The New York Post weighs in

Today's editorial column in the New York Post entitled "TIMES' WEAPON OF BUSH DESTRUCTION", makes this assessment of efforts by the Times and CBS to sink the Bush Presidency.

October 28, 2004 -- And so we finally have the October Surprise — a last-minute live political grenade tossed smack dab into the middle of the campaign by The New York Times and CBS' "60 Minutes," the latter still smarting from its Dan Rather Memogate fiasco.

The lead story in Monday's Times reported breathlessly that "380 tons of powerful conventional explososives . . . are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations."

John Kerry, predictably, went hysterical — charging that President Bush, by his "incredible incompetence," had now placed the lives of U.S. troops in immediate danger.

But there's much more to the story than the Times would have you believe.

That the story was intended as a last-minute political hit seems undeniable: CBS, which first got the tip and worked together with the Times, admits that it planned to air a piece next Sunday night — just two nights before the start of voting. That would have left precious little time for any response.

CBS says that the story only broke in the last two weeks; when other news outlets got wind of it, CBS agreed to let the Times publish its story first.

Maybe so. But more than a month after its blatant attempt to sink President Bush's re-election by relying on forged documents, no heads have rolled at CBS. Dan Rather is still on the air (and pushing this latest story to the hilt). Activist producer Mary Mapes — whose five-year obsession prompted the story — still works for CBS.

The Post sums up the newsworthiness of this explosive story on supposedly missing explosives.

And the Times-CBS stories also ignore the fact that the missing 380 tons, though troubling, was but a minuscule portion of the 400,000 tons of explosives stockpiled by Saddam Hussein — more than half of which has been destroyed by U.S. troops in the past 18 months.

Which is why Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. arms inspector for Iraq, said "it's hard for me to get that worked up about it," since "Iraq is awash in hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives."

Instead, thanks to the CBS-Times double-play combination, the Bush campaign finds itself on the defensive as the election clock winds down. As one John Kerry campaign aide told CBS: "The headlines in this week are in our favor."

Indeed, they are. October Surprise, everyone.

Read the whole thing.