Al Qaqaa: RW settles on the racist/isolationist El Baradei angle

[troublemaker]

Cliff May is one of the most depraved professional WH flaks so I take his take on anything as the official line. Here's a summation of his contributions today at NRO:

Sent to me by a source in the government: “The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The US is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

- - - -
If Drudge is right and Kerry has an ad coming on the missing weapons, that has to be a new high in chutzpah.

The more you look into this affair, the clearer it becomes that a senior UN official, IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei, attempted to influence an American election and that major American media outlets have been so willfully credulous as to assist him.

There were many ways to play al Qaqaa and I think they picked a comparative winner. Why get bogged down with a timeline and changing stories? Easier to say it's a UN conspiracy against Bush. It's clever, being a Goldwater era approach that appeals to even conservatives who hate the Iraq war. (And dragging CBS into it is gravy for the conservative mind.) Isolationist Lou Dobbs has obviously bought into it judging by his show promos as of 4:50pmEST, so that's one plum. Expect isolationist Pat Buchanan to lap it up too.

It's a run-out-the-clock election week strategy. The Bush base hates foreigners, particularly foreigners from the UN named Mohammed. The plan is a direct appeal to the base while shouting down all inconvenient facts. Their theory is that if they confuse the issue enough the TV news will get tired of trying to think through such a confusing story. (And they're probably right)

[Supersedeas]

1. Integrity twisting in the wind. Conservative???

[RinaJ]

2. That ought to help Bush bring allies to our side.

:eyes:

[displacedtexan]

3. So where did they go? "We" had satellite photos of al Qaqaa.

"We" were soooooooooooo concerned with WMDs and Chemical/biological materials!!!!!!

Why didn't "we" even cheneying take a look?

Lame.

[troublemaker]

4. That's a very good point. We should know EXACTLY when they were moved

assuming we have strong sat intel coverage of Iraq (which even these clowns must) we already know if anyone ever bothered to look. It's a lot of material to move!

Yet the matter is treated by the WH as a debating exercise where *anything* could be true, depending on the next news cycle.

[troublemaker]

5. And if they were moved during the sandstorm (first week of war) then

that would prove that the insurrection was a planned trap that we staggered into like over-confident boobs.

[klook]

6. Good analysis

I fear you're correct. But any objective look at the situation shows it's Bush's fault:

Prior to March 2003 - U.N. inspectors visit numerous Iraqi weapons sites, including Al Qaqaa, looking for WMDs. Al Qaqaa is a known explosives armory, but not one with WMDs.

March 2003 - U.N. inspectors leave Iraq at Bush's urging.

March 19, 2003 - U.S. invasion of Iraq begins.

April 9, 2003 - Baghdad falls.

April 10, 2003 - U.S. troops arrive at Al Qaqaa, and according to NBC in-bedded reporters, the explosives are nowhere to be found.

So even if this last item is accurate, this still never would have happened a) if Bush hadn't kicked the weapons inspectors out of Iraq, and b) even after kicking out the weapons inspectors, if the military had been instructed to secure known weapons/explosives stashes first, before securing the oil ministry.

As Robert Fisk wrote in The Independent, "US troops have sat back and allowed mobs to wreck and then burn the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information.

"They did nothing to prevent looters from destroying priceless treasures of Iraq's history in the Baghdad Archaeological Museum and in the Museum in the northern city of Mosul, nor from looting three hospitals."

The price for this negligence remains to be seen.

[troublemaker]

7. Too good, unfortunately - Lou Dobbs is gonna' hit the UN I think