A round-up on the explosives, updated
Arthur asks,

The question now is: we know why the mainstream media would want to land this one on Bush only a few days before the election; we also know why ElBaradei would want the world to know; what we don't know is - is the Abbas letter simply something that opportunely and coincidentally played into ElBaradei's agenda, or is it itself a part of the plan? And if so, why would Iraqi officials want to damage Bush?

Very good question, particularly in view of the 50 massacred Iraquis, an inside job if there ever was one. Terrorists hope to defeat Bush through Iraq violence, after all.

Roger explains that the explosives were gone before the war started. NRO realizes that "even International Atomic Energy Agency experts cited in the Times report say Iraqi officials probably removed the explosives prior to the war." Belmont Club, observes how The RDX Problem Resolves Itself -- "the inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound".

Juliette and several commenters in other blogs sees through the media's low opinion of the military. Roberto explains the true outrage, which goes ignored by the MSM:

Yes, the true story is that it appears that officials at the United Nations, in particular the head of the International Atom Energy Agency Mohammed El Baradei, conspired with the NY Times and CBS and possibly the Kerry campaign to try to influence this election, to try to undermine the president of the United States during war time. This is the same UN that John Kerry wants to entrust with our safety

As they asked yesterday on NRO, Does John Kerry trust the U.N. bureaucracy (the same U.N. that evidently did nothing about weapons in Iraq) more than the U.S. armed forces?

Captain's Quarters asks CBS, "If the danger to America and its military forces is so acute, why wait a full week to report it?". The WSJ has an answer

Both of these possibilities are logical, if contradictory, and both acquit the Administration. But there's one more thing we'd like to know: How did this story come to light, oh, one week before the presidential election? The IAEA informed the U.S. of the missing stockpile on October 15; according to our sources, it also notified the government that the story was "likely to leak." Leak, of course, is what it did, and to no one other than CBS's "60 Minutes." Funny how that rings a bell.

But wait! CBS was reporting on the site back on April 4, 2003, and raised valid questions on WMDs being manufactured or stored there.

Then there's the pretzel logic aspect:

So, according to the liberals, we SHOULD remove the President of the United States from power because terrorists might get these weapons but a brutal dictator who murdered hundreds of thousands of people SHOULD NOT have been removed from power just because he might give the terrorists these same weapons.

and the Kerry people can't vouch for the New York Times's "explosive" explosives story, but they're running with it anyway, which keeps them in character as fabulists.

Update: Article emailed by a friend, from Investor's Business Daily: There's no polite way to put it: This story was a lie, apparently cooked up to serve the Times' partisan ends.