Remember how Bush said recently that there was "no way to know" if those 380 tons of high grade explosive were removed from the Al Qa-Qaa facility before the invasion?

Nice try. The crew of a television station embedded with US troops during the 2003 invasion released video of the troops discovering the facility. They show images of piles upon piles of canisters and boxes clearly marked "explosiv" and "al QaQaa."

Those 380 tons of explosive were definitely there after the fall of Baghdad.



Excerpts from the article:

Using GPS technology and talking with members of the 101st Airborne 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS determined our crew embedded with them may have been on the southern edge of the Al Qaqaa installation, where that ammunition disappeared. Our crew was based just south of Al Qaqaa. On April 18, 2003 they drove two or three miles north into what is believed to be that area.

During that trip, members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew bunker after bunker of material labelled explosives. Usually it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get in and see the material identified by the 101st as detonation cords (...)

Link to the story:

http://www.kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1

You can also view the video here.

The folks at NeedleNose bring us an awesome Flash animation to lift our spirits as the election approaches:



http://www.needlenose.com/win04/vote2.htm

Bye Bye Bambino!!!!

(And bye bye Bushino next Tuesday)

That's right! The election doesn't take place until November 2, and there are already disturbing reports coming out of battleground states, in particular Ohio and Florida.

Today we read that about 60,000 absentee ballots in Florida are missing:

Postal Experts Hunt for Missing Ballots in Florida

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. Postal Service investigators on Wednesday were trying to find thousands of absentee ballots that should have been delivered to voters in one of Florida's most populous counties, officials said.

The issue evoked memories of the polling problems that bedeviled the Florida election in 2000 and which the state has been trying to address before next Tuesday's presidential election, which is again expected to be a very tight race.

Broward deputy supervisor of elections Gisela Salas said 60,000 absentee ballots, accounting for just over 5 percent of the electorate in the county north of Miami, were sent out between Oct. 7 and Oct. 8 to voters who would not be in town on election day.

While some had begun to be delivered, her office had been inundated with calls from anxious voters who still had not received their ballots.

"It's really inexplicable at this point in time and the matter is under investigation by law enforcement," Salas told Reuters.

"It was basically our first major drop of the absentee ballots," Salas said. She said postal service officials had assured Broward elections supervisor Brenda Snipes that the ballots had moved out of the post office to which they had been taken by the elections office. (...)

Fasten your seatbelts, because it's going to be a bumpy ride!

Remember that bizarre collection of photos of Bush rubbing other people's heads?

We just added another one to the lot:


US President George W. Bush reaches out and touches a young girl after his campaign speech inside the Onalaska Omni Center in Onalaska, Wisconsin. Bush touted the tax cuts at the heart of his economic plan and efforts to promote trade as he sought a firmer grip on this up-for-grabs state(AFP/Paul J. Richards)

You can access the whole collection here: The Teenager in Chief

This is quite new, and as they say, it's developing hard. I'm not sure if it's verifiable yet, so use your caution. This is the deal: apparently, someone not too bright at the GOP campaign has been sending a lot of their internal emails to georgewbush.org instead of sending them to georgewbush.com. Of course they were unaware that georgewbush.org is a parody website that criticizes Bush and Cheney.

The folks at that site have decided to publish all those emails in their website:

http://www.georgewbush.org/deadletteroffice/

It's truly unbelievable. If they are legit, some of these exchanges are very revealing of the mood within the Bush campaign. Let me resume some of them for you:

• They are very, very nervous after the latest polls.
  
  
• There are lots of internal fighting and some of them are freaking out.
  
  
• They openly exchange lists of registered voters with very delicate info (including the social security numbers).
  
  
• Lots of interesting info on their GOTV efforts in Miami in regards of the Cuban community.
  
  
• They exchange info on how they identify and block unfriendly journalists from asking questions in press conferences.
  
  
• Lots, and lots of memos, including Newt Gingrich's entire campaign plan!

Here are some juicy quotes from some of those exchanges:

"... many counties are violating the campaign law as I understood it
from you. God help us if the Democrats find out."

Or this one:

"Call me and let me know what your thoughts are. I have some good ideas but I really need to know what Rove is thinking. Call me and let me know what you think. Let's not get over confident. Let's go for the jugular right away."

For the record, this confussion between .org and .com domains is nothing new to the Republicans. Remember that in the vice-presidential debates, Dick Cheney himself messed up by referring to factcheck.com instead of factcheck.org, thus sending curious viewers to George Soros' website.

Too many "internets," I guess.

The new and very controversial video by Eminem "Mosh" has just been released.

You can view it here:

"Mosh" Lo-res - "Mosh" Hi-res

It truly is an excellent video. Kudos to the producers!

Today's headlines carry a news report that is truly disturbing in its implications.

Hundreds of Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq -UN

Hundreds of tons of explosives are missing from a site near Baghdad that was part of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s dismantled nuclear arms program but never secured by the U.S. military, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

The missing 377 tons of high explosives, monitored by inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) in March 2003, could potentially be used to make a detonator for a nuclear bomb, blow up an airplane or a building or in numerous other military and civilian applications, arms experts said. (...)

Just another example of the tremendous incompetence of the Bush administration in the handling of the Iraqi invasion. This, however, is old news. I remember reading about this and similar cases of negligence back in 2003, when Rumsfeld thought it was more important that our troops guarded the oil fields and the oil ministry than anything else in the ravaged country, which as a consequence descended into chaos and everything of value was looted.
It's starting to look as if the only goal was to produce utter chaos in Iraq. I believe several people have mentioned this may have been the case. Randi Rhodes commented that by creating this mess in Iraq it was easier to just steal. Chaos is a good smokescreen. Speaking of Randi Rhodes and Iraq, about a month ago, a guy called Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio with his theory about Iraq and the price of oil.

According to his theory, and contrary to what most people assume, the invasion of Iraq was not meant to tap into the massive oil reserves underneath Iraqi soil. Instead, it was meant to close the spigot. Notice that since the US illegally invaded Iraq, not a gallon of Iraqi oil has been produced, and the "oil-for-food" program has been effectively shut down. There's no Iraqi oil flowing into the market at all. The OPEC (mainly the Saudis) hated the "oil-for-food" program, as it dumped lots of cheap oil in the market and lowered prices, thus decreasing the obscenely huge profits they used to make.

I think that this "close the tap" strategy accomplishes two goals, short and long term:

• Short term: the price of oil coming from other producing countries (OPEC, US) has skyrocketed, making some nice profits for these countries and corporations at the expense of a consumer base with no alternatives, and progressively more addicted and dependent on oil. (Cheney, Baker, and the Saudi royals are going "ka-ching" and laughing all the way to the bank on this one).
  
  
• Long term: The US will control the spigot of the massive oil reserves of Iraq. Simple.

Lately, this theory is making more and more sense to me. In retrospective, knowing that Enron operated in a very similar fashion in California, I feel this was the intended result. The creation of this organized chaos is letting them get away with anything.

Relatives of George W. Bush have launched a website to announce their displeasure with the policies of their cousin, and making it very clear that they are endorsing Kerry. It comes to show you that even in that family common sense can prevail:

Check it out:

Bush Relatives For Kerry

They sure are getting desperate:

Taking a break after three months of very intense work on several projects I was developing at once.

Will be back in two weeks.

That's what everyone seems to be asking at the moment. Nevertheless, I have to say that many of my friends and I, as well as people at various Internet boards I frequent have been wondering about this since at least 1999. There have been plenty of occasions in which his behavior in public, his awkward pauses, his bizarre "questions to himself" would make you wonder if he was actually listening to anyone else. I have suspected since that he may be pulling a "Millie Vanilli" on us.

The latest avalanche of theories on this matter comes after some of his more bizarre gimmicks during the last debate (like blurting out "let me finish" when nobody was interrupting him and he had plenty of time for his rebuttal). Also, several people have noticed a mysterious shape under the back his jacket during the debate. Here's a photo illustrating it:



Even the mainstream media are starting to notice. Salon.com published an article by Dave Lindorff on this matter: Bush's mystery bulge.

Many other websites are sprouting everywhere focusing on this mystery. Here's a list of some of the best:

• http://www.isbushwired.com -- for all things about this mystery
  
  
• A documentary maker explains why he thinks Bush is wired for sound
  
  
• Did he wear an earpiece in his February 2004 interview with Tim Russert.
  
  
• More discussions on audio "shadowing"
  
  
• Promptergate

In addition to these opinions, many people have reported that French TV broadcasters were able to intercept this frequency during the last D-Day celebration, and that it was easy to hear someone reading ahead of time everything that Bush was about to say a few seconds later, including his addresses to specific journalists. It would be interesting if someone is able to post excerpts of this broadcast online.

While all this is still in the realm of speculation, it would be interesting if someone with the right equipment and expertise could locate the signal and record it too. I wonder if any journalist decides to further look into this matter. If confirmed, it could be the news story of the century!

There's a Pulitzer somewhere, waiting for someone with guts!

Shameless. Simply shameless:

U.S. Alerts Schools About Terror Threat

WASHINGTON - The Education Department has advised school leaders nationwide to watch for people spying on their buildings or buses to help detect any possibility of terrorism like the deadly school siege in Russia.

The warning follows an analysis by the FBI and the Homeland Security Department of the siege that killed nearly 340 people, many of them students, in the city of Beslan last month.

"The horror of this attack may have created significant anxiety in our own country among parents, students, faculty staff and other community members," Deputy Education Secretary Eugene Hickok said in a letter to schools and education groups.

The safety advice is based on lessons learned from the Russia incident. But there is "no specific information indicating that there is a terrorist threat to any schools or universities in the United States," Hickok said. (...)

Same old, same old. How interesting that this non-specific terror alert comes sandwiched between Bush's unannounced speech, and tomorrow's debate. This alert also follows the pattern of behavior that the Bush people have us accustomed. In our Timeline of terror alerts we argued that many of the terror alerts and announcements released over the last few years seemed to follow really bad news for the Bush administration. Notice that today's terrifying announcement comes a day after the revelation that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

Check out what the Washington Post said about yesterday's address:

The strongly worded speech, which indicted Kerry as a "tax-and-spend liberal," was timed to deflect criticism of Bush's Iraq policy from such key sources as former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. weapons inspector and the State Department. A Bush adviser said the president hopes to change the dynamics of the race with more biting attacks on Kerry's record and trustworthiness and on what Bush charges is Kerry's reluctance to use U.S. military force to defeat terrorism.

The strategy is aimed at stoking public fears about terrorism, raising new concerns about Kerry's ability to protect Americans and reinforcing Bush's image as the steady anti-terrorism candidate, aides said.

More Rovian pre-debate treachery, if you ask me.

I think it's a good time to check our study on terror alerts that made the rounds in the Internet last summer. Here's our Timetable of Terror Alerts, and here's the famous chart:

Check it out at the DNC website:


Why did Cheney have to lie so blatantly, even about petty things?

CNN / GALLUP POLL ON WHO WON DEBATE

Kerry: 53
Bush: 37

CBS POLL ON WHO WON DEBATE:

Kerry: 44
Bush: 26
Tie: 30

ABC POLL ON WHO WON DEBATE:

Kerry: 45
Bush 36:
Tie: 17