Good heavens, CNN is dishonest. They pulled their original, candid report on what the NBC reporter said about his first visit to the al Qaqaa weapons depot and replaced it with a similar-looking spun version, purged of information which might have supported Bush or thrown Kerry's recent attacks in a bad light.

I've got to make more of a habit of saving news stories when they're first published. You can't trust these guys anymore.

Excerpts from the original story:

NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad.

While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional explosives, they did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that reportedly went missing, according to NBC....

With the U.S. presidential election eight days away, news of the missing explosives quickly became campaign fodder.

Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry immediately seized on the information to accuse President Bush of incompetence in failing to secure the material, charging that "this is one of the great blunders of Iraq and one of the great blunders of this administration."

But in the wake of the NBC report, the Bush campaign fired off a statement saying that Kerry's criticism of the president over the missing material has "been proven false before the day is over."

"John Kerry's attacks today were baseless," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said. "He said American troops did not secure the explosives, when the explosives were already missing." ....

But Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart fired back with a statement of his own, accusing the Bush campaign of "distorting" the NBC News report.

"In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame," Lockhart said. "It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous."

Lockhart did not elaborate on how the Bush campaign was distorting the NBC report.

It ends with a dig highlighting the obvious deception Lockhart employed.

Now excerpts from the new version, completely bereft of the above information:

The day after the Bush campaign pointed to an NBC report to quash the story, the network reporter who visited the Al Qaqaa weapons depot with American soldiers in April 2003 played down their role at the facility.

Pentagon officials acknowledged there was a window of about six weeks after the invasion of Iraq when the stockpile could have been stolen from the sprawling facility near Baghdad.

But they don't mention that this would have been before we arrived at al Qaqaa, making it sound like we were just standing around not doing anything, as opposed to nowhere in the neighborhood yet.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry continued his attacks on President Bush over the issue for a second day Tuesday.

"What did the president have to say about the missing explosives? Not a word. Complete silence," Kerry said during a stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

"Despite devastating evidence that his administration's failure here has put our troops and our citizens are in greater danger, George Bush has not offered a single word of explanation."

Bush did not answer a reporter's shouted questions about the issue at a campaign stop in Richland, Wisconsin, but Vice President Dick Cheney blasted Kerry for "playing armchair general."

In this new version, Bush is given a mute role, even though he's clearly spoken on the subject several times in the iterim.

In contrast to:

"John Kerry's attacks today were baseless," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said. "He said American troops did not secure the explosives, when the explosives were already missing."

All the Bush administration is allowed to say here is:

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said the NBC report showed that Kerry's allegations were "baseless."

And, of course, we set this up to be contradicted:

U.S. troops did not conduct a detailed search of the compound nor did they try to prevent looting, she said.

The IAEA said Tuesday the last time it can vouch for the presence of the explosives at Al Qaqaa was in March 2003, before the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam.

IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the agency warned U.S. officials in May 2003 that U.N. inspectors feared the site might have been looted.

On May 27, inspectors with the Iraq Survey Group -- the CIA-Pentagon task force set up to account for Saddam's suspected weapons programs -- arrived to inspect the compound and did not find the stockpile.

In an interview with the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said it "looks to me like somehow the multinational force didn't stay on top of this."

He referred further comment to the Pentagon, but added, "We're shocked."

Strangely, even though this new version has been updated to downplay the original evidence and footage of a facility which did appear to be strangely lacking in 400 tons (a huge quantity) of explosives, it seems to have been less, uh timely, at including information which supported the Bush stance, including information showing 400 tons is less than 1/1000th of the explosives destroyed so far in Iraq, evidence showing the amount may have been only a iiny fraction of the 400 tons originally reported, satellite footage showing trucks moving things out of this facility before the war begun, and subsequent information showing that El Baradai, the UN official who made these allegations, had a possible political motive for reviving this story -- which had already been reported last year -- again, near the election.

Oh, but right. My friends on the left tell me CNN is biased toward Bush.

Get real, folks.