Ramblings' Journal

The KSTP video is not the be-all, end-all to the Al Qaqaa story

Liberal bloggers and posters across the web are making much of a video from KSTP-TV/DT Minneapolis/St. Paul which shows canisters of some sort in a warehouse in Iraq.

What the leftists don't realize (or are ignoring) is that Al Qaqaa is not a single warehouse, but multiple buldings. Not only that, but there are still SOME explosives at Al Qaqaa today.

Oh, and let's not forget the seal of the IAEA weapons inspectors that's on the door of one of the rooms in question -- troops from the 3-I-D say they specifically did NOT enter that room.

Finally, there's the satellite evidence released by the Pentagon showing trucks moving materials out of the facilities prior to the arrival of the 3-I-D and 101st Airborne.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld entered the debate Thursday, suggesting the 377 tons of explosives were taken away before U.S. forces arrived, saying any large effort to loot the material afterward would have been detected.

"We would have seen anything like that," he said in one of two radio interviews he gave at the Pentagon. "The idea it was suddenly looted and moved out, all of these tons of equipment, I think is at least debatable."

The Pentagon also declassified and released a single image, taken by reconnaissance aircraft or satellite just days before the war, showing two trucks outside one of the dozens of storage bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa munitions base.

The particular bunker is not one known to have contained any of the missing explosives, and Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita said the image only shows that there was some Iraqi activity at the base when it was taken, on March 17. Di Rita said the image says nothing about what happened to the explosives.

Is it definitive? I'll admit that it isn't -- toward either explanation.

But it does not support the haranguing of the leftists who call me and others on the right stupid and idiots.

But then again, as long as they call us stupid, and try to throw enough "October Surprise" fecal matter at the wall, they think they can keep us off balance enough to sweep in and take the election Tuesday.

Bottom line: I don't trust John Kerry to protect the citizens of this nation -- he's too concerned with political correctness, and with America's standing in the world to protect the people here at home. Period.

Posted by mhking at October 29, 2004 09:31 AM