NY Times Bombs Bush

Today's New York Times lead story tries to put a good face on the newspaper of record's obvious attempt at an October surprise in using a two-year-old non-story against President Bush just days before the election:

The very fact that Mr. Bush mentioned the missing explosives, after two days of silence since their disappearance was first reported, signaled that his campaign strategists recognized the issue's political potency in the final week of a presidential race that both sides agree could be exceedingly close.

People in the Kerry campaign clearly think too that the missing explosives may be a powerful issue, as the senator himself illustrated today by again emphasizing it at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, whose seven electoral votes are up for grabs.

Reports out of NBC and CNN, by contrast, suggest that the explosives may well have been moved out before the United States entered Iraq, which would mean, of course, that their disappearance has nothing to do with any carelessness on the part of the Bush administration or the American military forces in Iraq. Which would mean that Sen. Kerry and his ghastly friends at the New York Times have not only spread a vicious falsehood—with exactly the same amount of care and sense of responsibility that Dan Rather and CBS used in spreading an anti-Bush story earlier in the campaign—but have exploited that lie for political gain during a time of war.

Rather reminiscent of certain false stories about American atrocities in Vietnam that certain people spread during the early 1970s, isn't it?