Last night the National Review Online wrote:

NBC BLOWS A HOLE IN THE KERRY ATTACK ABOUT THE EXPLOSIVES

Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News pretty much dismantled the New York Times attack on behalf of Kerry today.

NBC News: Miklaszewski: '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 Qakaa 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. In a letter this month, the Iraqi interim government told the International Atomic Energy Agency the high explosives were lost to theft and looting due to lack of security. Critics claim there were simply not enough U.S. troops to guard hundreds of weapons stockpiles, weapons now being used by insurgents and terrorists to wage a guerrilla war in Iraq.' (NBC's 'Nightly News,' 10/25/04)

If Jill Abramson, managing editor of the New York Times, had a shred of concern over her paper's reputation for getting the facts right never mind objectivity or fairness, she would be running the correction — or at least this blatantly contradictory information — in the giant headline font and above—the—fold location that today's story got. But I guess the interest in echoing the sentiments of Maureen Dowd is more important than getting it right at the Old Gray Lady.

In a media feeding frenzy yesterday, the mainstream media took its usual cue from the Times with the Iraq explosives depot mentioned at least 4 times by ABC News, 7 times by CBS News, 37 times by MSNBC and 50 times by CNN  .  But for anyone who didn't turn on the TV or check the news all day yesterday:  The front page story in the New York Times   claiming 377 tons of powerful explosives are missing from Iraq because the American—led forces never secured a known stockpile became the lead story throughout the media and fodder for John Kerry to launch some of his harshest attacks against President Bush, calling it "one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration."  See, for example, "Kerry rips Bush for 'incredible incompetence'"   and "Kerry Slams Bush for 'Great Blunder' in Iraq." 

As quoted above, NBC News debunked the basis for Kerry's political attacks by reporting last night that its embedded reporter with the American forces who first arrived at the site only three weeks into the Iraq War confirmed that the explosives were already missing when our forces got to it.  Having a reporter as an eyewitness to the events debunking the premise underlying a highly publicized line of political attack right before an election would seem to be important news.  Yet for some reason, NBC's revelation cannot be found on its news web site, MSNBC.  So unless you happened to catch NBC's Nightly News or regularly read it's transcript or follow the blogs you might not know that Kerry's latest attacks have been rendered false.

In the aftermath of the clear evidence provided by NBC that the political attacks against Bush stemming from the front—page Times' story are baseless, one might think that the paper would prominently report this important item for both the missing explosives story and their pre—election political coverage.  Think again!  Its front—page story today headlines with "Iraq Explosives Become Issue in Campaign" painted it as the Bush campaign in a defensive mode desperately trying to explain away a major gaffe, leading with:

The White House sought on Monday to explain the disappearance of 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq that American forces were supposed to secure, as Senator John Kerry seized on the missing cache as "one of the great blunders of Iraq" and said President Bush's "incredible incompetence" had put American troops at risk.

It is not until the 18th paragraph on page A20 that the possibilty is mentioned that the explosives had disappeared before the war.  But rather than present NBC's solid evidence, the Times cited a Bush spokesperson who could only note that the Times had raised that possibility in yesterday's story (my note: but had given very short shrift to) and therefore Kerry could not prove his accusations.  Despite the availability of NBC's evidence to the contrary long before the Times went to press, "the paper of record" did all it could to assure that the Bush administration would still be blamed for not securing the site.

The Times' story that powerful explosives "vanished sometime after the American—led invasion last year" relies heavily on information from the International Atomic Energy Agency and statements by its director general, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, who told the Times that he is "extremely concerned" about the potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.  But the Times, in its eagerness to tarnish Bush, broke the story without reporting either the fact that these are 377 tons compared with almost 400,000 tons of munitions that have been secured or destroyed, or the possible political motivation behind ElBaradei's release of information .

Mike Nadler   10 26 04