The second foot falls ... and it shook things up ... mightily!

The First Phase of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Report on the US Government's pre-war accuracy was a bombshell; however, taken together with the second report from the same Senate Committee, the combo is a bombshell of the nuclear kind.

Besides not having a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program either ongoing or projected, Saddam Hussein actually turned down repeated pleas from al-Quaida's Osama bin Laden for support of any kind whatsoever and indeed, tried to capture the terrorist, Abu Musab al Zarqawi while he was in Iraq.

Just as Osama bin Laden regarded Saddam Hussein as an infidel (having cabinet members who were Christians and running a secular government), Saddam Hussein feared Osama bin Laden's even having a toe-hold in Iraq, knowing his (Saddam's own) secular regime would be quickly dismantled if the al-Qaida existed in Iraq.

The two reports (400 pages in all) shot down all of President Bush's prewar reasons for invading Iraq and, in fact, are in disagreement with fairly recent statements made by the President as he continues to attempt to "connect" his War on Terror (starting with 9/11) and his invasion of Iraq which has actually furthered al Quaida's position rather than weakening it.

Both Republicans and Democrats are now in alignment with the heretofore almost exclusively Democratic charges that the Bush Administration "manipulated intelligence" to make a case for war to the American people. Of course,the American people (that's us!!) fell for it ... hook, line and sinker.

And as of today, more than 2,600 young Americans, believing (just as most of us believed) that they were avenging 9/11, have died horrible deaths in Iraq ... believing that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 ... when almost the exact opposite was actually true. The reports show that Saddam Hussein wouldn't even cooperate in the least with Osama bin Laden!

The "September surprise" (the Intelligence Committee reports) will be hard to beat -- especially since it (the "surprise") was produced by a Republican-controlled Senate committee, but Mediawingnuts believes that Karl Rove is working overtime this evening on coming up with an "October surprise" that might mitigate the effects that today's reports and the accompanying announcements and furor might have on the fates of many Republicans running for election and/or re-election in November.

Today's release of the Senate Intelligence Committee reports was BIG! Hopefully, for the sake of America, our Constitution and especially our troops serving overseas, Rove's "October surprise" will not result in some (unpredictable) horrific event next month or in early November.

How many of us will have to die for oil, corporate greed and to maintain the Bush Administration in office?