It’s not just the candidates who are launching last-minute attacks. See Associated Press. In this one, reporters Calvin Woodward and Tom Raum channel all the John Kerry attacks on their last-minute scoop on a Halliburton probe. Note how Kerry merely “seizing on” AP’s gift, while Bush is launching a “stinging character assault” for saying Kerry isn’t consistent. (Note then, how later in the story “consistent” Kerry protests he “might” have gone to war against Saddam.) Oh, and Republicans are also the only ones making apparent gaffes: “This late in the game, any miscue is ripe for exploitation, and the Republicans committed a few…”

While we’re on the subject of late hits, AP’s Emma Ross is reporting that an article for the British medical journal The Lancet (being leaked in advance, of course, for the best political timing). It’s guessing “as many as 100,000 more Iraqis, many of them women and children, died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq than would have been expected otherwise.” If you read far enough, and many might not, you learn that the study’s organizer reveals “I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives.”