Getting Real

My friends, it is time for some straight talk about this election.

The American people deserve an honest accounting of what is at stake in this era of global anxiety.

It would be easy to say that one of the candidates will keep us completely and totally safe from terrorists. But it would be wrong.

No matter how hard they work, no matter how much money the federal government spends, there is always the possibility of a successful attack. You know that. I know that. We all painfully learned that three years ago.

So why do the candidates keep jumping on each other when either one so much as hints that the country can't be hermetically sealed against terrorism?

Bush told Matt Lauer in August, speaking of the war on terror, that "I don't think you can win it." Which is a perfectly reasonable thing to say, in the sense that the threat, like bad weather, can never be completely eradicated. But Kerry jumped all over him and Bush quickly backtracked.

Kerry told the New York Times Magazine this month that his goal is to reduce terrorism to a nuisance, like gambling or prostitution. The president pounced: A nuisance? That's how he regards terrorism?

Bush told Sean Hannity last week that whether we can completely protect the country is "up in the air." Kerry jumped on the comment: When-I-am-president-it-won't-be-up-in-the-air. Unfortunately, no one can guarantee that. And every journalist writing or broadcasting about this knows that. So how about a reality check on this rhetorical war?

There's some major pushback, meanwhile, on that NYT story on the 380 tons of ammo missing in Iraq. Some of this is fueled by the acknowledgement of Times partner "60 Minutes" (to the LAT) that it was going to pop the story on Halloween, but allowed the New York Times to break it because the story was going to leak out. Could CBS really have been thinking of dropping such a bomb (forgive me) two days before the election? Amazing.

On Fox, former NBC correspondent Dana Lewis, who was embedded with a military unit at the huge ammo dump in question, told his new network: "Some of the concrete was split open and you could see munitions in a few of the bunkers. And then at one end of the facility I can remember seeing hangars full of rockets. I've never seen so many rockets in one place."

Still, Bill O'Reilly asked whether it was "a legitimate story or a dirty trick," and said CNN was trying "to get Bush" by mentioning the story 50 times. But he offered no evidence of dirty trickiness, since the Iraqis didn't notify the International Atomic Energy Agency until this month.

Tony Snow said the story "looks pretty bogus" and is "an embarrassment to the New York Times and also CBS." Dick Morris said the story would "unravel" like Dan Rather's National Guard reporting.

"At a minimum," former coalition flack Dan Senor told Paula Zahn, "there's the possibility that those weapons weren't there."

The New York Times has more on Ammogate:

"White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell.

"But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the facility and had merely stopped there for the night on their way to Baghdad."

Kerry jumps on the story, as the Boston Globe reports:

"Democratic challenger John F. Kerry accused President Bush yesterday of covering up the disappearance of Iraqi explosives after the US-led invasion, charging that the incumbent 'tried to hide the information until after the election' as part of a broader political strategy to mislead voters about setbacks in Iraq.

"At a rally late yesterday in Las Vegas, Kerry went even further, suggesting that the missing weapons had been used against American troops. 'Those ammo dumps have been looted and raided, and kids and our young American forces are being shot at from weapons stolen from the ammo dumps that this president didn't think were important enough to guard,' said Kerry, citing no evidence of the link between attacks on troops and the missing explosives."

No evidence. Well, when did that ever stop a candidate?

The president avoided the subject, but "Bush campaign advisers, meanwhile, hammered away at the credibility of the missing weapons story, saying it will be viewed by voters as an election-eve conspiracy to harm Bush."

Conspiracy? Like a vast left-wing conspiracy?

Bush's running mate was not as reticent, says the AP:

"Vice President Cheney yesterday flatly rejected Sen. John Kerry's criticism of the loss of hundreds of tons of explosives in Iraq, saying that toppling Saddam Hussein had led to the confiscation of hundreds of thousands of tons.

"'If our troops had not gone into Iraq, as John Kerry apparently thinks they should not have, that is 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that would be in the hands of Saddam Hussein, who would still be sitting in his palace instead of jail,' the vice president told supporters."

InstaPundit says the ammo story is "flatly contradicted" by NBC's Jim Miklaszewski, who reported thusly:

"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.

"If the NBC report is wrong and the unnamed Pentagon official is right, it's still not that big a story. The Belmont Club notes that 600,000 tons of munitions were dispersed by Saddam throughout Iraq and says worrying about a few hundred tons of RDX 'is similar to worrying about a toothache after being diagnosed with AIDS and Ebola.'"

The Note sees it differently: "The NBC story does not exonerate the president, but it does add context that rebuts, at least to some extent, the most hyperbolic charges that we heard Monday.

"Perhaps the Bush administration can be faulted for not pre-securing the site, and there is ample evidence that they were warned about it and the dangerous explosives. But that's a different and less meaty charge than what the story sounded like across America -- that they knew about the site and failed to secure it after the war."

National Review is in knockdown mode:

"Explosives are missing in Iraq. This news ordinarily would not be the stuff of breathless political attacks, but in the final days of a presidential election anything will do -- especially if you are John Kerry, waging your campaign on whatever fodder the New York Times happens to provide you on any given day. . . .

"In the larger context of Iraq, this is hardly surprising. The country is bristling with weapons and explosives. According to the Duelfer report, 10,000 weapons sites have been reviewed and cleared since the war; 240,000 tons of explosives have been destroyed; and another 160,000 tons have been consolidated for destruction. Given the massive amount of material in play, it's not shocking that some of it would go missing or fall into the wrong hands. But the conception of immaculate warfare held by Bush's critics does not allow for such unfortunate incidents or operational mistakes -- the realities of war."

Two media reports for you this morning. Find out how many newspapers have switched their endorsements from Bush in 2000 to Kerry. Also, you may be surprised at just how bad Bush's coverage was during the debates.

Also, if you're interested in all these 527s flooding the airwaves with more provocative commercials than the candidates, I've got the details here.

Some surprising words from the prez, as picked up by the New York Post:

"President Bush, breaking with the Republican Party, said yesterday that gays should have the right to civil unions if states where they live make that possible.

"'I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do,' Bush said, speaking on ABC's Good Morning America.

"Asked if his position disagreed with his own GOP platform -- approved in August at the Republican convention in New York -- Bush acknowledged it did.

"Moreover, it was Bush himself in February who announced support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and encouraged Congress to approve legislation that would ban gay unions."

He waits until a week before the election to tell us, by the way, I disagree with the platform?

In the New Republic, conservative Andrew Sullivan works his way toward a Kerry endorsement:

"I know few people enthused about John Kerry. His record is undistinguished, and where it stands out, mainly regrettable. He intuitively believes that if a problem exists, it is the government's job to fix it. He has far too much faith in international institutions, like the corrupt and feckless United Nations, in the tasks of global management. He got the Cold War wrong. He got the first Gulf War wrong. His campaign's constant and excruciating repositioning on the war against Saddam have been disconcerting, to say the least.

"I completely understand those who look at this man's record and deduce that he is simply unfit to fight a war for our survival. They have an important point--about what we know historically of his character and his judgment when this country has faced dire enemies. His scars from the Vietnam War lasted too long and have gone too deep to believe that he has clearly overcome the syndrome that fears American power rather than understands how to wield it for good.

"So we have two risks. We have the risk of continuing with a presidency of palpable incompetence and rigidity. And we have the risk of embarking on a new administration with a man whose record as a legislator inspires little confidence in his capacity to rise to the challenges ahead. Which is the greater one?. . . .

"Kerry has actually been much more impressive in the latter stages of this campaign than I expected. He has exuded a calm and a steadiness that reassures. He is right about our need for more allies, more prudence, and more tactical discrimination in the war we are waging. I cannot say I have perfect confidence in him, or that I support him without reservations. But not to support anyone in this dangerous time is a cop-out. So give him a chance."

Not likely to make its way into a Kerry ad, but there it is.

The Chicago Tribune's Jill Zuckman frames a Kerry profile this way:

"John Kerry was riding in his campaign bus, passing another in a long series of miles along the roads of Ohio, and the question for him was an innocent conversation-starter. Given the remarkable trajectory of his run for the White House - written off for dead during the primaries to dead-even with the incumbent - does he ever just stop and pinch himself?

"'Nope. I don't let myself do that. Nope, I don't,' Kerry said adamantly. Why not? 'Because I've got to stay focused, and I've got to get the job done,' replied Kerry, during a recent interview with the Tribune. 'And there isn't time to wander around here. It requires discipline and focus. I'm the leader of the effort, and I've got to stay focused and make sure that people are on target and carrying out the mission. There's no pinching allowed.'

"In that sort of humorless intensity may lie the secret to Kerry's success. Or the seeds of his defeat. His supporters see a bright, driven, serious man who views the gray in the world, the nuance and the complication, a leader well-matched to the times. His detractors see a stentorian caricature of a senator, given to long-winded, self-involved pronouncements, lacking in the human touch and perhaps lacking in core conviction."

I see a guy who regards even the most innocent queries as trick questions.

The New York Post has a new baseball angle for the campaign:

"The World Series adds a big 'X factor' in the race. Some analysts say Republicans are more likely than Democrats to watch the games (except in Boston) and less likely to talk to phone pollsters on weekend game days.

"'I stop all my polling a half-hour before the World Series,' said GOP pollster Jim McLaughlin, who was racing to finish a Missouri poll Monday night -- a non-game night -- because everyone will be watching their beloved and beleaguered St. Louis Cardinals Tuesday night."

Buzz Machine man Jeff Jarvis is getting some pretty vile hate mail:

"It wasn't hard to guess what would happen when I wrote this post about what I think Bush should have done in his first term and what he could have done to win a landslide this time around.

"Keep in mind that I'm a lifelong Democrat talking about how I might have voted for Bush -- even me, even Bush.

"You might think that people would come in and convincingly try to push me over the edge. You might think that. But I didn't.

"Some -- but not all -- of the comments were vituperative and venomous. . . . That, sadly, is what is going on across America in this final week.

"Now I'm not exactly an undecided voter, as I've made clear, but let me give some advice to both sides: This is no way to win friends and influence undecideds.

"And it is a failing of both sides. Whenever I said anything civil and respectful about Bush or supported the war in Iraq in the last year, I got self-appointed Democratic PC police coming after me with two-by-fours yelling that I wasn't Democratic enough. Now I dare to say something critical about Bush and the execution of the aftermath in Iraq and I'm getting bashed from the other side."

That breathtaking column in London's Guardian, which wound up asking for someone to kill Bush, has produced an apology--a rather tepid apology, given how outrageous the column was:

"The final sentence of a column in The Guide on Saturday caused offence to some readers. The Guardian associates itself with the following statement from the writer.

"'Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind.'"

An ironic joke? Yeah, that was a real thigh-slapper.

Finally, Howard Stern confronts his nemesis, the chairman of the FCC, on a call-in show. He accuses Michael Powell of getting his job through his dad.