General: October 2004 Archives

From this morning's New York Times:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - 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, make 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 sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

...

The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material.

...

Earlier this month, in a letter to the I.A.E.A. in Vienna, a senior official from Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology wrote that the stockpile disappeared after early April 2003 because of "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security.

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq, By James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, The New York Times, 24 October 2004

Let's see. President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1st, 2003. So I guess he regards it as part of our "success" in Iraq that 380 tons (that tons, not pounds) of explosives disappeared on our watch. He must, because "the Bush administration would not allow the [International Atomic Energy Association] back into the country to verify the status of the stockpile." The IAEA was involved because the explosives are dual-use, many countries use them as detonators for their nuclear warheads.

I don't get it. Republicans are up in arms that Kerry and Edwards mentioned in passing that Mary Cheney is gay. In this morning's New York Times, columnist Bill Safire wrote this:

The memoir about the Kerry-Edwards campaign that will be the best seller will reveal the debate rehearsal aimed at focusing national attention on the fact that Vice President Cheney has a daughter who is a lesbian.

That this twice-delivered low blow was deliberate is indisputable. The first shot was taken by John Edwards, seizing a moderator's opening to smarmily compliment the Cheneys for loving their openly gay daughter, Mary. The vice president thanked him and yielded the remaining 80 seconds of his time; obviously it was not a diversion he was willing to prolong.

Until that moment, only political junkies knew that a member of the Cheney family serving on the campaign staff was homosexual. The vice president, to show it was no secret or anything his family was ashamed of, had referred to it briefly twice this year, but the press - respecting family privacy - had properly not made it a big deal. The percentage of voters aware of Mary Cheney's sexual orientation was tiny.

The lowest blow, New York Times, 10/18/2004

Only if a tiny percentage of voters watched the Vice Presidential debate in 2000.

Only if Alan Simpson, a long-time friend of the Cheneys, also delivered a low blow during celebrations at President Bush's inauguration:

In his opening remarks, Mr. Simpson noted, "Not one of us doesn't have someone close to us who is gay or lesbian." Then he invoked Mary Cheney, the daughter of the vice president, who attended the inauguration with her partner. Mr. Simpson said that after Ms. Cheney said she was a lesbian, her father, Dick Cheney, "protected and loved her as his very special, special daughter." (NYT 1/26/2001)

Kerry and Edwards deserve an apology from Safire and his ilk. Mentioning that Mary Cheney is a lesbian is no more embarassing than mentioning that Lynne Cheney is married. Safire will, I hope, assert his essential decency by apologizing with sincerity.

(You'll have to read the last paragraph of the Safire column to understand the last sentence.)

[T]he following facts are simply indisputable. The fundamental rationale for the war - the threat from Saddam's existing stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction - was wrong. Period. In the conduct of the war, it is equally indisputable that the administration simply didn't anticipate the insurgency we now face, and because of that, is struggling to rescue the effort from becoming a dangerous mess. Period. So the question becomes: how can an administration be re-elected after so patently misjudging the two most important aspects of the central issue in front of us? It may end up as simple as that. Maybe, in fact, it should end up as simple as that.

Andrew Sullivan, "The underlying fact", October 7, 2004

If you read Andrew Sullivan, you know that he was a vigorous and vocal supporter of the invasion of Iraq. In fact, earlier in the above entry he makes it clear that he still thinks it was right to start the war. I disagreed with him on that, but this one he's got exactly right. We cannot re-elect a President whose judgment is so grievously flawed.