This week, Dick Cheney called Iraq a "remarkable success". Previously, George W. Bush called it a "catastrophic success". With 15 dead U.S. troops in Iraq over the past week (at least 9 of them yesterday alone, 8 in a single attack), and a new report detailing that in fact over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since it all began, there is little doubt about the kind of "success" this war has been. No matter what the desperados in office trying to win reelection are hoping you will beleive.

Look at the numbers and decide for yourself. Here are the latest as of 10/31/04...

Ratio of Al-Qaeda Attacks in the 3 years after 9/11
to Al-Qaeda Attacks in the 3 years prior:
2:1

Avg. Number of Attacks on U.S. Military per day:
80-90

U.S. Military Killed
between "Mission Accomplished" and hand-over of "Sovereignty":
1.89 per day

U.S. Military Killed
since hand-over of "Sovereignty" (125 days ago):
2.34 per day

Total U.S. Military Killed
since hand-over of "Sovereignty" (125 days ago):
269

Total UK Military Killed
since hand-over of "Sovereignty" (125 days ago):
9

All other "Coalition" Military Killed
since hand-over of "Sovereignty" (125 days ago):
14

Number of Countries in "Coalition":
Unknown
(White House Removed "Who Are the Coalition Members?" document from their Website. It's still gone. See this BRAD BLOG article for more info.)

Total U.S. Military Dead in Iraq since start of War:
1,123

U.S. Military Amputees, Wounded, Injured & Psychologically Disabled,
All now evacuated from Iraq:
29,550 est.

Iraqi Civilians Killed since start of War:
100,000+ est.

Iraqi Military Killed (prior to end of "major hostilities"):
28,000 est.

Total Iraqis Killed (Civilian and Military) in Iraq War:
128,000+ est.

Population of Iraq:
25 million

Total Killed in the US on 9/11:
2,973

Population of US:
293 million

Stockpiles of WMD's found in Iraq so far:
0

Al-Qaeda Creators/Spiritual Leaders "brought to justice...Dead or Alive":
0

Sources: Iraq Coalition Casuality Count, U.S. Dept. of Defense, McLaughlin Group, Johns Hopkins University

I can't post too much today because the Hannity & Colmes story below is sucking away all the bandwidth for the moment! Knocked us down entirely this morning. So read that story, and then colmes@foxnews.com, Comments@foxnews.com, mm-tips@mediamatters.org, mm-actions@mediamatters.org, Send">TheBradBlog@cville.com\">Send Email to these Folks requesting they do the right thing this Monday night!

After that, as a reward for doing something positive for your Democracy, see the first few killer minutes from Jon Stewart's Thursday show on video here.

Keep spreading the word, guys! This world isn't gonna save itself!

SUNDAY UPDATE: My highly placed source inside H&C tells me your Emails are making a difference! Keep speaking up! Your voice matters! If you Democrat/Liberal/Progressives think it makes sense to simply write Fox off entirely, please see this.

It was announced at the end of Friday's Hannity & Colmes on Fox that their Monday (Election Eve) guests would be:

ON THE RIGHT: Karl Rove, Dick Morris, William Weld (UPDATE!) Jeb Bush just added!!!
ON THE LEFT: Bill Richardson

Obviously, this is anything but "Fair and Balanced" and on the eve of a national Election it's simply outrageous!

I have a highly placed source inside the Hannity & Colmes show who I've sent Email to complain about this, and I received back a similar response to the ones I usually receive from them on the lack of balance on H&C. Namely; the Kerry campaign is simply not as willing to help them by supplying guests as the Bush campaign is. (I wonder why!)

I have tried to explain to my source that it's Fox's and H&C's responsibility to ensure that their show is fair and balanced! Not the responsibility of the Kerry campaign or the DNC to ensure that!

No matter how much the Democrats wish (or do not wish) to supply top-level guests to H&C it is the responsibility of the news organization, and debate show --- which claims to offer "Fair and Balanced" debate from both sides --- to do everything they can to ensure that the American people whom they serve receive an equal representation from both sides!

Last week, for example, Hannity had half-hour one-on-one interviews first with George W. Bush and then again with Dick Cheney. After which, both Hannity and Colmes pointed out that they had invited Kerry and/or Edwards to enjoy the same, to which apparently they declined.

In lieu of Kerry or Edwards then, H&C should have given an equal amount of time to a Democratic representative --- any Democratic representative, if necessary! --- to do at least their best to try and offer balance, even if they were not able to get Kerry or Edwards themselves!

And now, on their Election Eve show, such sorry excuses are simply intolerable! Having three Republican guests --- two of them, Rove and Morris, who will likely be offered segments where no balancing Democrat representative is there to supply balance --- is beyond the pale on the final show before Americans go to the polls!

I've contacted MediaMatters.org about this issue in hopes that they can help make some noise about it. I hope you will do the same, as well as helping to spread this word, and contacting the people at Fox News and the Hannity & Colmes show with your opinions about this outrageous example of attempting to effect the Presidential Election on the nation's most-watched channel for Election news coverage on the night before the Election!

CONTACT...
Sean Hannity: hannity@foxnews.com
Alan Colmes: colmes@foxnews.com

FOX News Channel FOX News Channel:
1-888-369-4762
Comments@foxnews.com

Media Matters:
www.MediaMatters.org
Email

Click here to Email all of the above at once!

UPDATE: If you have any question where Hannity & Colmes --- the show that claims to offer "Fair and Balanced Debate" stands, see the front page of their website right now. Here's a screenshot. Note all three featured stories offered to readers: Interviews with Peggy Noonan (Conservative, Ronald Reagan's speech writer), George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

We've come to expect this from H&C by now, of course, but their Election Eve coverage is even more outrageous than on most days! And, certainly more important than just any old day of the week!

UPDATE 11/1/04: Hannity & Colmes now announcing that Jeb Bush is added to tonight's show!!!

GOOD NEWS UPDATE 11/1/04: Just heard from my source: Terry McAullife now added to show for balance! Your letters are working! Keep it up! You are making a difference!!!

FINAL UPDATE: Victory (mostly)! Final lineup: 2 guests from the Right, 2 from the Left! But H&C managed, incredibly, to skew it to the Right anyway. Click here to read how.

As usual, Josh Marshall hits upon the essence of the question:

Marshall also notes, in another item, that apparently the Bush team learned of the impending bin Laden statement yesterday morning, but didn't notify the Kerry camp about it until later in the afternoon.

And then, as Bush finished criticizing Kerry for criticizing Bush for not doing more to catch bin Laden, there was this report from AFP:

Prompting Marshall to aptly note: "There's nothing, it seems, they won't game."

Which is both funny and insightful. But if any of you folks are paying attention, it's Ohio that I'd be very concerned about this year. Seems to me the G.O.P. is just begging to create a race war there.

It's one thing to disenfranchise several thousand elderly Jews in retirment homes in Boca Raton. It's another matter altogether to systematically and aggressively disenfranchise black voters in real time at the polls in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.

From what I saw reported on Nightline last night, it looks like the G.O.P. is playing with fire out there, and hoping to start trouble as part of their strategy. I'm very concerned about what may happen in Ohio on Election Day. There's your heads-up for the moment...

Success! Mostly.

Chalk it up to "one for the little guy"!

In the wake of our series of reports on the White House quietly removing embarrassing Audio and Video from their website, it seems the bulk of that material has now been restored online! Thanks, no doubt, to the adverse attention they received via wire reports and Washington Post articles that our reporting was able to spur, the Administration seems to have gone through thousands of web pages and restored the previously available media to them.

That alone seems to disprove the theory offered by Jim Gilliam, one of the creators of the excellent OutFoxed documentary, who reported being told by the White House at the time that there was a policy to remove old audio/media after a year. As we previously reported, there was much media still online well over a year old. If this supposed policy was done for storage-space reasons, the restoration of gigabytes of media now would seem to disprove that notion as well. Looks like the WH was at least victorious in selling their line to those filmmakers. Just another in a series of apparent lies and nonsense peddled, too often successfully, by this corrupt Administration.

So what material is still not restored to the publically owned and historical website?

Their removed "List of Coalition Members", which originally started all of this when it was taken down just after Dick Cheney accused John Edwards of not counting Iraq as part of the "coalition" during the V.P. Debate is still, unbelievably, not available. We caught them red-handed at the time. And as of this date, in the final days of a Presidential campaign, in the middle of a war, the Whitehouse.gov website still has no list or information as to who our allies are in that effort.

Beyond that, there is no way of knowing what else has been deleted, removed, changed, redacted or disappeared since the White House doesn't allow Internet Archive sites to index it's thousands of pages. Thus, it's nearly impossible to track everything that has been changed and deleted. For example, the "Secretary Paul O'Neil testifies about terrorism risk insurance" link in their special report detailing "America's Response to Terrorism" is still missing (as illustrated at right).

At this point, all we can do is hope the Bush Administration has any respect left for "the rule of law" since all of the documents they release on their website are "historical documents" that belong to the people. As we previously reported, their deletion or editing without approval from the National Archives seems to be in clear violation of the "Presidential Records Act".

But they'd never disrespect "the rule of law" at this White House. Right?

EnjoyTheDraft.com's new ad campaign (a couple of ads from it seen below) has been cancelled at the last minute by senior management at Yahoo. John Aravosis of AMERICABlog, part of the group that created EnjoyTheDraft.com, is reporting that management at "the highest levels of Yahoo" decided at the last minute to cancel the campaign after ads were bought, paid for, and set to go live today. The original announcement for their campaign, with more graphics, etc, is here.

{DISCLAIMER: EnjoyTheDraft.com is a paid BRAD BLOG advertiser. We're proud to have them as a sponsor!}

Who stands to benefit from the re-emergence of Bin Laden? The best spinners, I guess. I'm looking over the transcript of the video now, as posted on Drudge.

More on that as I go through it. But in the meantime, no doubt, the Bushies will spin this as proof that bin Laden supports the election of John Kerry. The Kerry team will spin this as proof that Bush took his eye off the ball, and use his statement that he was "truly not that concerned about him" to blast Dubya.

Now the Bushies are better spinners, in general, and have a far more sophisticated "spin apparatus" in place via their echo chamber control of the media. As well, this helps to get the awful al Qa-qaa news and the Administrations disastrous handling of same --- being remarkably flat-footed and ham-handed in their many responses --- off the news. So overall, I'm leaning towards Advantage: Bush on this one for the moment. But I don't know yet.

What are your thoughts? Other than it's the American people (and the world) who "lose" by bin Laden still being alive, who "wins" from today's news on this?

Story here. Video here (sorry, CBS-haters, the Fox version wouldn't download).

Don't let this worry you though, since our "President", as you may recall, was "truly not that concerned about him". So why should you be?

(Video tape of that statement available here, despite the White House's version of same having been scrubbed from their website).

UPDATE: Whaddaya know? Since our report on the scrubbing of that audio/video, and since The Washington Post's coverage of it, the White House has restored the Audio and Video from that March 2002 press conference that they'd previously removed!

Little wonder the Pentagon refuses to report or count Iraqi casualty figures.

We've been reporting that 28,000 Iraqi military (many whom were conscripted out of their village at gunpoint by Saddam) were reported killed at the end of "major hostilities" by various Pentagon sources at the time.

Since then, the best estimates we've been able to round up are that over 22,000 civilian Iraqis are estimated as dead. But apparently, we've been low-balling it!

This just out from The Independent:

By way of comparison to the "at least 100,000 Iraqis" who've been killed so far --- and had nothing whatsoever do with 9/11 --- the U.S. lost 2,973 on that fateful day. That'll show 'em!

Even the CIA won't play along with the White House anymore. The New York Times reported yesterday on the diplomatic "no thank you" the CIA took on rubber-stamping a White House-proposed report they hoped to release this summer subtly titled: "America Is Safer Without Saddam Hussein"

Say what?! What sort of judgement is it? An "emotional" one? A "political" one? Well, if it's up to this White House, I guess... Anyway, the report goes on...

heheh...

In reply to one of our "White House Website Scrub" stories, this comment was posted last night by someone identifying themselves as "Spakeh":

After posting that same message about 10 times, the same user (same IP address) then posted another comment right after that one using another name, "wEEwEE":

Wow. Talk about your flip-flops! Anyway, thanks for supporting the BRAD BLOG "Spakeh"/"wEEwEE"! I feel the love...All the way down to my WARM SPINCHTER.

Any more questions?

No clue on the authenticity of the flyer below that was scanned and sent to Kos as he reported today. Given the similarity in it's message to past known examples of such dirty tricks and flyers just like this, as well as the orchestrated voter suppression tactics beginning to emerge now in Ohio and Florida, I'd rather err on the side of vigilance.

Keep your eyes out for this kinda crap...I think there will be plenty of it (if the language in the hate mail I've been receiving of late is any indication).