Too Much Information Runnin' Through My Brain
Lots of interesting tidbits today--it just seems to be all piling. Think I'll just put on a little Police (Zenyatta Mondatta, to be precise) and let the spice flow...

MSNBC rebuffs Drudge
Much has been made by Drudge and other right-leaning media outlets that perhaps the 350+ tons of munitions that had been identified at the al Qa Qaa facility by the IAEA was wheeled out of there before US troops secured the area. This meme was forwarded by a confusingly worded NBC report, but NBC/MSNBC now states more clearly what they and their embedded reporter from that time were saying--here's the 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.

NBC's Jim Miklaszewski joins in:

Following up on that story from last night, military officials tell NBC News that on April 10, 2003, when the Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne entered the Al QaQaa weapons facility, south of Baghdad, that those troops were actually on their way to Baghdad, that they were not actively involved in the search for any weapons, including the high explosives, HMX and RDX. The troops did observe stock piles of conventional weapons but no HMX or RDX. And because the Al Qaqaa facility is so huge, it's not clear that those troops from the 101st were actually anywhere near the bunkers that reportedly contained the HMX and RDX. Three months earlier, during an inspection of the Al Qaqaa compound, the International Atomic Energy Agency secured and sealed 350 metric tons of HMX and RDX. Then in March, shortly before the war began, the I.A.E.A. conducted another inspection and found that the HMX stockpile was still intact and still under seal. But inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound.

This meme is toast.

More Munitions Fallout
And remember, it's not just the HMX or RDX that we should be worried about from the al Qa Qaa site, nor does this seem to be the lone occurrance of missing weapons materials from Iraq according to the Sydney Morning Herald (for registration, user name "bornflippy", password "flipper").

The removal of Iraq's mothballed nuclear facilities took about a year and was carried out by experts with heavy machinery and demolition equipment, diplomats close to the United Nations have said.

The UN nuclear watchdog, which monitored Saddam Hussein's nuclear sites before the US-led invasion last year, told the UN Security Council this week that equipment and materials that could be used to make atomic weapons had been vanishing from Iraq but neither Baghdad nor Washington had noticed.

"This process carried on at least through 2003 ... and probably into 2004, at least in early 2004," a Western diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency said.

Apples to Apples, Oranges to Gallup

One of these polls of Presidential voting in Florida is not like the other:

• ARG: Kerry 49, Bush 46 (10/25)
  
• Insider Advantage: Kerry 46, Bush 46 (10/24)
  
• Miami Herald: Kerry 46, Bush 46 (10/21)
  
• Rasmussen: Kerry 48, Bush 48 (10/24)
  
• Research 2000: Kerry 48, Bush 47 (10/21)
  
• Survey USA: Kerry 50, Bush 48 (10/24)
  
• Zogby: Bush 48, Kerry 47 (10/24)
  
• Gallup: Bush 51, Kerry 43 (10/25)
  

Chris Bowers over at MyDD looks at the internals and sees that Gallup provides a +8% cushion to registered Republicans, when in 2000 registered Democrats had a +2% advantage on registered R's.

Guess the Endorsement
The Denver Post released its endorsement for the Presidential race this last weekend--read through this sampling and try to guess who they're giving the nod to:

Typically, in the case of an incumbent, our endorsement calculation would begin this way: Are we, as Coloradans, better off today than we were four years ago?

In a word, no. Since 2001, Colorado has lost more jobs than we've gained, and the ones we've gained pay less than the ones we've lost. We pay less in taxes, but our household and medical expenses have skyrocketed. Ninety thousand of us have lost our health coverage. Washington is ringing up record deficits and sticking the next generation with the bill. In Iraq, Colorado-based military units and reserves are deployed in a hostile environment for questionable purpose and uncertain result.

[...]

It's no secret that we part company with the president over many issues. Two glaring sore spots are his obsession to cut taxes even while piling up record deficits, and his mishandling of all things Iraq. He squandered global good will by taking a "my way or the highway" approach to matters of global warming, international law, Iraq weapons inspections and ultimately the Iraq invasion. He bows to corporate preference in matters of energy and environment, and his education funding levels leave far too many children behind.

Kerry has infused the 2004 campaign with energy and gumption, offering fresh ideas on health care and sensible plans for our tax structure. His are the superior proposals on environmental protection, on stem-cell research and judicial nominations. Sure, we've seen Kerry bend to the political winds over his long career, but we wouldn't mind one bit if more Washington politicians would reconsider their past judgments and ideological certainties. Kerry's growth on the campaign trail gives a glimpse of his potential.

OK, I know. That was a softball. Of course they're stumping for GEORGE W. BUSH:

Bush has labored erratically since his 2001 inauguration, and his first-term performance seems to have cheered and angered Coloradans in equal numbers. But decisiveness is a crucial characteristic in the showdown with the nation's elusive enemies. We believe he meets the test, and we aren't sure about John Kerry. So the president has our endorsement for a second term, even as we call on him to steer a more moderate course that is in keeping with his campaign appearances, but not his first-term performance.

Secretary of State emphasizes ‘one China’ policy
Finally, the one seemingly moderate person in the whole Bush administration seems to have been hit on the head with something heavy:

Secretary of State Colin Powell has angered Taiwanese officials and lawmakers by making unusually strong comments denying that the island is an independent nation and suggesting Taiwan should unify with China.

[...]

That was a departure from the U.S. government’s longtime “one China policy,” a purposely fuzzy approach that merely “acknowledges” people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait agree there is one China. Washington also insists differences should be settled peacefully and in recent years has emphasized that the Taiwanese people should have a say in the matter.

Taiwan is highly sensitive to any kind of language—especially from Washington—that might suggest their democratic island is part of the communist mainland. Taiwanese view China’s government to be repressive and have spent decades resisting rule by Beijing, which occasionally threatens to use force to bring the island under its sway.