I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable.

I came away convinced that, if we worked at it, if we were ready to work and letting Hans Blix do his job and thoroughly go through the inspections, that if push came to shove, they'd be there with us.

That was Senator Kerry in the second debate. His words - exactly. But...security council members are now denying that any meeting took place. Just a slip of the tongue or a blatant lie? Perhaps Roger L. Simon puts it best:

Is John Kerry a sociopath? That's an extreme statement but it would seem he has sociopathic tendencies if the new report by Joel Mowbray in the Washington Times turns out to be correct. We all remember the Senator's bizarre (and to date unsubstantiated) claim that he spent Christmas in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Well, he appears to have gilded the lily once again, this time, incredibly, before our very eyes during the second presidential debate.

URL: Security Council members deny meeting Kerry - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - October 24, 2004

Oh...my...god. Hundreds - yes...hundreds...of tons of explosives are missing in Iraq. 380 tons of explosives. My oh my. Now, if you read the stories around this so-called news item, you'd hear that the items are missing, but not in the hands of terrorists. They might have been destroyed, they might have been moved, they might have been taken by Iraqi police, they could be anywhere. They're just missing. But let's put this in context, which most people have been unable to do. There are 380 tons of explosives missing. Since we've been in Iraq, the Army's Engineering Corps haved destroyed 110,000 tons of explosives. There are 138,000 tons behind barriers, waiting to be destroyed. So out of the 248,000 tons of explosives that have, or will be, destroyed, 380 are missing. That's not 1% of them that are missing. It's not even one half of 1% that are missing, it's 0.15 of 1% that is missing.

Why not report that? One tenth of one percent of the weapons stockpiles in Iraq are missing. Why not write a story about how Saddam had stockpiled over 250,000 TONS of weapons? No...that doesn't make news. 380 tons of missing explosives & weapons makes headlines around the country. John Kerry even decided to criticize our sitting president over this:

“This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the greatest blunders of this administration and the incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk and this country at greater risk.”

Because, we all know that we should have just left Saddam Hussein and his 250,000+ TONS of weapons in power in Iraq. WMDs or no, if you've got 250,000 tons of weapons, explosives, and other weapons of destruction, there's a problem.

And as I search for more information on the story, here's a bit more information:

An estimated 600,000 tons of munitions with markings from all over the world, including the United States, and some so old that the weapons that fired them are no longer made, were stashed in Saddam’s innumerable caches.

So - 380 tons out of 600,000? Yeah, it's 0.00063 or 6% of 1%. So you take 1% of all the weapons and then take just 6% of that number and you have the amount missing. I think Charles at LGF said it best:

I guess John Kerry feels we were safer when the material was in the hands of Saddam Hussein, because after all ... Saddam was no threat, even though ... he had hundreds of tons of high explosives that could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons, but ... he had no plans for WMD ... uh ... but ...

URL: Yahoo! News - Hundreds of Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq -UN

They have a "Mic'ed up" segment on ESPN just now featuring Champ Bailey (now of Denver, formerly of Washington). He was standing in the end zone on a field goal try, joking with the referees asking if he could knock the ball away when it reached the cross bar and the ref jokingly said no - it was unsportsmanlike. But now that I think about it, is it actually written in the rules that you have to block the ball as it goes up, rather than comes down? Because a blocked field goal is a blocked field goal - it shouldn't matter if it's going up or coming down as far as I see it.

URL: ESPN.com: Champ Bailey

I hereby declare today the first day of winter here in Orange, CA. Because it was the first day this year I've worn jeans.

URL: RPO -- James Thomson : The Seasons: Winter

The "Mead Treatment" continued today as the cough still lingers. I thought that it was going away earlier in the day, and it is less pronounced, so maybe it is slowly fading and one more night of sleep will help. But today, I made hot tea and in the first cup, I just put honey - too sweet - in the second and third cups, I put in my mead. Added just the right amount of sweetness (though I like my tea without sugar) and had a little kick that wasn't even noticeable.

Hopefully it'll go away soon or I'll have to make a non-insurance-backed trip to the doctor...it'll be 14 days of a cough on Tuesday.

URL: Got Mead?: Honey Wine-Making mead and Buying Mead (Honey Wine)