The Russian Connection

Documented here by The Washington Times.

Wednesday was a Triple Play:

1) The Washington Times humiliated The New York Times.
2) ABC News humiliated The New York Times.
3) BoSox Sweep the Cards -- The Curse of the Bambino was Exorcised.

If you haven't heard by now, the lies and distortions of John Kerry and The New York Times' [What about the CBS-NYT nexus on this story?! -- Ed. Does anyone really care about or watch CBS News anymore?] have been documented as Roger Simon notes:

Bill Gertz of the Wash Times has a bombshell tonight . . . Gertz corroborates what we all know - the Times story of missing explosives was jerry-rigged propaganda concocted to make the president look bad and get Kerry elected. How could it have been otherwise? Obviously, the Times didn't do the slightest bit of research on the matter. They just rushed the story out. Otherwise they might have found out what Gertz did - that the explosives were "almost certainly" moved before the war (logical, isn't it?) and that Russian intelligence helped Saddam do it. This too is no surprise because anyone following the Iraq War story reasonably closely knows that the Russians were deeply enmeshed with the Iraqi mukhabarat at that time.

What's even more embarrassing is that Times' story is further discredited by that other organ of the "extreme right" ABC News. Apparently there was a "discrepancy" in the amount of missing explosives reported. It wasn't the 380 tons of the Times' story. According to ABC:

But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility - a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

Oh, well, what's 377 tons between friends?

All of this is particularly damaging to Kerry on the critial issue of this campaign: Leadership in Time of War.

Now look, we all have a right to be outraged. These are the same media which have been telling the country how badly the Iraq War is going. These are the same media who are lopsidedly favoring Kerry over Bush in this election. Only this time their partisanship may have trapped the Senator. In his excitement with the New York Times explosives story, Kerry has gone around the country trumpeting Bush's "mistake" for anyone in shouting distance. Now it's his mistake. Let's hope the Senator has flipped his last flop.

As PowerLine notes, what will be most interesting is to see how our Leftist Media discuss the Russian Connection which facilitated the movement of Iraqi weapon stockpiles before the war, and how John Kerry listened to a UN Bureaucrat rather than the US Military or that other organ of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, NBC News.

Gertz's piece brings the NYTroGate fiasco to a logical conclusion which satisfies Occam's Razor.

Hugh Hewitt makes it plain: Kerry is a man without character:

[The] verdict seemed impossible to escape, even before news arrived of the complete discrediting of the Kerry-New York Times' ticket's wild theory of Army negligence in the securing of the mythical munitions.  If Kerry had a shred of decency, he would apologize to the troops that passed through and searched the munitions comnplex.  He doesn't, so he won't.