ROVE IN OHIO: Watch what the Mayberry Machiavelli is up to. New Donkey has some insights.

NO DECLINISM: Carroll Andrew Morse doesn’t believe that John Kerry can bring us to “victory” over Jihadist terrorism. But he never defines “victory.” Can it mean the death of every single Jihadist on the globe? I’d love it to, but no serious person thinks that’s going to happen. Does he mean winning the war in Iraq? Well, Kerry says he intends to. You may think he’s incapable of such, but that’s a different argument than one about intent or will. Then Morse cites – again! – the Kerry quote from Matt Bai and equates it with Arthur Schlesinger’s view that we can live with “minor” terrorism. I begin to despair of the abuse of this Kerry quote. There is a distinction in the English language between the present and the future tense, a distinction apparently lost on many Kerry critics. I know this distinction might be dismissed as dreaded “nuance,” but what Kerry clearly said is that he wants us to get to the point in the future when terrorism is merely a “nuisance.” Given our inability to end it entirely – an inability conceded by this president many times – I’ll take that as victory. Look, it’s just rhetorical silliness to say we can end terror as a tactic for ever. It’s been around from the beginning of time and always will be. What we can do is crush organized Jihadist terrorism and try and bring about a democratic space in the Arab Islamic world so that Islamism loses political traction. Both candidates agree on that. It’s just that one candidate – in the most important test of his capacities so far – has obviously messed up dramatically. Morse wants to reward such incompetence and then pretends he’s a hawk. If he were really a hawk, he would not be ignoring Bush’s real failures and impugning Kerry’s imagined ones. If you care about ending Jihadist terrorism, ask yourself: can we afford four more years like the last year in Iraq? How many more Abu Ghraibs? How many more Fallujas? How many more al Qa Qaas? How many more debacles before we actually lose? The reason I’m for Kerry is that I want to win. And I refuse to ignore reality.

CHUTZPAH AWARD: “The role of a president is to confront problems, not to pass them on to future generations and future presidents,” – president Bush, attacking Kerry, yes, Kerry, on fiscal irresponsibility. Does he have any shame? Or does he simply have no idea what his own fiscal legacy is?

Mystery Pollster sees growing evidence that Bush might win the popular vote but lose in the electoral college. Can history really be that ironic?

You need to get out some more:

Doctors are blaming a rare electrical imbalance in the brain for the bizarre death of a blogger whose head literally exploded in the final week of the election! No one else was hurt in the fatal explosion but a small room at the blogger’s residence was sprayed with blood and brain matter when Gerard Van der Leun’s head suddenly blew apart. Experts say he suffered from a condition called Hyper-Cerebral Blogosis or HCB .
“He was deep in concentration with his eyes focused on the screen and his fingers frozen over the keyboard,” said Laguna Beach early responder, Miguel Wilsonista. “He seems to have hit ‘Post’ for what had to be the 3,456,856th item of inept political photoshopping this year when the blast occurred.
“His browser history documents that he went from Drudge to Real Clear Politics to Talking Points Memo to Instapundit to Fox News to the New York Times to MSNBC to Kos to Roger Simon to Little Green Footballs to The Corner to Atrios to Google News to Allah to Belmont Club to Wonkette and finally, and probably fatally, to Andrew Sullivan. All of a sudden his hands flew to his temples and he screamed in pain. Seals and surfers far below on Main Beach in Laguna looked up from the water startled by the shrieks of agony cascading down from Arch Beach Heights. Then, as if someone had put a bomb in his cranium, Van der Leun’s head popped like a firecracker.”

Yes, I really am the final straw.

This televised evidence lends credence to the notion that al Qa Qaa was indeed looted after the occupation, and not before. But there’s a question: why does the Pentagon not know for sure? Why is their investigation ongoing? The missing armaments have been known to the Pentagon for well over a year. The very fact that they still don’t know what happened – or even when the site was looted – by itself proves negligence with respect to this issue. And it’s worth reiterating that this is no indictment whatsoever of the troops. They were doing what they were told. The only people scapegoating the troops are, yes, the Republicans. Et tu, Rudy?

“I just think that if you’re responsible for this kind of a big policy failure, you ought to be held accountable for it.” – Francis Fukuyama, on why he’s not voting for Bush.