PRESIDENT BUSH HAS GOTTEN AROUND TO addressing the missing explosives issue, I’m glad to see. Yesterday, I fretted that Bush’s failure to respond to Kerry on this issue “makes me suspect that the loss either did not pre-date the war or that it isn’t clear whether it did or not.” According to the NYT, Bush had this to say at a campaign stop today in Lancaster, Pennsylvania:

“Our military is now investigating a number of possible scenarios, including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the site … This investigation is important and it’s ongoing, and a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief. After repeatedly calling Iraq the ‘wrong war’ and a ‘diversion,’ Senator Kerry this week seemed shocked to learn that Iraq was a dangerous place full of dangerous weapons.”

Hmmm … well, then my suspicion yesterday was correct. He can’t come out and say clearly that the loss pre-dated the war. The facts we have, as the Times puts it, are:

The stockpile was found to be intact in March 2003, when United Nations weapons inspectors checked it just days before the American-led invasion. On April 10, one day after Saddam Hussein was toppled, American troops visited the Al Qaqaa depot, not finding any big cache of explosives but apparently not looking very closely either.

How close do you have to look to see something that big?

Bush’s line “a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief” interplays nicely with Kerry’s usual criticism of Bush for rushing to war without knowing all the facts.