Remember the October Surprise?

Well do you remember the October surprise unleashed by the NY Times -- you know the colossal mistake made by the military, Rummy, and President Bush. I mentioned here, here, and here… Well Jonah Goldberg has some really interesting insight on what ever happened to the "end of the world" story…

So, anyway, I'd forgotten about all this. Bush won the election despite the al-Qaqaa drumbeat from Kerry and his surrogates in and out of the press.

But Byron York, my colleague at National Review, didn't forget. He wondered, whatever happened to The Biggest Story on Earth? The answer, it turns out, is nothing. The Times has not run a single story about the al-Qaqaa story since November 1. Nada, bupkis, zilch.
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If the story was accurate, it should be important enough to follow up. If it wasn't, we should be told that.

There's also another news angle that might have been worth investigating. As Times columnist William Safire and Cliff May, a former Times reporter and contributor to National Review Online, have suggested, the whole al-Qaqaa story might have been orchestrated by Mohammed el-Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in order to influence the American presidential election. The Bush White House dislikes Baradei, and reportedly the feelings are mutual (largely because the White House wouldn't support Baradei's bid for another term as the head of the IAEA). According to the Wall Street Journal, Baradei triggered the process which resulted in the al-Qaqaa story getting leaked to the Times and CBS News.

Nice to see someone remember the "story of the year and you can read about it here.