About the missing explosives issue, you can see Karl Rove in full spin mode, as Bush loyalist mouthpieces spew the exact same flak, word for word, in a flurry of articles that are coming out: "it's only a drop in a bucket of 400,000 tons of munitions", "it might have been removed before the war", "this liberal media plot to sandbag the President will blow up in Kerry's face - it's Bomb-gate instead of Rather-gate", "it's unpatriotic to criticize the war effort in any way".

So here are some recent developments:

1) A few hours ago, the U.N. nuclear agency confirmed that it clearly warned the United States about the vulnerability of explosives stored at Iraq's Al-Qaqaa military installation after the country's main nuclear complex was looted in April 2003. "After we heard reports of looting at the Tuwaitha site in April 2003, the agency's chief Iraq inspectors alerted American officials that we were concerned about the security of the high explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa," said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency. These explosives are usable in nuclear triggers and thus were of great importance to this organization trying to keep nuclear weapons from the hands of terrorists. The organization clarified that most of the RDX - about 125 tons - was kept at Al-Mahaweel, a storage site under Al-Qaqaa's jurisdiction located outside the main Al-Qaqaa site. "IAEA inspectors were in the process of verifying this statement ... and would have proceeded later had they stayed in Iraq," Fleming added. The nuclear agency's inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the U.S.-led invasion and have not been allowed to return for general inspections despite ElBaradei's requests that they be allowed to finish their work.

2) It's clear that US troops were not told to secure explosives, according to Lieutenant Colonel Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade, which arrived at the al-Qaqaa base a day or so after other coalition troops seized Baghdad. He added that when troops arrived there were already looters throughout the facility. The soldiers "secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemical weapons were not present in their area," Wellman wrote in an e-mail message. "Bombs were found but not chemical weapons in that immediate area. Orders were not given from higher to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions." Clearly, these guys are not willing to take the rap or fall on their swords for Bush & Co, which clearly failed to heed the advice of the U.N. nuclear agency.

3) Recent reports on the ground indicate that there was widespread looting AFTER U.S. troops left. In fact, workers at the facility ASKED to have the site sealed from looters, but the U.S. troops had "more important" order to tend to. In fact, on video shot by an embedded reporter, U.S. troops broke into a bunker there, and when they left, failed to relock the bunker, full of munitions and explosives. And a few hour ago, some insurgents even released a statement that they looted the facility, after the U.S. troops left... "nyah, nyah, nyaaaaaaah!!!"

The issue isn't that mistakes were made. Everyone knows that all war planning is useless after the first ten minutes of battle. For example, when the Bay of Pigs operation failed, John Kennedy had the courage to take responsibility for the mistakes he made. It also taught Kennedy NOT TO REPEAT HIS MISTAKES. The real issue here is that Bush - a man who seems to refuse to see reality possibly because he's an evangelical true believer who talks to God and is leading a religious crusade into the holy land - fits Einstein's definition of insanity to a tee: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." The real issue is why Bush didn't let the U.N. nuclear agency back into Iraq to help. The real issue is whether Bush listened to the U.N. nuclear agency about it's most important advice - or to Clinton's last words to Bush to absolutely focus on Osama bin Laden as America's #1 threat - or to George Tenet and Richard Clarke's advice to focus on bin Laden instead of going after Iraq über alles?

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Finally, I saw something on the Internet recently that answers Bush's charge that Kerry is being unpatriotic to criticize the President. It was this quote: "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Who said it? Some wild-eyed liberal? Nope, President Teddy Roosevelt.