Thursday morning overview

Grab a few hours' sleep and wake up to find events trending in the right direction, albeit a bit surreal.

The big overnight story is the possibility that Russian troops moved large quantities of Saddam's explosives prior to the war. The Russians say "nyet" on this, but what would we expect? "Da, and we'll never do it again" ?

And even if the Russians didn't help Saddam, the removal from Al Qaqaa would not have been that difficult for the Iraqis themselves, especially now that we have learned, from ABC News, that the IAEA (our good friends at the United Nations) could only verify 3 tons of explosives, not 377 tons as some Iraqis were claiming. ABC calls this "a considerable discrepancy." Considerable indeed!

Naturally the tone-deaf John Kerry is still on the stump furiously invoking al Qaqaa-big bang gone-Bush failed to plan-military units uninformed, incompent-blah blah blah, as if only the NY Times and 60 Minutes exist in his parallel universe. But he's wearing a borrowed Red Sox hat (our assumption since we haven't seen it before) and hoping to siphon off karma from the new world champions.

That may be hard to do. Curt Schilling today on GMA called for America to "vote Bush" and there are rumors the heroic Natural pitcher and Dubya may campaign together this weekend. Of Schilling, we can only express our greatest admiration for his gutsy performance in Game 2. His foot bleeding through his Sox -- they were indeed Red with the blood of a true patriot -- he held my beloved Cardinals scoreless for six innings, giving the Red Sox the confidence they would need to seal the deal on their first championship since you-know-when. Schilling set the tone.

Oh, Cardinals! Why pick World Series week to have your worst offensive slump of the year? Our hearts are broken but in our minds we've already figured out what really happened.

We blame John Kerry. Kerry boasted a week or so ago that he didn't care if the Red Sox lost the World Series as long as he won the White House. God was obviously listening, and God does not care for selfish aggrandizement. Thus, the World Series goes to Boston. The rest of the bargain you can figure out. (Looks like Johnny boy will be heading for Boston too).

TERROR WARNING -- The CIA and FBI have authenticated the new terror tape that is in the possession of ABC News. Now ABC is in crisis mode trying to determine whether its desire to election John Kerry is stronger than either its mandate to journalism or its civic responsibility to America. Jim Gerahty of the Kerry Spot Kerry Spot says "be patient." Give 'em time to do the right thing. Okay, sound advice. Just hope al Qaida respects the ABC timetable.