KNEE DEEP:

Fresh Qaqaa: The “Missing Weapons” Story and the Spin Wars: One ammo dump in a nation of ammo dumps was not a big story; it was merely a handy location for a political mugging. (Nicholas Stix, 1 November 2004, Intellectual Conservative)

Democrats’ October Surprise du jour is the Al Qaqaa ka-ka, whereby the New York Times (yep, them again!) colluded with CBS News (yep, them again!) to assert, at the 11th hour, that U.S. occupation forces in Iraq had permitted terrorists to abscond with 377 tons of explosives from a munitions dump in Al Qaqaa, after the fall of Baghdad. [...]

People who had insisted that going to war against Saddam Hussein after 17 UN resolutions against him and after waiting over one year constituted a “rush to war,” were breaking their ankles, rushing to jump on the Al Qaqaa bandwagon. Even at the close of the October 29 Pentagon press conference, in which Army Maj. Austin Pearson’s announcement that his unit had removed 200-250 tons of explosives accounted for most of the ordnance from Al Qaqaa, snarling reporters -- still undeterred by the discrediting of their precious story -- were shouting out questions that presupposed that nothing in the story had changed, and that the explosives that Raddatz, Martinez, and Pearson had accounted for somehow didn’t count.... The Raddatz/Martinez report together with Maj. Pearson’s statement, could explain the disposition of virtually the entire weapons cache at Al Qaqaa.

Hard to argue with the assessment of Newsweek's Evan Thomas that press bias has been good for about 5 points off Mr. Bush's lead.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 1, 2004 11:25 PM