Commentary by Michael Reagan

John Kerry, CBS, The New York Times, the U.N.’s Mohamed El Baradei, the other networks and most of the mainstream media surmised they had a dandy “October Surprise” to spring on President Bush just days before the election – but their surmise fizzled. Their planned October Surprise that was supposed to bring about the president’s defeat tuned out to be just more left-wing blather and they got hoisted by their own petards.

The story is a shocking revelation that the strong ties that exist between the liberal media and John Kerry and his corrupt political party actually amount to a conspiracy to hoodwink the American people by whatever means are necessary, be they fair (which they never are) or foul (which they usually are). The Times and CBS are nothing less than an integral part of the Kerry campaign – they are his willing stooges being used to defeat the president of the United States.

On Monday the Times broke a story that a cache of 380 tons of exceedingly potent HMX and RDX explosives in a storage depot at Al Qaqaa have been missing at some point since former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted from power. In other words, after the U.S. became an occupying force responsible for keeping such munitions under lock and key.

According to CBS News executive producer Jeff Fager, the story about the missing explosives was going to be revealed on this Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” – two days before the election. Fager did not bother explaining that this would not allow the President time to adequately respond to the allegations.

“(Ou)r plan was to run the story on October 31, but it became clear that it wouldn’t hold,” Fager said in a statement. CBS – the same network that gave us Rathergate and the forged documents – then handed the hatchet job off to the Times, which ran the story under the headline “Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq.”

The Times reported that the Iraqi interim government warned the U.S. and the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives were missing from “one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations.” The Times claimed that hundreds of tons of high explosives had been removed from the Al-Qaqaa weapons depot while the facility was under U.S. control.

The story began to fall apart before the day was over when NBC reported that one of their correspondents had been at the weapons site before Baghdad had fallen and saw no evidence of the explosives, indicating that they were gone before the war ended.

John Kerry, obviously alerted that the story would run on Monday, immediately attacked the president for failing to safeguard these munitions, which could be used to trigger a nuclear weapon. The rest of the mainstream media jumped on the story, backing Kerry’s allegations. And together with Kerry they are trying to keep this bogus story alive.

Moreover, the Times knows the story is bogus! In February 2003 they reported that the removal of the munitions was set in motion by none other than the government of Saddam Hussein and not by looters or insurgents after the U.S. had liberated Iraq, according to the U.N.’s Bush-hating Mohamed El Baradei.

Here’s what the president said today at a rally in Pennsylvania: “After repeatedly calling Iraq the wrong war, and a diversion, Senator Kerry this week seemed shocked to learn that Iraq is a dangerous place, full of dangerous weapons…”

“If Senator Kerry had his way… Saddam Hussein would still be in power. He would control those all of those weapons and explosives and could share them with his terrorist friends. Now the senator is making wild charges about missing explosives, when his top foreign policy adviser admits, quote, ‘We do not know the facts.’ Think about that: The senator is denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts…”

America has a problem here – a serious problem. A major segment of the media have allowed themselves to become part and parcel of a political campaign, promoting the interests of their candidate and seeking to smear his opponent, the president of the United States. And that’s more than a scandal – it’s a dagger pointed at the heart of this republic.

Mike Reagan, the eldest son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s new book “Twice Adopted”. Comments to mereagan@hotmail.com

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