Sent to me by a source in the government: “The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The US is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

News of missing explosives in Iraq — first reported in April 2003 — was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crisis mode.

Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of 60 MINUTES, said in a statement that “our plan was to run the story on October 31.”

. . .

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq. According to NBCNEWS, the explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

. . .

CBSNEWS’ plan to unleash the story just 24 hours before election day had one senior Bush official outraged.

“Darn, I wanted to see the forged documents to show how this was somehow covered up,” the Bush source, who asked not to be named, mocked, recalling last months CBS airing of fraudulent Bush national guard letters.

UPDATE: Oh, and note that in that first article, John Kerry couldn't wait to use the original leak of the story to grab a microphone and blame Bush for somehow being responsible for letting these 380 tons of explosives go missing.

Kerry said terrorists could use the material “to kill our troops, our people, blow up airplanes and level buildings.”

“This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the greatest blunders of this administration and the incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk and this country at greater risk.”

Couldn't even wait for your own fact-checkers to give you the green-light, could you, John? Care to issue an apology?

Maybe admit your collusion with CBS, or something?

UPDATE: Someone should get MoveOn.org in on this whole Internet thing:

Every day, the tragedy in Iraq deepens. On Sunday, newspapers reported the execution of 49 members of the Iraqi National Guard, who were lined up and executed at the hands of insurgents. And yesterday, the New York Times reported that hundreds of thousands of pounds of deadly explosives in Iraq have gone missing, looted from a facility that was left unprotected by the U.S. Army. Yet George Bush says everything's going fine.

Maybe it's the Times that's lying, you freaks, not Bush.

UPDATE: And now Kerry is running an ad centered on this "story".

Geez louise. Are we in a race condition here? Is the Kerry campaign specifically, cynically trying to get as many bogus memes into the water as possible in this last week before the election, just to be as loud and chaotic as possible so there won't be any chance for the administration to post a defense in time, or for the public to absorb it if they do?

If they win, how will they live with themselves once everything calms down and they start to reflect on what precedent they've set this year?

Do they even care?

UPDATE: Bob P. e-mails:

How news travels....on the main 6o'clock news yesterday the missing 380 tons of explosives was the lead story on New Zealand's channel one, and they even claimed that the explosives "could be used to trigger a nuclear device"

And the dems say that it's *Bush* trading in fear....

I seriously don't know if I can take another week of this...