Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Explosive Mistake

Ok, folks. Here’s what Jim Miklaszewski said yesterday:

“April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army’s 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qaqaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing.”

“The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon.”

He has now been contradicted by the NBC embed herself:

Here’s the video. And, here’s the relevant transcript:

Amy Robach: And it’s still unclear exactly when those explosives disappeared. Here to help shed some light on that question is Lai Ling. She was part of an NBC news crew that traveled to that facility with the 101st Airborne Division back in April of 2003. Lai Ling, can you set the stage for us? What was the situation like when you went into the area?

Lai Ling Jew: When we went into the area, we were actually leaving Karbala and we were initially heading to Baghdad with the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. The situation in Baghdad, the Third Infantry Division had taken over Baghdad and so they were trying to carve up the area that the 101st Airborne Division would be in charge of. As a result, they had trouble figuring out who was going to take up what piece of Baghdad. They sent us over to this area in Iskanderia. We didn’t know it as the Qaqaa facility at that point but when they did bring us over there we stayed there for quite a while. We stayed overnight, almost 24 hours. And we walked around, we saw the bunkers that had been bombed, and that exposed all of the ordinances that just lied dormant on the desert.

AR: Was there a search at all underway or did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?

LLJ: No. There wasn’t a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was — at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.

AR: And there was no talk of securing the area after you left. There was no discussion of that?

LLJ: Not for the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. They were — once they were in Baghdad, it was all about Baghdad, you know, and then they ended up moving north to Mosul. Once we left the area, that was the last that the brigade had anything to do with the area.

AR: Well, Lai Ling Jew, thank you so much for shedding some light into that situation. We appreciate it.

LLJ: Thank you.

NBC has cleared up this little “misunderstanding” but we need to ensure that they emphasize their clarification on the evening news and on all the gasbag shows on MSNBC.

Once again, I think that the Rove machine has lost a ball bearing or two. It is not in their interest to be fighting this story with such fervor in the waning days of the campaign, particularly relying on a news organization’s preliminary reporting to justify its position. They would have been far better off using one of those infuriating Codpiece tautologies and called it a day — “of course we didn’t know anything about this because if we had we would have done something about it. Since we didn’t do anything about it, we couldn’t have known.” Instead they’ve called in the full force of the mighty Wurlitzer which gets the mainstream press all quivering with excitement — and forces NBC to work the story even harder since they are now part of it.

Still, it might just be helpful to ensure that NBC knows that you are aware of the Lai Ling Jew clarification and also that you are aware that Drudge and the wing-nuts are using their story to pass on bad information to the voters. Karl Rove is said to have thought so highly of the NBC story that he planned to use it in a mass e-mail.

If NBC and MSNBC have any journalistic integrity they might want to take extra measures to ensure that they don’t get used as Karl’s love slave this close to an election.

MSNBC

www.msnbc.com

world@msnbc.com

One MSNBC Plaza

Secaucus, NJ 07094

Phone: (201) 583-5000

Fax: (201) 583-5453

NBC News

www.nbc.com

30 Rockefeller Plaza

New York, NY 10112

Phone: (212) 664-5900

Fax: (212) 664-2914

Nightly@NBC.com

viewerservices@msnbc.com

hardball@msnbc.com

countdown@msnbc.com

abramsreport@msnbc.com

norville@msnbc.com

Lesterholt@msnbc.com

joe@msnbc.com

MTP@NBC.com

JMiklaszewski @NBC.com

DShuster@msnbc.com

JTrippi@msnbc.com

DBellone@msnbc.com (Hardball producer)

AMitchell@msnbc.com

For the full backround on this story, Josh Marshall is the resident blogospheric expert.

Update: Marshall has posted a subsequent clarification by Miklaszewski. I just heard even CNN finally drop the earlier NBC version of events and also reveal that the wing-nuts have been inundating them with e-mail flogging the NBC story.

The Dinner Guest From Hell

Apparently, David Brooks just went to a family gathering somewhere on his home planet where he bored the living shit out of every single person in the room. In fact, there is little doubt in my mind that there was at least one suicide, right there at the dinner table.

I used to think that at least he was an interesting guy, but it’s clear that even his imaginary friends are pompous bores.

This Land Is Your Land

Ezra pointed me to this Paul Waldman piece in The Gadflyer that hits on something that’s been getting me angrier and angrier during the last few years — the constant refrain by Republicans (and accepted without comment by the mediawhores) that blue state America is somehow unamerican. It’s offensive and I’m tired of it:

Fantasyland, October 25, 2004 – Today John Kerry opened up a new line of attack on President Bush, charging that his policies and positions are a product of Texas, a state whose political culture lies far outside the American mainstream. “The former governor of Texas has governed like, well, like a former governor of Texas,” said Kerry to the laughs and hoots of the crowd. “He’s so far out on the right wing, he fell off the plane.”

Kerry also brought up Tom DeLay, the ultra-conservative congressman from the Lone Star state. “George Bush makes Tom DeLay look like a Texas moderate!”

The new line of attack came as an independent liberal group began airing a new ad in which an elderly couple says, “George Bush should take his NASCAR-loving, tobacco-chewing, trailer-park-living, redneck freak show back to Texas, where it belongs.”

Of course, we’ve never seen a story like this one – like all Democrats, John Kerry knows that if he criticized one state or one region of the country, the press and the Republicans would come down on him like a ton of bricks, charging him with being a Northeastern elitist who doesn’t want to be the president of all Americans.

But the rules are different on the other side of the aisle. In today’s politics, it is acceptable for Republicans to traffic in ugly stereotypes and assert outright that people who come from some areas of America are not really American. Some might remember the ad to which I referred, aired by the conservative Club for Growth, which said, “Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs.”

[…]

Bush is hardly the first Republican to use this attack; when the DNC decided to hold its convention in Boston, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey said, “If I were a Democrat, I suspect I’d feel a heck of a lot more comfortable in Boston than, say, America.”

[…]

Why does Bush get away with this? Because the press corps buys the Republican argument that the areas of the country where there are lots of Republicans are “really” American, and the areas of the country where there are lots of Democrats aren’t. So they never asked whether the fact that Bush was a “Texas conservative” would hurt him, while they constantly wonder about how damaging it is that Kerry is a “Massachusetts liberal.” Disparage Texas – or Alabama, or Mississippi, or Kansas – and you’re in for a heap of trouble. Throw insults at Massachusetts or California or New York, and the press will laugh right along.

If Kerry wins this election, it is highly likely it will be without the South. And maybe then people are going to realize that catering entirely to one regional culture and insulting the others may not be the way to build a permanent majority. If that happens it’s not going to be us blue-staters from Taxachusetts or Hollywood who have the problem.

Great News!

Dick Morris just said on FAUX that Bush is “surging in the polls” and it’s because of the puppies ad. In fact, he believes that ad is going to go down as one of the greatest political ads in history.

The rule of thumb for everything in life is that if Dick Morris says it, the opposite must be true. Therefore, Bush is slipping and the puppies ad is going down as the biggest political joke in history.

I feel good!

What Is News?

Here’s a little quiz for everyone. Which of these two stories will dominate the news tomorrow?:

To review the essential facts, prior to the war, Iraq’s Al Qa Qaa bunker and weapons complex had roughly 350 tons of high explosives under IAEA seal. After the war, for whatever reason, the complex was either not guarded at all or inadequately guarded. And all those explosives (primarily RDX and HMX) were carted away.

What we’re talking about here isn’t just a bunch of dynamite. This encyclopedia entry says RDX “is considered the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives.” And not 350 pounds, 350 tons.

It is apparently widely believed within the US government that those looted explosives are what in many, perhaps most, cases is being used in car bombs and suicide attacks against US troops. That is, according to TPM sources and sources quoted in this evening’s Nelson Report, where the story first broke.

One administration official told Nelson, “This is the stuff the bad guys have been using to kill our troops, so you can’t ignore the political implications of this, and you would be correct to suspect that politics, or the fear of politics, played a major role in delaying the release of this information.”

or this one:

U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred.

FAUX News will be flogging the latter like crazy. But, the former is above the fold on the front page of the NY Times.

Anybody want to lay down a bet?

Now’s The Time

Memo to the press corpse: In light of this new information about Junior’s lies regarding Project P.U.L.L., it’s now perfectly legitimate to ask that One Simple Question.

In fact, it’s your job. Consider the bounty your bonus.

Another Pratfall

Junior isn’t the most coordinated fellow in the world and he has a lot of trouble staying upright in the best of circumstances. It’s probably not a good idea to put him in platform shoes. He falls down. Again:

President Bush is helped after tripping on a step after speaking at the Canton Palace Theatre about medical liability reform Friday, Oct. 22, 2004 in Canton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

Haven’t They Seen Enough Horror?

Wayne Newton Entertains Troops in Iraq

Newton, along with special guests that included actor Rob Schneider and country singer Neal McCoy, spent nearly three hours at a 1st Cavalry division camp in the capital on Tuesday.

Wasn’t the mutiny in the 1st Cavalry? I’m just saying…

Via tristero

Up In The Air

HANNITY: “Do you or when you think of, for example, what happened in Spain prior to their last election there was an article recently that showed that you were presented with the possibility by your CIA director and others that — I think September 15th they presented this to you – it was written up recently – that this is a potential threat here but we still have area vulnerabilities so we — is that always going to be the case? Is that something we are always going to have to live with?

BUSH: Yes because we have to be right 100 percent of the time in disrupting any plot and they have to be right once. We’re better. Much better. As a matter of fact the 9/11 commission reports that America is safer under the course of action we’ve taken but not yet safe. Whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up — you know, is up in the air.”

Whoopsie. I think Junior’s faith based reality may have slipped a little bit there. I’d call it a gaffe except that he’s also said that he doesn’t care about bin laden and he doesn’t think America can win the GWOT. If this guy is so iffy about our ability to deal with the terrorist threat, I’m not sure he has a rationale for his presidency. If he isn’t the codpiece cowboy then what’s the point?

I think it’s only fair to wrap these comments around his neck so tight that he can hardly breathe. It would be downright disrespectful to treat him any differently than he would treat us — ruthlessly and without mercy.

Premeditated Theft

Can someone explain to me why, when crap like this is going on, that all I’m hearing about today is alleged Democratic intimidation of Republican voters?

Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.

Party officials say their effort is necessary to guard against fraud arising from aggressive moves by the Democrats to register tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio, seen as one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in the Nov. 2 elections.

Election officials in other swing states, from Arizona to Wisconsin and Florida, say they are bracing for similar efforts by Republicans to challenge new voters at polling places, reflecting months of disputes over voting procedures and the anticipation of an election as close as the one in 2000.

Ohio election officials said they had never seen so large a drive to prepare for Election Day challenges. They said they were scrambling yesterday to be ready for disruptions in the voting process as well as alarm and complaints among voters. Some officials said they worried that the challenges could discourage or even frighten others waiting to vote.

Ohio Democrats were struggling to match the Republicans’ move, which had been rumored for weeks. Both parties had until 4 p.m. to register people they had recruited to monitor the election. Republicans said they had enlisted 3,600 by the deadline, many in heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities. Each recruit was to be paid $100.

The Democrats, who tend to benefit more than Republicans from large turnouts, said they had registered more than 2,000 recruits to try to protect legitimate voters rather than weed out ineligible ones.

Republican officials said they had no intention of disrupting voting but were concerned about the possibility of fraud involving thousands of newly registered Democrats.

“The organized left’s efforts to, quote unquote, register voters – I call them ringers – have created these problems,” said James P. Trakas, a Republican co-chairman in Cuyahoga County.

Both parties have waged huge campaigns in the battleground states to register millions of new voters, and the developments in Ohio provided an early glimpse of how those efforts may play out on Election Day.

Ohio election officials said that by state law, the parties’ challengers would have to show “reasonable” justification for doubting the qualifications of a voter before asking a poll worker to question that person. And, the officials said, challenges could be made on four main grounds: whether the voter is a citizen, is at least 18, is a resident of the county and has lived in Ohio for the previous 30 days.

Elections officials in Ohio said they hoped the criteria would minimize the potential for disruption. But Democrats worry that the challenges will inevitably delay the process and frustrate the voters.

“Our concern is Republicans will be challenging in large numbers for the purpose of slowing down voting, because challenging takes a long time,” said David Sullivan, the voter protection coordinator for the national Democratic Party in Ohio. “And creating long lines causes our people to leave without voting.”

[…]

Among the main swing states, only Ohio, Florida and Missouri require the parties to register poll watchers before Election Day; elsewhere, party observers can register on the day itself. In several states officials have alerted poll workers to expect a heightened interest by the parties in challenging voters. In some cases, poll workers, many of them elderly, have been given training to deal with any abusive challenging.

If anyone wonders why the Bush campaign doesn’t feel the need to do much campaigning in the essential state of Ohio, you don’t need to look any further than this. They haveplans in place to ensure he wins no matter what.

This tactic is based upon the same one by which they “won” the election in 2000. They are using it not so much to intimidate voters, although I’m sure they will do that also. The main purpose, as it was when the Republican “challengers” in the recount questioned many more ballots than necessary, is simply to run out the clock. And if anyone tries to hold the polls open longer to accomodate long lines as they did in St Louis last time, they will scream bloody murder about the Democrats “changing the rules” after the game has been played.

This is a big deal. If anyone can get to the swing states for election day, they should do it. Check out ACT for Victory for instructions on how you can help. The Republicans have put together an organized effort to suppress the vote. The only thing that will stop it a huge turn-out and people willing to help at the polling places and report the atrocities.

Update: Check out ISOU for some coming attractions.