Tapping fingers...

So, where's the October Surprise? I thought every presidential campaign was supposed to have one. Did I miss it or something?

...ahhh, blogger blogger blogger. I click "Publish Post" and it, yet again, sits there for 10 minutes "publishing." I think I'll be doing less blogging and more working on Drupal tonight. After I wake up, that is.

[plop]

...and I guess I spoke too soon about the October Surprise, so says Power Line. Then again, Power Line ain't exactly the most reliable source in the world.

...actually, it looks like TPM has what should be the October Surprise.

To review the essential facts, prior to the war, Iraq's Al Qa Qaa bunker and weapons complex had roughly 350 tons of high explosives under IAEA seal. After the war, for whatever reason, the complex was either not guarded at all or inadequately guarded. And all those explosives (primarily RDX and HMX) were carted away.

What we're talking about here isn't just a bunch of dynamite. This encyclopedia entry says RDX "is considered the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives." And not 350 pounds, 350 tons.

It is apparently widely believed within the US government that those looted explosives are what in many, perhaps most, cases is being used in car bombs and suicide attacks against US troops. That is, according to TPM sources and sources quoted in this evening's Nelson Report, where the story first broke...

[T]he White House and the Pentagon have known for more than a year that this stuff had gone missing. But the White House, according to TPM sources, has known that this story was coming for at least ten days. Again, not just the underlying facts -- that the stuff had been stolen and was being used against American troops (they've known that for more than a year) -- but the fact that this story was going to break in the not too distant future. And they've been hoping it could be pushed back until after the election.

So the Bush administration not only allowed IRaq weapons sites to be looted, but the explosives that got looted helped kill over 1000 US troops.

How can anybody even defend Bush after a story like this?