The Kerry Campaign's Voice in Alabama

Mr. H. Brandt Ayers's Anniston Star (known not-so-affectionately to those of us from that area as the "Red Star") has published two editorials in the last two days lambasting the Bush administration over the "disappearance" of explosives at al-Qaqaa facility in Iraq.

On October 26, Star Publisher H. Brandt Ayers and the rest of the editorial board had this to say:

Add another deadly serious misstep to the list of Bush administration failures regarding postwar Iraq. The U.S. military conquered Iraq in an amazingly short time, but what followed the takedown has been a series of costly blunders...

This week a new mistake — one kept quiet by the White House for months — was discovered. Hundreds of tons of dangerous explosives were stolen some time after the U.S. occupation of Iraq began in 2003. The materials, HMX and RDX, are very powerful. In 1988, one pound was enough to bring down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Closer to today’s chaos, the stolen explosives are two of the key ingredients being used in the car bombings currently killing Americans and Iraqis.

This is staggering news, further confirming how poorly the Bush administration has handled a war of its own choosing.

It’s also another example of how a secretive White House won’t accept responsibility for its actions.

On October 27, as the original New York Times story began to unravel and the administration responded, the Anniston Star said:

In the days leading up to the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush confronted a nasty political "gotcha." A local TV news station in Maine reported that Bush was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol in 1976.

The candidate promptly owned up to the arrest. "I’m not proud of that. I made some mistakes," Bush said.

Historians may want to note the date — Nov. 2, 2000 — as the last time Bush admitted a mistake.

With questions arising over the disappearance of more than 300 tons of explosives in Iraq, no one should be surprised that Bush and his administration aren’t admitting fault.

The White House is frantically spinning the disappearance of explosives from the al-Qaqaa facility in Iraq. Bush spokesmen are claiming the explosives were already gone when Americans arrived at the facility in early April. They cite a report from NBC News first aired Monday night that claimed al-Qaqaa was stripped of ordnance during a visit just after the U.S. invasion...

And so it goes as the Bush campaign dips and dodges, pinning blame here, there and everywhere. There’s plenty to go around, but none for them.

Who can blame the Bush administration? All it did was start a war of its own choosing based on false evidence of WMD and thus fulfilled Colin Powell’s warning about the Pottery Barn rule — you break it, you own.

Well, we own it, and it’s a bloody mess caused by rosy White House estimates of success that have literally blown up in our faces, possibly with the very explosives looted from al-Qaqaa. So, why won’t President Bush own up to it?

When the Star goes on partisan rants like this, I realize that Mr. Ayers has been wearing his ties too tight for way too long.

Read the Washington Times today, Mr. Ayers. When will you own up to the fact that your newspaper naively and unquestioningly bought into the "false evidence" propagated by the New York Times in its story earlier this week? When will you accept responsibility for your mistakes? I won't be holding my breath.