The NYT and CBS are simply not objective. They are actively trying to remove the President from office by poisoning public opinion. This is precisely what the liberal media has done from the very beginning of the Bush presidency, no wonder he is hated worldwide from day one.

That is not to say that he is not without fault. Again, his handling of the War in Iraq (not technically a war) is stalling and the home front is vulnerable to Islamists crossing either border or simply immigrating to America.

The left has given up all pretense of objectivity and simply allied themselves with Kerry and the Democrats who stand for dismantling the Republic.

Perhaps instead of ‘Minority” quotas in America’s news rooms, there should be conservative representation quotas.

Who will be the watchdog of the fourth estate?

The president can and should be pilloried on this issue. The explosives were legal and have uses in construction and demolition. So they were not “WMDs.” They were also declared openly by Iraq and monitored by international inspectors. That is, they were secured. We can’t say that now, can we?

So, now, thanks to the briliance of the Bush Administration and the nincompoops who backed this war, like James Robbins, the Islamists have now expanded their explosives stockpiles as well as their recruiting pool.

Thus the criticism is perfectly valid: what were once secured, monitored explosives have fallen into the hands of our enemies thanks solely to George W. Bush’s administration.

I should like fot Mr. Copold to show me the verification that the 380 tons of explosives were even at the site when our troops arrived. The NBC reporter (certainly no friend of the Bush Administration NBC) embedded with the troops who arrived there in April has said that they were not. Of course, the 380 tons of explosives, much like the WMD that were also “secured and monitored” have disappeared; probably to Syria. Oh, wait a minute! That’s right! There were no WMD. This is a war for oil.

At least, thanks to the new media: the internet, talk radio, the press has been throughly exposed for its leftist bias. Andrew2 is right, the press is after this President in a way I have never seen before !

I’m sorry to disagree with you, Mr. Auster, but James Robbins’ piece was a poor hack job.
If the US was really concerned about these materials being used for developing WMD, then they should have had them removed during the inspections; these materials had been openly declared and were monitored by the IAEA. If these “WMDs” were the reason we went to war, wouldn’t it have been more effective to have simply removed them during the inspections rather than invading the country, thus causing Saddam (or someone) to abscond with them?
So if there is a real concern that these could be used in a WMD program, then it is totally appropriate to criticize Bush for invading instead of removing the materials,because materials that were previously monitored and were not part of an active WMD program are now missing, and could be part of a WMD program, and we have no way of knowing.

Having said that, I do not fault Bush for not securing these explosives during the invasion, as they may have already been moved by that time.
Do I blame him for not having them removed during the inspections? To the extent that there is a concern of them being used as part of a WMD program, yes. To the extent that people are upset about the explosives just because they could be used to kill troops, then no, because removing Saddam’s ability to defend his regime with conventional weapons was not the goal of the inspections.

“I should like for Mr. Copold to show me the verification that the 380 tons of explosives were even at the site when our troops arrived.” - Joseph Baum

Irrelevant if the issue is the ability to use the explosives for WMD; Bush screwed up by not removing the material during the inspections. If conventional use of the explosives is the concern, then indeed, it is only Bush’s fault if the explosives were there when the troops arrived, so Bush may very well not be to blame.

RDX is in no way a weapon of mass destruction. It’s a conventional military-grade explosive. Every army in the world uses it and has since World War II. In theory, it can be used to create the critical mass in a fission bomb but that takes pounds, not tons — never mind hundreds of tons.

Mr. Baum, the explosives were declared by the Iraqis before the war and certified by international inspectors. Not even the Bushies are denying that the explosives were there before the war. So give it up. The Bush Administration, yet again, screwed the pooch on this one.

Mr. Baum wrote:

“I should like for Mr. Copold to show me the verification that the 380 tons of explosives were even at the site when our troops arrived.”

AP has a timeline here: http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-iraq-weapons-timeline,0,2481644.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

There’s an 18 day window between the last time a UN inspector saw the unbroken seals (March 15) and the first time American troops reached (but did not search) the site (April 3). The NBC reporter was there 7 days after that (April 10) but that’s a bit of a red herring. The unit she was with wasn’t looking for conventional explosives at that time. The official report that the seals were broken didn’t come until May 27, after the big wave of looting. So were the explosives moved after April 3 (our fault) or before (not our fault)? Those who say don’t know and those who know don’t say.

Discount the lefty academics who say that it’s not humanly possible to load that many trucks (80-odd) in 18 days. These guys never worked on a loading dock. It’s called a forklift. It moves material a ton at a time.

For what it’s worth, the Iraqi head of the Science Ministry monitoring department (so supposedly on our side) says that the site scientists (probably not on our side) say that the explosives weren’t moved “before the regime’s fall”.

Isn’t it funny how even the verifications need to be verified. So the US and President Bush should have gone through the UN to have the materials removed. As my students would say, “Sweet!”.Why not seek a Security Council Resolution declaring that the Iraqis were in violation of the agreement that ended the first Gulf War. I am no fan of the way President Bush has prosecuted this war, however, I think that nit picking criticisms are unnecessary when there are so many real criticisms (Fallujia, al Sadr, etc.) that can be pursued. Gentlemen: Such quibbling is unbecoming.

The explosives in question were hardly “WMDs” if that term means anything; John Podhoretz is simply playing the typical Bushite game of pretending that whatever has actually happened somehow vindicates the Administration. It surprises me, however, that anyone takes this whole business so seriously. Charges like this appearing a week or two before an election should be treated ultra-skeptically. So should the Administration’s denials!

I don’t necessarily blame Bush for the looted explosives. I just don’t think that it is necessarily inconsistent to do so while denying that Iraq had a WMD program.
It is not improbable that this circumstance with the explosives was an unavoidable consequence of going to war, and so unless you were against the war, there was no “smarter plan” that could have prevented this and therefore Bush can’t be blamed, as it was an inevitable consequence of a necessary action.
I also disagree with the assertion that Mr. Robbins (in the article) that these explosives amount to a WMD program.