RSS Feed for This PostCurrent Article

Bush Dropping the Ball on Al Qaeda

By Larry Johnson on July 17, 2007 at 10:10 PM in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, CIA, Current Affairs, DoD, Homeland Security

by

Larry C Johnson

Today’s release of the unclassified summary of the National Intelligence Estimate, Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland, is a black eye for the Bush Administration propaganda campaign that Iraq is making America safer. Despite White House efforts to persuade the public that we are vanquishing Al Qaeda, the intelligence community sees things differently. It is the equivalent of George Bush trying to pass off a pig wearing lipstick as a foxy debutante, but frantic spin notwithstanding the naked critter is still a pig.

Here are the two critical key judgments from the estimate:

We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership. We assess that al-Qa’ida will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the Homeland through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups.

Of note, we assess that al-Qa’ida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland. In addition, we assess that its association with AQI helps al-Qa’ida to energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources, and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks.

It is important to understand that work on this NIE started in November 2006 and circulated in April/May 2007 for comment; so it is not reflecting new, startling intelligence. The Senators and Representatives with access to the classified portions of the NIE need to ask some tough questions. For starters, what is the evidence that Al Qaeda has “regenerated” its ability to attack the continental United States? I am skeptical of this claim because we have witnessed a marked decline in mass casualty terrorist attacks outside of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006.

Set aside the Bush Administration rhetoric on terrorism and look at its actions. In November 2001, when Osama Bin Laden was surrounded in Tora Bora, the CIA officer leading the charge, Gary Berntsen, called for reinforcements to finish off the Al Qaeda Chief. General Tommy Franks and General Dell Dailey turned him down. Bin Laden escaped.

Several recent books, including Woodward’s State of Denial, document that George Bush directed Secretary of Defense to start planning the invasion of Iraq in October of 2001. The focus on Iraq took Al Qaeda off of the hook.

George Bush and his apologists keep insisting that we are fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq. While there are individuals in Iraq who would consider themselves affiliated in some fashion with Bin Laden, the fact is that most of the violence is sectarian in nature and has little to do with Al Qaeda. I was in Iraq a year ago with the U.S. military forces who are devoting their energies to tracking down and killing AQ operatives. Despite a steady body count and capture of suspects, the overall level of violence in Iraq has continued to rise. In other words, success in killing and capturing suspected AQ operatives is having no effect on stemming the rise in violence.

Why is Bin Laden and his number two, Ayman Zawahair, still running free? The answer is pretty simple–the Bush Administration has not made their capture or elimination a priority. Here we are approaching the six year anniversary of the 9-11 attacks and there still is no one in charge of hunting down the Al Qaeda leaders. CIA is working the issue as are U.S. special operations forces. But the full panoply of the U.S. Government’s resources have not been marshaled nor organized. If you are going to have a Czar in the White House then for my money it ought to be a “Where in the World is Osama” Czar.

The folks ostensibly responsible for coordinating the counter terrorism effort–Fran Townsend and her clumsy deputy, Juan Zarate–are over their heads and incapable of swimming in deep water. I have no personal animus against either, but good friends throughout the national security bureaucracy describe the two of them as incompetent. Someone is supposed to harness the energy of the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the Department of State and create a coherent strategy. But they have failed to do so and no one else has stepped into the void. Therefore we should not be surprised that Al Qaeda reportedly is thriving in the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan.

Check out whitehouse.gov. Terrorism is not listed as one of the key focus issues on the left side of the page. That speaks volumes. George Bush does not get briefed every morning on the status of the hunt for Bin Laden. Knowledgeable friends still on the inside tell me that he is not demanding progress reports. Finding Bin Laden is not a priority issue for Bush.

Perhaps George Bush needs to go back and review his notes from Harvard Business School. Set a goal, organize the necessary resources to accomplish the goal, and make it a priority. But as Al Qaeda regenerates what is President Bush going to do? He has his August vacation in Crawford to worry about. That is his true priority.

  • Leslie

    We’re training them there, so they can attack us here!

  • bama_barrron

    if memory serves me correct didnt bush and his cronies work up an NIE just before the invasion of iraq. could this be more of the same? do the dullards actually think we would have forgotten?

  • taters

    Thanks Larry.
    Leslie,sadly, you may have a point.

    Good news – Nicholson the Brownie of the VA is gone!Then again I should be careful, we don’t know who will replace him.

    I don’t know if you’ve seen this yet…

    Pentagon dithering turned U.S. forces into sitting ducks Tue Jul 17, 12:22 AM ET

    Just when you think the poor planning and bad management that have characterized the Iraq war couldn’t get any worse, a new outrage emerges.

    On Monday, USA TODAY reported that the Pentagon has known for years that vehicles called MRAPs could keep U.S. troops safer from most roadside bombs, but until recently it did little to deploy the vehicles to Iraq, even as hundreds of Americans died.

    The Pentagon has numerous explanations for this. Planners didn’t think the war would last this long. MRAPs are more expensive than armored Humvees. Adding armor to Humvees seemed like a quicker, better solution.

    Not one of these excuses holds water.

    Consider this history: MRAPs — Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles — were developed in the 1970s in Rhodesia and South Africa, where their high ground clearance and V-shaped underbodies helped deflect bomb blasts to keep troops inside alive. The Pentagon tested them in 2000 and even bought some for explosives-disposal units.

    But when officials began planning for an invasion of Iraq, they failed to prepare for a grinding insurgency in which U.S. troops patrolling post-Saddam Iraq in lightly armed Humvees would become easy targets for insurgents.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070717/cm_usatoday/pentagonditheringturnedusforcesintosittingducks&printer=1;_ylt=ApUbi5N0v9ea.TAV5gtfvFD8B2YD

    • Leslie

      I was being sarcastic Taters. But should’ve remembered, sarcasm doesn’t translate very well online.

      As Larry says above, the al Qaeda presence in Iraq is reportedly minimal and most of the fighting is between various Iraqi factions and directed at Iraqis. But, if the purpose of the war in Iraq were to limit al Qaeda [which was never Bush's goal], then the war is actually boosting al Qaeda recruitment.

      • taters

        I gotcha, Leslie – perhaps I didn’t indicate that I did or or word it properly in my previous post.

    • Leslie

      Taters,
      It’s outrageous. Rummy wanted a lighter, slimmer military. So the MRAPs go to the Iraqis? I’m glad the Iraqis are getting them, but our troops should also be getting them. And it took the Pentagon this long to figure that out?

  • Leslie

    Fran Townsend said this today at a press briefing:

    Our greatly increased worldwide counterterrorism efforts since September 11th have constrained the ability of al Qaeda to attack the U.S. again and have led terrorist groups to view the homeland as a harder target to strike than it was on 9/11. Our worldwide counterterrorism efforts over the past five years have helped disrupt a number of plots against the U.S. At the same time, the NIE notes concern that this level of international cooperation may wane as 9/11 becomes a more distant memory and perceptions of the terrorist threat diverge.

    Al Qaeda will continue to attempt visually dramatic mass casualty attacks in the homeland, and they will continue to acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials, and will not hesitate to use them if they develop sufficient capability.

    The NIE assesses that al Qaeda will enhance its capabilities to attack the homeland through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups. Of most concern is that al Qaeda will try to exploit the conflict in Iraq and leverage the contacts and capabilities of al Qaeda in Iraq, its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the homeland.

    • Leslie

      What is this woman smoking? Al Qaeda in Iraq is al Qaeda’s most capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the US?!

  • Donovan Fraser

    I am tired of these “warnings” of our impending deaths all the time. what F*&K are us John q public’s supposed to do with info other than take tums? I believe they don’t want Bin Laden caught . he serves the purpose of being this entity or boogie man which is always out to get us and if caught, takes quite a bit of steam out of the endless war that they are perpetuating on the global stage now.there is too much money in arms sales/securty firms to be lost if he is killed. therfore, there no particular urgency to get this bastard.

  • Rob

    Find Bin Laden? What ever happened to finding Imad Fayez Mugniyah? We have only been hunting for him for what? 25 years? No National Priorities….. No terrorism priorities…

    Just the wrong folk in the wrong high places at the wrong time. We are asking to get attacked again.

  • oldtree

    Thanks Larry; is there any reason to think that Al Qaeda is not a Saudi creation? Is there any reason to believe that they are not financing them? And doesn’t this mean that we have a problem fighting and providing arms to the same folks? And doesn’t this lead back to the original issue that this fraud is all about?
    Is it possible they are so dull that they could miss this due to ignorance? Or do they just think we don’t notice?

  • Montag

    Bush himself has stated this some years ago when he said he wasn’t “all that concerned about [catching]Bin Laden.” It was just another instance like his “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” banner on the aircraft carrier. Once Bush had gotten his moment of glory with the “Wanted Dead or Alive” poster analogy for his pursuit of Bin Laden, the actual pursuit became irrelevent. The Bushies are just like an irresponsible group of children who get out their toys and play with them for awhile, then later decide to go play outside–leaving a mess for someone else to clean up. And when questioned as to why their toys are scattered all over they say with straight faces, “An elephant did it.”

    During Reagan’s presidency on the other hand, Reagan was constantly asking about progress on getting our hostages in Beirut released. So much so that the sale of arms to Iran evolved out of his desperation.

  • Thinker

    Great new blog Larry.

    Don’t get me wrong, you use the term Al Qaeda correctly, but you still describe some potential super plot, which in my opinion doesn’t exist. Or rather it is very different to the description you have kindly provided your readers.

    The interesting bit, for me, is Fran Townsend’s and Juan Zarate’s incompetence. Is it, in your opinion, that they chose to believe the cartoon charactures served up by meddling corporate ignoramuses (mainstream media)? Or is it something rather more sinister – that they have sold themselves out to ensure “intelligence” will be as they are instructed?

    • Leslie

      Thinker,
      They’re probably partisan hacks, like everyone else Bush appoints.

    • http://NoQuarterUSA.net Larry Johnson

      Proof of the Peter Principle.

  • Cee

    Rob,

    What a blast from the past! I bet Mugniyah is in a grave with Osama by now.

  • Shirin

    Regarding so-called Al Qa`eda in Iraq:

    Never mind the “most capable” part, calling them an affiliate is ludicrous enough. A few people have suggested the franchise analogy, but that implies more of a relationship than is really there. You can’t even use the analogy of a brand. They are, at best, an Al Qa`eda knock-off.

    By all reliable accounts they are responsible for only a minuscule part of the violence, and have never been very well tolerated by the majority of Iraqis, including the true resistance, who are focusing their attacks on the occupation.

    Of course, it is difficult to tell based on what we hear from the U.S. military, the Bush regime, and their stenographers in the media, but the group responsible for committing and provoking the great majority of the violence are the foreign fighters from the USA. Polls show consistently that Iraqis understand this very well.

  • BigRed

    Wednesday: Townsend was on NPR this morning and was asked 2-3 times was Al Queda in Iraq before we invaded. She ducked the question at one point saying she was not at “the meeting” where this was discussed. She’s useless and comes across as of of Bush’s fawning women.

  • Jerome

    With an estimated cost of $1.2 trillion for the Iraq occupation Osama continues to bleed us all at the cost of 19 hijackers with box cutters/purloined airplanes and fighters who don’t know any other way of life anyway. He has us right where he wants us.

    Osama=Superman

  • Leslie

    Two wars, $ billions spent, over 3,600 US lives lost, countless Iraqi lives lost and al Qaeda is gaining strength in Pakistan.

    But we’ve arrested the top al Qaida leader in Iraq. How many times have we arrested him now?

    We arrested the top al Qaeda leader in Iraq in

    • September 2006

    • February 2006

    • November 2006

    • August 2006

    • al Qaeda leader in Iraq Zarqawi killed in 2005, and then again around June 8, 2006

    Feel free to add on….

  • Shirin

    Leslie,

    As you say, your military killed Zarqawi – at least twice. Oh, but they did sooooo much more:

    After they killed him the first time, but before they killed him the second time, they grievously – perhaps mortally, they said at the time – wounded him. Immediately after said grievous wounding Zarqawi traveled on his one leg (or was it two? They could never get that straight) and with near-fatal abdominal wounds, all the way from western Iraq to the eastern border, whereupon he entered Iran and sought and received refuge from the Iranians (amazing, since he had issued numerous screeds against the apostate Shi`as, whom he vowed to remove one and all from the face of the earth).

    Also do not forget how they kept “capturing or killing” Zarqawi’s “top leutenants” one after the other after the other until most of us lost count at around 4,651 of them. Zarqawi seemed to be able to produce an endless supply of leutenants for the U.S. military to capture or kill – one of many amazing, magical powers.

    Considering that he was a semi-analphabet street thug, he also managed to produced a number of amazingly literate documents some in very high level literary Arabic, only to have them duly discovered and revealed, usually at very convenient moments, by the U.S.

    And then there was his apparent ability to be in several, often very distant, places at once – we all marveled at that, too.

    • Leslie

      Come on Shirin,
      It’s your military too. But, you know, it’s not the troops gaming the system, it’s the Pentagon’s office of propaganda, which doesn’t exist.

  • Shirin

    Oh yes – I forgot to mention that during Zarqawi’s amazing journey all the way from western Iraq to Iran, which he accomplished on one leg with near-fatal abdominal wounds, the U.S. apparently did not see him once, since they failed to “capture or kill” him.

    And I just remembered also that twice he, who hated and wanted to destroy everything and everyone to do with Shi`ism even more than he hated and wanted to destroy America, twice formed alliances with “firebrand Shi`a cleric” Muqtada Sadr. One of those alliances was actually a three-way with arch Saddamist, and sometime “insurgent” leader, `Izzat Ad Duri – certainly and interesting set of bedfellows to say the least.

    At least once Zarqawi and the Iranians were in bed together, too (that doesn’t count the time he took refuge in Iran after being wounded by the U.S.), and I have a vague recollection that at one time there was an alliance that included Zarqawi, Iran, and anti-Iranian “firebrand cleric” Muqtada Sadr, but don’t hold me to that one.

    I did NOT make any of this up. It was all announced by the U.S. military, and duly, and unquestioningly reported by the stenographers of the U.S. media.

    • Leslie

      What do you do with a very convenient bogeyman after he’s dead, dead, captured, wounded, dead, nearly dead, very clearly dead? Will the Pentagon resurrect him in the hereafter? Stay tuned…

    • Thinker

      Shirin:

      You have made an important contribution to this thread.

      First, the makeup of the power struggle in Iraq is very much more complex than even the most open minded western information source implies. You talk of a “resistence movement” in place to obstruct the Allied invation.

      Second, you are quite right to highlight the ‘figurative’ misinformation designed to punctuate cartoon charactures, such as Zarqawi. From an intellecual position, It would be more interesting to hear what some of the incumbant “terrorists” have to say and whether any or all of their “demands” on a human level (at least) are reasonable.

      The way this propaganda campaign is being conducted, the intellectual should ask who are the goodies and who are the baddies.

      To finish, I use this as an example. If God became angry (something I am led to believe is impossible) and reassigned all Americans to Iraq and all Iraqis to America. Thus America was in civil war and Iraq was at war, peacefully. How would Americans feel about their situation? How would Americans feel about being occupied by “friendly” oppressors?

  • mudkitty

    Your point Shirin?

    Dems suck?

    You don’t need that much bandwidth to say so.

  • bob h

    From 2002 it has been obvious that Pakistan should have been the central front in the war against AQ. Send Armitage back to Islamabad and have him inform Musharaff that our B-52s are going to turn Waziristan into a parking lot very soon.

    • Leslie

      That’s bright Bob H,
      Just bomb them all to hell, enemy and foe alike. What’s the difference, right? You do know that Musharraf has also been our ally in the fight against al Qaeda? From Reuters:

      Musharraf, a U.S. ally, signed a truce last September with tribal leaders in North Waziristan and touted it as a way to fight terrorism by isolating militants.

      President George W. Bush was initially supportive of the deal. Tenth months on, his spokesman said it had failed.

      “President Musharraf attempted to engage in … carrot diplomacy with tribal leaders in the tribal areas and it didn’t work,” Snow said.

      Maybe we ought to bomb the White House first for allowing al Qaeda to escape to Pakistan to rebuild its base and asking Musharraf to reach a truce with them too.

  • Pingback: NO QUARTER » Blog Archive » Chris Matthews’ Beatification of Judy Miller (OPEN THREAD TOO!)

  • http://mercedes-ponton.hondafinancing.cn Vasilis

    Cool…

  • http://belt-ford-tensioner.toyotapickups.cn/lcd-way-pager-car-alarms.html Vasilios

    Cool.