MORE FODDER FOR KERRY: Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

Oops. Are you better off now than you were a week ago? Not so much, after you read this article. Oh, and the explosives missing in Iraq were under the protection of the US - ha! - but not really. They were SUPPOSED to be under our protection, but we didn't protect them. Even better, these are the explosive they used to blow up the Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, blow up the Moscow apartment building, blow up the foreign housing in Riyadh, you get the picture. And even better, they're also used to ignite nukes. George Fucking Bush. Our president.

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished after the American invasion last year....

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could be used to produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings. The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the material of the type stolen from Al Qaqaa, and somewhat larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it....

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

I just can't quote any more from this article or I'm going to hit somebody. We fucking gave them THEIR EXPLOSIVE OF CHOICE. Oh, oh, must hit something. Just read it. How can this utter total asshole remain our president? Read the rest of this post...

Two more relevant good polls

Two national tracking polls:

Washington Post:
Bush 49 Kerry 48
(yesterday it was 50 - 46)

Rasmussen Reports (the right wingers love Rasmussen)
Bush 47.6 Kerry 47.2 (Friday it was 49.1 - 45.0)

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Zogy battleground polls

New Zogby number. Remember that these have a 4.1% margin of error either way, i.e., plus or minus 4 for each result. When you look at them with their margins of error, it's a wash.

The state-by-state results:

STATISTICAL TIE: In Colorado, Kerry led 49-45 percent;
STATISTICAL TIE: Florida, Bush led 49-46 percent;
STATISTICAL TIE: Iowa, Bush led 47-45 percent;
KERRY: Michigan, Kerry led 52-42 percent;
STATISTICAL TIE: Minnesota, Kerry led 46-45 percent;
BUSH: New Mexico, Bush led 49-44 percent;
STATISTICAL TIE: Nevada, Bush led 48-44 percent;
BUSH: Ohio, Bush led 47-42 percent;
STATISTICAL TIE: Pennsylvania, Kerry led 47-45 percent; and
STATISTICAL TIE: Wisconsin, Bush led 48-45 percent. Read the rest of this post...

Kerry ridicules Bush on terrorism remark

Yes! That's my boy.

President Bush and Sen. John Kerry stayed on the offensive in swing states Sunday as the presidential race entered its final full week. In a television interview, Bush said it is "up in the air" whether the nation can ever be fully safe from another terror attack and suggested terrorists may still be contemplating ways to disrupt the election.

Kerry ridiculed Bush's statement, suggesting it echoed an earlier assertion — later withdrawn — by the president that the war on terror could not be won.

"You make me president of the United States, we're going to win the war on terror," Kerry said at an evening rally in Boca Raton, Fla. "It's not going to be up in the air whether or not we make America safe."

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US may have committed war crimes in Iraq

Now, I realize that this headline will cause the Blog Veterans for Truth to oppose my presidential candidacy in 2025, but according to the Justice Department's own internal memos, the Bush-sanctioned policy of taking detainees out of Iraq without notifying the Red Cross may very well constitute a war crime under international law.

The 1949 treaty notes that a violation of this particular provision constitutes a "grave breach" of the accord, and thus a "war crime" under U.S. federal law, according to a footnote in the Justice Department draft.

Think about that folks. John Aschroft's own department admits that these actions that he sanctioned could be war crimes if everything isn't done perfectly (think naked pyramid piles, if you're wondering how perfectly the military follow's the letter of the law in these cases).

War crimes.

War crimes.

War crimes.

The United States of America. War crimes. In the same sentence.

That's what Bush has brought us to. Let alone the fact that now our troops and our civilians may fall victim to war crimes that foreign powers justify using our Justice Department's own memo. Man I hope someone charges these bastards with war crimes. I'd love to know the process for doing so. Any international law experts out there? Read the rest of this post...

The inevitability factor

I usually prefer to post about facts rather than polls, but I saw this in the Washington Post this morning that just confirms to me the r's are growing more desperate, and grim, by the day. It starts out as the standard "Kerry was here, Bush was here" horse-race piece, but a couple of passages stood out to me:

GOP officials who talked to Bush-Cheney campaign leaders said the leaders have grown more worried about Ohio, Florida and other key states where Bush lacks a lead with just 10 days until the election. A poll by Ohio University's Scripps Survey Research Center, completed Thursday night, found Kerry leading 49
percent to 43 percent among registered voters, with a margin of error of five percentage points.

And in New Mexico and nationwide, they're already bracing themselves for bad news:

One Republican official described the mood at the top of the campaign as apprehensive. " 'Grim' is too strong," the official said. "If we feel this way a week from now, that will be grim."

...The Republican official said polling for Bush showed him in a weaker position than some published polls have indicated, both nationally and in battlegrounds. In many of the key states, the official said, Bush is below 50 percent, and he is ahead or behind within the margin of sampling error -- a statistical tie.

"There's just no place where they're polling outside the margin of error so they can say, 'We have this state,' " the official said. "And they know that an incumbent needs to be outside the margin of error."

It's increasingly clear the bushies have abandoned reaching out to swing voters and they're stuck trying to motivate their base. Since they've rightly concluded that their ideas aren't winning converts, all they can do is try to supress our turnout (through court actions, sympathetic secretaries of state, and of course scare tactics in the media) and gin up theirs.

Frankly, I'm thinking the wolves ad was a huge mistake for them -- not only in the content, but also in the timing. A few weeks ago, before the debates and after the rnc, bush is perceived as "ahead" and this is a finishing blow. Now, since the wolves aren't all that intimidating, it just looks like a lame and desperate attempt to scare people. Odd, since this ad was reportedly "in the can" for months.

Next up for the repo's -- they'll start dismissing the claims of our unnamed republican (after they find his identify and crush him), and give us a mixture of "we've got the momentum" (which we all now know is a crock) and "a vote for kerry is a vote for the terrorists."

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Republican Detroit News refuses to endorse Bush: Bush has "hurt the nation"

This is very very very interesting, and really damning of Bush. Though the media keeps refusing to write this article, we'll do it for you. There are a growing number of Republicans who are refusing to vote for this president. Whether they vote for Kerry is an open question, but voting for Bush, they're not doing. I really think they're going to have a major impact on this election, and the media won't realize/admit it until after Kerry wins by an unexpected 4 or 5 points. Stephanopoulos mentioned on THIS WEEK this morning that Republicans are telling him the senior members of the Bush campaign are very worried. And they should be, Kerry is up in the battleground state polls, the ones that matter.

This Detroit News piece is fabulous - they outright admit they're a conservative paper that can't endorse Bush because HE'S HURTING AMERICA.

Four years ago, the choice was clear. We endorsed George W. Bush based on his promises of fiscal conservatism, limited government and prudence in foreign affairs.

Today, we sadly acknowledge that the president has failed to deliver on those promises....

The Detroit News will not lend its endorsement to a candidate who has made too many mistakes, nor to one who offers a governing philosophy that we reject.

This decision to remain silent will disappoint readers who expect The Detroit News to stand with the Republican presidential candidate come hell or high water. Their expectations are not unwarranted - we have never endorsed a Democrat for president, and only failed to endorse twice before, both times during the Franklin Roosevelt years....

To that we add: We will never feel obliged to defend a president whose blunders and misjudgments have hurt the nation....

But this president has a knack for squandering success.

With the nation and the world firmly behind his operation in Afghanistan, he turned his sights too quickly to Iraq and Saddam Hussein, his family's old nemesis.

Acting on intelligence that was faulty and too eagerly interpreted by the administration to match its agenda, Bush moved against Iraq without the support of key allies.

We backed the invasion of Iraq, accepting the Bush assertion that Saddam's weapons programs presented a gathering threat to the United States. While America, the world and the Iraqi people are better off with Saddam gone, we now believe that Iraq was a fight that might have waited, or been avoided altogether.

Regardless, a president who takes the nation to war has an obligation to win that war as quickly, efficiently and painlessly as possible.

Bush has not done that. The management of the conflict in Iraq is abysmal. The United States went into Iraq without enough international support and brought too few of our own troops to complete the job.

In shorting the generals, in allowing political concerns to trump military strategy, in assuming too much cooperation from the Iraqi people, Bush allowed Iraq to become a hotbed of terrorism, the very condition he struck to prevent. The messy result has allowed our enemies to portray the United States as a villain, and use our role as a rallying cry for terrorists elsewhere.

There were too many poor calls, including disbanding the Iraqi army, leaving the borders undefended and trusting shady Iraqi nationals, all of which combined to turn what could have been a stunning liberation into a still uncertain, nation-building morass. Iraq has stretched America's military capabilities, strained friendships and will hamstring future strikes against rogue regimes.

Such bad management cannot be forgiven in a wartime president.

At home, Bush has shocked us with his free-spending ways. Non-defense, domestic spending increased more than 30 percent during his term. At the same time, the president cut taxes. Together, the two resulted in a massive federal budget deficit that could have been mitigated had Bush kept his promise of fiscal conservatism.

This was a failure of leadership. The American people will accept a call to sacrifice in times of crisis. But instead of asking for sacrifice, Bush delivered excess.

He plunged the federal government even deeper into the day-to-day operations of local school districts with the ill-advised No Child Left Behind Act; he failed to veto even one of Congress' pork-laden spending bills; he pushed ahead with his own spending agenda, including a confusing and deceptively expensive prescription drug plan, without regard to the budget demands of homeland security and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. On trade, he exhibited protectionist tendencies that hurt American industry.

Finally, on the matter of civil liberties, Bush has turned away from the conservative doctrine that the Constitution must be strictly observed. His Patriot Act contained many important elements to break down the walls between law enforcement agencies and allow them to respond to advancements in technology.

But it also trashed personal privacy protections, suspended due process safeguards and upset the balance between the power of the government and the rights of the individual.

The president's record does not recommend him for re-election.

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843 ex-soldiers fail to report for duty - drafty drafty drafty

CNN:

More than 800 former soldiers have failed to comply with Army orders to get back in uniform and report for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Army said Friday. That is more than one-third of the total who were told to report to a mobilization station by October 17.

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Bush: Whether America will ever be safe is "up in the air"

He's an idiot. Time for the Kerry campaign to use this comment and TAKE HIM OUT. And, oh yeah, he also finally admits that there's no actionable evidence that anyone is planning any attacks prior to our elections.

President Bush said in a television interview the United States was safer from terrorism but whether it can ever be fully safe was "up in the air."

Bush also told the Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes" show to be broadcast on Monday night that the U.S. government had no "actionable intelligence" pointing to a pre-election attack in the works as happened in Madrid earlier this year to disrupt the Spanish election.

"We do believe that they have -- because of what happened in Madrid -- that they do think about whether or not they can try to disrupt our elections," Bush said.

He said there was "nothing specific" pointing to a pre-election attack but rather "a kind of general intent."

In the interview, taped on Saturday and released on Sunday, Bush said U.S. security was "much better" since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up -- you know, is up in the air. I would hope we could make it a lot more safe by staying on the offensive," he said.

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Man knocks himself out stealing Kerry signs

Fabulous.

A Republican in Colorado fell flat on his face trying to steal campaign signs touting John Kerry and other local Democratic candidates.

According to Wheat Ridge Police spokesperson Officer Lisa Stigall, Randal Wagner was already wanted for questioning about a rash of campaign-sign thefts when he was discovered lying unconscious across a stolen sign Oct. 13.

Earlier that evening, a homeowner reported to police that he saw Wagner, 50, cutting down a campaign sign bolted to his fence. The sign was in support of a local Democratic candidate running for Congress.

The man confronted Wagner, who allegedly fled in a truck with his wife. The man gave the vehicle's plate number to police.

While police located the Wagners' home, Wagner was busy at work on another sign put up by a store in the business district, Stigall said.

But he encountered resistance.

"He already had the sign in hand and was running out of the parking lot when he tripped over a low chain that blocked off the driveway," Stigall said.

Wagner fell flat on his face and was knocked unconscious. His wife, unaware of his accident, remained in the car.

An officer driving by noticed the figure lying on the ground and called for an ambulance. Wagner was treated for cuts and abrasions to his face.

Police discovered two dozen campaign signs in the back of the couple's truck and issued Wagner a summons for theft, trespassing, criminal tampering and disorderly conduct.

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49 Iraqi soldiers killed

BBC News claims that they soldiers were leaving a training camp near the Iranian border and three buses were stopped and the soldiers were shot while laying on the ground, unarmed. The movement of these troops were followed closely and there must have been a considerable force to overtake such a large force. Here's the initial AP link but I am sure this story will be receiving more focus later in the days to come.
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More on our friendly neighbors and the flu shots

Now one company is offering a cruise from Seattle to Vancouver Island (a 75 mile trip) for those wanting flu shots and people in Texas are jumping over the border to pick up flu vaccines. I'll bet those horror stories about not being able to trust drugs from across the border will resonate with voters after all of this. Hmm, maybe come up with another scare tactic next time.
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More US violations of the Geneva Code?

Hello? Does anyone care? The laws always seem to be for others with these guys.
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