In the growing conundrum that is the Bush-Cheney shifting argument (you should be familiar by now based upon the Iraq War alone), Dick Cheney once again shifted the response on 380 tons of missing explosives in Iraq. What else can be said.
The link. Article below the fold...
NTERNATIONAL FALLS, Minn. (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney modified his criticism of John Kerry on Thursday after declaring the Democrat got his facts wrong about the disappearance of several hundred tons of explosives in Iraq.
Hitting back on what has become a major issue in the last week of the campaign, Cheney embraced an ABC News report suggesting that much of the explosives cache was removed from a storage facility before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
Kerry is ``just dead wrong. ... We know ... upwards to 125 tons had been removed'' in January 2003 before the invasion, Cheney told supporters at a restaurant coffee session in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
``He's just plain wrong on the facts,'' Cheney said.
Around the time Cheney was speaking, the International Atomic Energy Agency -- part of the United Nations -- raised questions about the news report, saying it cited an inspection report of a single day and that most of the explosives were kept at another site that the IAEA considered part of the overall storage area.
ABC reported that IAEA confidential documents showed that just over three tons of the explosive RDX was stored at the facility, which could mean that well in excess of 100 tons were removed before the invasion.
After the news report was called into question, Cheney dropped references to Kerry being ``dead wrong'' during a stop in International Falls. Instead, he cited a statement by a U.S. military commander that Saddam Hussein had moved most of his ammunition and explosives in the months before the invasion.
``John Kerry made these charges without knowing if any of the explosive material was there,'' Cheney said.