THE WORLD’S YOUNGEST BLOGGER (or so she says, she’s 13) hosts the Halloween edition of the Carnival of the Vanities.

A PALESTINIAN IN PARIS: Yasser Arafat is being flown to Paris for medical treatment. Israel has lifted its one-man travel ban, not wanting to be blamed if he dies outside a hospital. There is no word on whether or not they will give him the right of return.

BAD PUPPETS: ABC news reports that Iraqi officials may have overstated (if you’ll allow me to understate it) the amount of explosives that went missing from al Qa Qaa. 377 tons of RDX? Try 3.

[T]he confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency’s inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

Why would Iraqi officials overstate it by more 10,000 percent? Some puppets they’ve turned out to be.

NOW WHAT? 60 Minutes can’t break the missing explosives story on election eve as originally planned. What’s a network to do when it needs to find a new angle, and fast? Jeff Goldstein suggests nine last-minute story ideas.

MISTAH ARAFAT, HE DEAD YET? Roger L. Simon put Yasser Arafat on Deathwatch.

TAKING FALLUJAH: The New York Times reports that the U.S. military is preparing a massive assault on Fallujah. It is time.

I’m tempted to say it is long past time. Terrorists have lorded it over that town with impunity for months. It cannot stand. There’s an upshot to this, however. A recent article in the Washington Post suggests we are winning at least some hearts and minds by letting the thugs show the locals what they are made of.

Adnan, the taxi driver who moved his panicked wife and four children to another town, said attitudes toward the foreign fighters have changed dramatically since they poured into Fallujah after the Marines’ siege ended in April. “We were deceived by them,” he said. “We welcomed them first because we thought they came to support us, but now everything is clear.”

Among the tensions dividing the locals and the foreigners is religion. People in Fallujah, known as the city of mosques, have chafed at the stern brand of Islam that the newcomers brought with them. The non-Iraqi Arabs berated women who did not cover themselves head-to-toe in black — very rare in Iraq — and violently opposed local customs rooted in the town’s more mystical religious tradition…

Residents said the overwhelming majority of Fallujah’s people also have been repulsed by the atrocities that Zarqawi and other extremists have made commonplace in Iraq.

Fallujah is ripe for the picking. Even if it weren’t, the so-called Iraqi “resistance” there has gone unopposed long enough.

The U.S. cannot be defeated on any battlefield. I can only hope the Bush Administration and the interim Iraqi government don’t pause in the middle to talk. They need to remember who we are fighting. The enemy has no demands we can give in to. As Christopher Hitchens recently put it, terrorism “is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.”

Remember Napoleon’s words to the wise: “If you start to take Vienna – take Vienna.”

JIHAD IN PARADISE: Here’s something that isn’t getting enough attention. Mary at Exit Zero notes that Wahhabi Hate Radio is playing loud and clear in Thailand.

FRENCH PERFIDY WATCH: Saudi Arabia’s Arab News isn’t the most trustworthy news source around, so I suggest taking this story with a shaker of salt. But it’s worth keeping an eye out for anyone else who might cover it.

JEDDAH/PARIS, 27 October 2004 — France’s attempts at creating a coalition of Iraqis opposed to the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi collapsed yesterday as Paris announced it had abandoned its opposition to an international conference to be held on the future of the newly-liberated country. [Emphasis added.]

[…]

France and US were at loggerheads about who should attend the conference. Washington insisted that only governments should be invited. Paris, however, wanted what it calls “Iraqi resistance groups” to also attend.

[…]

“We understand France’s desire to revive part of its influence in Iraq,” says an aide to interim Prime Minister Allawi. “But this does not mean that we can let Baathist criminals and their jihadist allies to gain a foothold thanks to French support.”

Hey, look at the bright side. If Kerry is elected and France is able to pull off something like this, our “alliance” will become so deep and so broad it will even include our own enemies.

(Hat tip: Robin Burk at Winds of Change.)

BANANAS: Fidel Castro announced yesterday that all Cubans must now wear their underwear outside their clothes. Sort of. Marc Cooper explains.

MERYL YOURISH, another liberal for Bush, says the Democrats forced her hand.

HITCHENS FOR KERRY: Christopher Hitchens, along with most of the staff at Slate, endorsed John Kerry for president. That’s odd. Just last week in The Nation he said he was (slightly) in favor of George W. Bush.

He is not at all happy with either Kerry or the Democratic Party right now, and his “support” is the kind I am entirely sympathetic with. He breaks it down into two parts.

Objectively, his election would compel mainstream and liberal Democrats to get real about Iraq.

And:

I do think that Bush deserves praise for his implacability, and that Kerry should get his worst private nightmare and have to report for duty.

I made similar points in a Tech Central Station column last month, so I know where Hitchens is coming from. I tried to talk myself and other hawks into voting for Kerry. The problem is I couldn’t convince even myself. I doubt Hitchens really convinced himself either. And I doubt Kerry could find a colder endorsement from anyone.

THE FUTURE OF BLOGS: Glenn Reynolds’ second installment on the future of blogs and the blogosphere is up at Tech Central Station.

AL QA QAA THOROUGHLY SEARCHED: On April 4, 2003, CBS (of all places) reported that the al Qa Qaa industrial site was thoroughly searched by the 3rd Infantry Division. Suspicious material was found. (Hat tip: Captains Quarters.)

The senior U.S. official, based in Washington and speaking on condition of anonymity, said the material was under further study. The site is enormous and U.S. troops are still investigating it for potential weapons of mass destruction, the official said.

“Initial reports are that the material is probably just explosives, but we’re still going through the place,” the official said.

Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.

Captain Ed notes:

From this description, it sounds as if the material left at Al Qaqaa would have only been samples or starter materials, as storing 380 tons of powdered explosive in vials would have taken most of Baghdad to store…The idea that various Army units showed up at the weapons facility and strolled around a few minutes before moving up the road to Baghdad, leaving the lights on and the front door unlocked, looks more and more ridiculous. The Army knew very well what it had found, and it searched the bunkers carefully looking for the most dangerous and high-priority items.

Indeed.

The CBS piece continues:

The senior U.S. official, based in Washington and speaking on condition of anonymity, said the material was under further study. The site is enormous and U.S. troops are still investigating it for potential weapons of mass destruction, the official said.

There is no mention of 380 tons of HDX and RDX that disappeared at some point. It appears increasingly likely that it went missing not only before the 101st Airborne arrived on April 10, but also before the 3rd ID showed up on April 3.

UPDATE: The Belmont Club makes an excellent point.

The contemporaneous CBS report, written before anyone knew al Qa Qaa would be a big deal, establishes two important things. The first is that 3ID knew it was looking through an IAEA inspection site. The second was that the site had shown unmistakable signs of tampering before the arrival of US troops. “Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare.” Now presumably those thousands of boxes were not all packaged and labeled with chemical warfare instructions under IAEA supervision, so the inescapable conclusion is that a fairly large and organized type of activity had been under way in Al Qa Qaa for some time.

Read the whole thing.

EARLIER TODAY I posted a question, first asked by J. Trevino at Red State, about what might have happened after the 3rd ID arrived at the al Qa Qaa weapons site in Iraq and before the 101st Airborne showed up a week later. I still don’t what the 3rd ID found. But it seems unlikely the missing explosives were there at that time.

2Slick left the following in the comments section on my blog.

I understand your questions about the 3rd ID being there 1 week before us, but I think I should offer up a military perspective for you. I was with the 101st when we RIP’d (Relieved in Place) the 3rd ID in that region.

380 tons of explosives would require about 40 truckloads to haul it away. It would have taken more than 1 week (and an unbelievable amount of man-hours and heavy-moving equipment) simply to load the trucks. To imply that those trucks could have been loaded and then driven away unnoticed, under the watchful eye of the 3rd ID is absolutely ludicrous.

WHY NOT USE ‘EM? N.Z. Bear asks a good question about the supposedly missing explosives from al Qa Qaa. If they were looted by terrorists a year and a half ago, why have they never been used?

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES: Don’t miss the latest Carnival of the Vanities, hosted on Overtaken by Events.

J. TREVINO AT RED STATE points out that NBC’s Milkaszewski story doesn’t quite debunk the New York Times article that says the Iraqi explosives at al Qa Qaa were lost under American watch. NBC reports that when the 101st Airborne arrived at the site the explosives were already gone. But the Third Infantry Division was there a week earlier.

There are still at least two things we don’t know.

Was the Third Infantry Division the first to arrive at the site? If so, what did they find?

Trevino issues an appeal, which I’m happy to post:

If you are military, or know how to navigate the maze of PAO personnel, lend a hand. The logical person to track down is COL John Peabody, cited as 3ID EN BDE CDR, and quoted in the relevant press reports. Any other avenues of inquiry that present themselves should be pursued — respectfully and professionally.

CARNIVAL OF THE LIBERATED: Dean’s World hosts the latest Carnival of the Liberated, the best of the Iraqi blogs.

YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE: Drudge reports that 60 Minutes hoped to sit on the explosives story until the very last minute.

News of missing explosives in Iraq — first reported in April 2003 — was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode.

Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of 60 MINUTES, said in a statement that “our plan was to run the story on October 31, but it became clear that it wouldn’t hold…”

It doesn’t hold, all right. It doesn’t hold water.

So they lost their story. And there was time enough to debunk it. That’s what they get for playing partisan games.

BUSH ON CIVIL UNIONS: President Bush said today that he favors civil unions for gays, or at least that he doesn’t agree with the Republican Party platform that opposes them. This is news to me. How can he be in favor of civil unions and also back the Federal Marriage Amendment? He can’t, at least not consistently. The FMA would ban civil unions as well as gay marriage. This is a flip I’ll take, as long as he doesn’t flop back on it.

UPDATE: Okay, so this isn’t the first time Bush has mentioned this. Carl Fenley emails a link to this CNN article from February 2004 which quotes Bush as saying the states should be allowed to define “legal arrangements other than marriage.” Bush has tried to have it both ways, even so. The FMA states “Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.” [Emphasis added.]

SECOND UPDATE: Eugene Volokh thinks Bush is being consistent. Perhaps so. Read his whole argument, but here is his conclusion:

So if the FMA is enacted (and note that, as I’ve blogged before, I do not support its enactment), the result will be almost exactly what Bush suggests: A state could still “choose to” recognize “a civil union” as “a legal arrangement.” It would have to do so via a statute — just as most family law is defined by statute — not via a court decision or (probably) a constitutional amendment. But it would indeed be free to make such a choice.

CLOSING IN ON ZARQAWI? The U.S. military reports that one of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s aides was killed by an airstrike in Fallujah.

HIDEOUS HOMES: James Lileks was too modest to bleat about it, but his new book Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes from the Horrible 70s was released by Crown Books today. If it’s half as good as his hilarious Gallery of Regrettable Food it will be worth every penny and then some. I bought several copies of Regrettable Food as gifts (you’re welcome, James!) and it’s always a smash hit.

IRAQ’S MISSING EXPLOSIVES: According to an MSNBC TV news report the Pentagon says the hundreds of tons of explosives that disappeared from Iraq went missing before U.S. troops entered the country. The story is not yet posted online. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Saddam is worried.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall points to this AP article in the Jerusalem Post:

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

But this is flatly contradicted by NBC. (Hat tip: Robbie Port.)

NBC News: Miklaszewski: “April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army’s 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qakaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing. The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon. In a letter this month, the Iraqi interim government told the International Atomic Energy Agency the high explosives were lost to theft and looting due to lack of security. Critics claim there were simply not enough U.S. troops to guard hundreds of weapons stockpiles, weapons now being used by insurgents and terrorists to wage a guerrilla war in Iraq.” (NBC’s “Nightly News,” 10/25/04)

If the NBC report is wrong and the unnamed Pentagon official is right, it’s still not that big a story. The Belmont Club notes that 600,000 tons of munitions were dispersed by Saddam throughout Iraq and says worrying about a few hundred tons of RDX “is similar to worrying about a toothache after being diagnosed with AIDS and Ebola.”

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger L. Simon thinks this story might damage the New York Times worse than Jayson Blair.

SOUTH KOREA IS ON THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE ALERT after a hole was discovered in the fence separating it from the North.

THE BALKANIZATION OF THAILAND: Dave Rodrigues has the latest on Muslim-Buddhist clashes in the south of the country.