Everybody's wrong

The story of the explosives missing from Al Qaqaa in Iraq continues to be a major embarrassment to the GWBush regime. At the same time, they are trying any number of denials and spins to minimize the damage, such as this, from Josh Marshall:

Okay, now we seem to have the White House's third rendition of what happened at al Qaqaa. And we can find it in a nicely digestible form in this new piece from Fox News.

The headline reads: "Search Showed No Explosives at Iraqi Base Before War's End."

Down into the piece we find this: "U.S. forces searched several times last year the Iraqi military base from which 380 tons of explosives vanished — including one check a week before Saddam Hussein was driven out of power. But the military saw no signs of a huge quantity of munitions."

But wait, there's more. Today, we have some clarification from the NYTimes, from PEOPLE WHO WERE ACTUALLY THERE!!!

4 Iraqis Tell of Looting at Munitions Site in '03

Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday.

Well, which is it?

• "They weren't there."
• "SODDI" (some other dude did it)
• "It wasn't my job."
• "The military screwed up." (Sorry about denigrating the troops, it's just politics)
• "The Russians took them." (Drudge: no link, it's just a waste of bandwidth)

Or, as GWBush said today:

A President must be consistent. After repeatedly calling Iraq the wrong war and a diversion, Senator Kerry this week seemed shocked to learn that Iraq was a dangerous place full of dangerous weapons. (Laughter.) The Senator used to know that, even though he seems to have forgotten it over the course of this campaign. But, after all, that's why we went into Iraq. Iraq was a dangerous place, run by a dangerous tyrant who hated America and who had a lot of weapons. We've seized or destroyed more than 400,000 tons of munitions, including explosives, at more than thousands of sites. And we're continuing to round up the weapons almost every day.

Seems almost sane, doesn't it? Never mind that it's totally contradicted by evidence. Never mind that he didn't speak about this until 48 hours after it became known. Never mind that his military machine, under the control of Rumsfeld, never even bothered to secure this site. Never mind what he said in the same speech, the real punch line:

"And a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not the person you want as the Commander-in-Chief."

It takes my breath away, the irony of it. Let me translate for the non-GWBush speaking:

• Iraq possesses WMDs
• Iraq was working with AL Qaeda
• Tax cuts for millionaires help the working poor (I just had to slip that one in)
  
• insert ridiculous GWBush Iraw rationale here

He actually has said several things lately, however, that I agree with.

Surprised?

Well, here they are, as reported by Kos:

The Democrat Party has also a great tradition of defending the defenseless.

And this, too:

The Democratic Party has a great tradition of leading this country with strength and conviction in times of war.

The Democratic party has a tradition for support of our public schools. I think about Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, who always stood up for the right of the poor and minority children to get the best education America could offer.

Disgusting, isn't it?

Also, Kos has this final point, one little detail we shouldn't forget:

For those who don't know, Republican pollsters have determined that "Democrat Party" sounds nastier than "Democratic Party".

Holy crap!