As we remember this day, think about what might have been accomplished world-wide, especially in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine, if we hadn’t pissed away our blood, time, money and respect on Iraq. mjh

The New Al-Qaeda Central
Far From Declining, the Network Has Rebuilt, With Fresh Faces and a Vigorous Media Arm
By Craig Whitlock,Washington Post Foreign Service

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — When Osama bin Laden resurfaced Friday in a 26-minute videotaped speech, his most important message was one left unsaid: We have survived.

The last time bin Laden showed his face to the world was three years ago, in October 2004. Since then, al-Qaeda’s core leadership — dubbed al-Qaeda Central by intelligence analysts — has grown stronger, rebuilding the organizational framework that was badly damaged after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, according to counterterrorism officials in Pakistan, the United States and Europe.

It has accomplished this revival, the officials said in interviews, by drawing on lessons learned during 15 years of failed campaigns to destroy it. In that period, bin Laden and his followers have outfoxed powerful enemies from the Soviet army to the Saudi royal family to the CIA. …

On June 24, 2003, President Bush declared al-Qaeda’s leadership largely defunct. At a Camp David summit, Bush praised Pakistan’s Gen. Pervez Musharraf, crediting his country with apprehending more than 500 members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

“Thanks to President Musharraf’s leadership, on the al-Qaeda front we’ve dismantled the chief operators,” Bush said. Although bin Laden was still at large, his lieutenants were “no longer a threat to the United States or Pakistan,” Bush added. …

Many U.S., Pakistani and European intelligence officials now agree that al-Qaeda’s ability to launch operations around the globe didn’t diminish after the invasion of Afghanistan as much as previously thought. …

– – – – –
Al-Qaeda’s Return – washingtonpost.com
The terrorists have a sanctuary once again.

MANY FACTORS contributed to the awful success that al-Qaeda achieved six years ago today: tactical and policy mistakes by the United States, the diabolical skill of the terrorists, even the clear, cobalt-blue sky on that initially beautiful morning. But probably nothing was more important than the haven in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan that gave al-Qaeda the time and space it needed to train, recruit and plan for highly complex operations. Accordingly, the greatest victory the United States and its allies have yet recorded against the terrorist network was the ouster of the Taliban from Kabul and the scattering of al-Qaeda’s depleted ranks across Southwest Asia.

Yet as the United States mourns and commemorates the worst act of terrorism ever carried out on U.S. soil, and reflects thankfully on the fact that it has not been repeated, there are ominous signs that al-Qaeda is back as a coherent, global force capable of inflicting damage on the United States. Al-Qaeda never really went away, of course, as grieving families of its victims from London to Baghdad can attest. But the emergence of the first authentic Osama bin Laden video in three years, the arrest of German-based al-Qaeda operatives near Frankfurt, and the reinfiltration of hundreds of al-Qaeda-aligned Taliban fighters and intended suicide bombers into Afghanistan point toward one alarming conclusion: Al-Qaeda is once again able to operate from a consistent haven. According to the latest National Intelligence Estimate on al-Qaeda, the organization “has protected or regenerated key elements of its homeland attack capability” inside Pakistan.

Thompson Runs to The Right By Michael D. Shear, Washington Post Staff Writer

DES MOINES, Sept. 6 — Fred D. Thompson took his bid for the White House to the campaign trail Thursday, vowing to compete aggressively for the support of Iowans and pitching steady, experienced and conservative leadership.

“I still have the same common-sense conservative beliefs I did when I ran in 1994,” the former senator said in a speech at a Des Moines conference center, a not-so-subtle reference to criticism about the changing positions of his main Republican rivals, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. …

In Thursday’s speech, he pledged fidelity to a series of conservative principles — limited government, an aggressive foreign policy and lower taxes — and promised a commitment to securing the borders and appointing conservative judges. …

A national anti-tax group Thursday proclaimed that his record has the “hallmarks of a pro-growth economic conservative,” but the Club for Growth cautioned that the senator has an “enigmatic” record on tort reform and must explain his support for limits on political speech.
– – – – –

A Conservative for . . . 1994? By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Fred Thompson, who proposes to be what Republicans need to overcome their malaise, may himself be part of the problem.

And the problem is that conservatism as a philosophy no longer produces ready-made answers to the quandaries that face the country or the voters. Republicans do not need to debate who is conservative enough. They need to argue about what conservatism is. …

Republicans, says [Tony Fabrizio, a neutral Republican pollster], who conducted a similar study a decade ago, are more conservative than ever but in ways more complicated than many appreciate. [mjh: Snicker. Guffaw. Yup, they’re deeeeep thinkers.]

That will make Thompson’s effort to become the Man for All Conservatives much more difficult. And Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman whose book “Reclaiming Conservatism” will be published in the spring, says that providing the backdrop for the contest is a conservative “awakening that we completely lost our way.”

This means that making conservatives feel good will not be enough for Fred Thompson. He needs to show where he will lead a movement shrewd enough to know that it is now in the wilderness.
– – – – –

ConservativesBetrayed.com
Fred Thompson, the Faux Conservative By Richard A. Viguerie

The American people want a President who will finally bring conservative values—honesty, faith, a belief in limited government, and respect for the family as the core of society—to the White House. After eight years of Democratic Big Government under Clinton and eight years of Republican Bigger Government under Bush, they certainly deserve a break.

They won’t get it with Fred Thompson.

Fred Thompson is just playing a conservative for your consumption. In real life he’s a typical Washington insider.

Granted, most Republican politicians play that game to a greater or lesser degree. But Thompson does it so well that it becomes truly difficult to separate the acting from the reality.

Bush shows gift of gaffe at APEC summit | Politics | Reuters

Even for someone as gaffe-prone as U.S. President George W. Bush, he was in rare form on Friday, confusing APEC with OPEC and transforming Australian troops into Austrians.

Bush’s tongue started slipping almost as soon as he started talking at a business forum on the eve of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney.

“Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction,” he told Prime Minister John Howard. “Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit.”

As the audience of several hundred people erupted in laughter, Bush corrected himself and joked, “He invited me to the OPEC summit next year.” Australia has never been a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Later in his speech, Bush recounted how Howard had gone to visit “Austrian troops” last year in Iraq. There are, in fact, no Austrian troops there. But Australia has about 1,500 Australian military personnel in and around the country.

Upon finishing his speech, Bush took the wrong way off-stage and, looking slightly perplexed, had to be re-directed by Howard to a centre-stage exit.

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0637479920070907?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/progressreport/2007/09/50_years.html

Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction | Salon.com, By Sidney Blumenthal

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. …

CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, who was “excited” about the report. Nonetheless, McLaughlin expressed his reservations. He said that Sabri’s information was at odds with “our best source.” That source was code-named “Curveball,” later exposed as a fabricator, con man and former Iraqi taxi driver posing as a chemical engineer.

The next day, Sept. 18, Tenet briefed Bush on Sabri. “Tenet told me he briefed the president personally,” said one of the former CIA officers. According to Tenet, Bush’s response was to call the information “the same old thing.” Bush insisted it was simply what Saddam wanted him to think. “The president had no interest in the intelligence,” said the CIA officer. The other officer said, “Bush didn’t give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up.” …

These taps “validated” Sabri’s claims, according to one of the CIA officers. The officers brought this material to the attention of the newly formed Iraqi Operations Group within the CIA. But those in charge of the IOG were on a mission to prove that Saddam did have WMD and would not give credit to anything that came from the French. “They kept saying the French were trying to undermine the war,” said one of the CIA officers.

The officers continued to insist on the significance of Sabri’s information, but one of Tenet’s deputies told them, “You haven’t figured this out yet. This isn’t about intelligence. It’s about regime change.” …

One of the former senior CIA officers told me that despite the certitude of the three Republican senators [Orrin Hatch, Saxby Chambliss and Pat Roberts], the Senate committee never had the original memo on Sabri. “The committee never got that report,” he said. “The material was hidden or lost, and because it was a restricted case, a lot of it was done in hard copy. The whole thing was fogged up, like Curveball.”

While one Iraqi source told the CIA that there were no WMD, information that was true but distorted to prove the opposite, another Iraqi source was a fabricator whose lies were eagerly embraced. “The real tragedy is that they had a good source that they misused,” said one of the former CIA officers. “The fact is there was nothing there, no threat. But Bush wanted to hear what he wanted to hear.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/?source=whitelist

Kudos again to Eugene Robinson, this time for fighting the Republican re-write of history by people who weren’t even there. (Or were high at the time.) mjh

Eugene Robinson – Good Morning, Vietnam! – washingtonpost.com

But seeking support for the war in Iraq by reminding the nation about Vietnam? I’d feel better if I thought this was just some exquisitely subtle, deeply cynical gambit, yet I have the sinking feeling that Bush actually believes the nonsensical version of history he’s peddling. I fear the man is on a mission to rewrite the past. …

[Bush said:] “Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility — but the terrorists see it differently.”

Lest anyone think this was merely a random rhetorical spasm, outgoing White House political czar Karl Rove wrote an article in the conservative National Review last week that included this passage: “If the outcome [in Iraq] is like what happened in Vietnam after America abandoned our allies and the region descended into chaos, violence and danger, history’s judgment will be harsh. History will see President Bush as right, and the opponents of his policy as mistaken — as George McGovern was in his time.”

What?

For the record, the illegal U.S. bombing of Cambodia destabilized that country and boosted the Khmer Rouge, who eventually took power and exterminated those “millions” in the “killing fields.” The monstrous Khmer Rouge regime was finally ousted by . . . none other than the communists who took power in Vietnam after the American withdrawal. Oh, and it was Richard Nixon who negotiated and began the U.S. pullout. Gerald Ford presided over the fall of Saigon. Both of them were Republicans, as I recall.

And George McGovern, who never got to be president, was right.

Bush, Rove, Dick Cheney and the other principal architects of the Iraq war never served in Vietnam — in fact, they went to great lengths to put distance between themselves and the military adventure they now describe as both necessary and noble. At the moment, though, I’m less concerned about their hypocrisy than their distortion of history.

To say the United States should not have withdrawn its forces from Vietnam is to say that there was something those forces could have done — something beyond napalm, carpet-bombing, destroying villages in order to save them — that would have led to some kind of “victory.” Of course, Bush and the others don’t say what that special something might have been, because they don’t know. They’re seeing nothing but a historical mirage.

Bush seems to want to return to a golden age when America confidently threw its weight around wherever, whenever and however it pleased. The problem is that no such golden age existed. American power has always had its limits, and there have always been some wars that simply couldn’t be won.

Bush and his enablers seem to forget that it was Dwight D. Eisenhower — a man with a bit more experience in running a war than the tinhorn generalissimos now occupying the White House — who realized that the most we could achieve in Korea was a stalemate. [mjh: Curiously, the Journal left this one paragraph out without inserting an ellipsis. Was “tinhorn generalissimos” too galling?]

George W. Bush wants us to remember Vietnam? Fine, then let’s remember those iconic images — the Viet Cong prisoner being executed in cold blood with a pistol shot to the temple, the little girl running naked and screaming from a napalm attack. Let’s remember how little we really understood about Vietnamese society. Let’s remember how wrong the domino theory proved to be. Let’s remember how much damage prolonging an unpopular war did to our armed forces and our nation, and how long it took us to recover.

Thanks for the reminder, Mr. President. When you talk about “victory” in Iraq and the Petraeus report discerns a light at the end of the tunnel, we’ll think of Vietnam.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/03/AR2007090300802.html

I recommend the full text or audio of this report on the Republican presidential candidates. mjh

NPR : GOP Presidential Hopefuls Debate, Thompson Runs, by Mara Liasson

The biggest fireworks of the night came in this exchange between Congressman Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. Paul is the lone anti-war candidate in the Republican field and wants U.S. troops out of Iraq now.

“We’ve dug a hole for ourselves and we’ve dug a hole for our party,” Paul said. “We’re losing elections and we’re going down next year if we don’t change it, and it has all to do with foreign policy and we have to wake up to this fact.”

Huckabee responded sharply: “Even if we lose elections, we should not lose our honor, and that is more important [to] … the Republican party.”

“We have lost over 5,000 Americans killed in – we’ve lost over 5,000 Americans over there in Afghanistan, in Iraq and plus the civilians killed,” Paul retorted. “How many more you want to lose? How long are you going to be there? How long – what do we have to pay to save face? That’s all we’re doing, is saving face. It’s time we came home.”

A mixture of boos and applause that followed indicates just how divided even a Republican audience in New Hampshire is over the issue of Iraq.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14204597

ABQjournal NM: Bush Manual Shows Disparities, By Jeff Jones, Journal Politics Writer, Copyright © 2007 Albuquerque Journal

One hundred seventy yards. A distance approaching the length of two football fields.

That’s how far away police kept protesters from President Bush’s motorcade in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque on Monday while a smaller group of Bush supporters waved flags within a few feet of the presidential procession.

None of the major law agencies involved in security for Bush’s $350,000 fundraising stop for Sen. Pete Domenici— including Albuquerque police, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department and the Secret Service— had a clear explanation for the distance disparity. …

Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, county chairman of Bush’s 2004 re-election effort, said the Secret Service makes the final calls for security at presidential events.

Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy David Linthicum said the Secret Service, in consultation with the Sheriff’s Department, decided the small pro-Bush group could stay in its location across from the Abraham driveway.

Linthicum said the Secret Service, Albuquerque police and the Sheriff’s Department agreed on where the protesters would gather.

He said that to his knowledge, keeping the protesters out of the president’s sight didn’t factor into the decision but that he wasn’t at the
meeting at which the decision was made.

Eric Zahren, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said he was not familiar with all the specifics from the Los Ranchos event. But he said his agency by policy doesn’t discriminate between Bush protesters and Bush backers.

“We work in concert with our local (police) partners in identifying … public viewing areas outside our secure perimeters,” Zahren said. “We make no distinction as far as purpose, message or intent of any particular group.”

http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/590148nm08-30-07.htm

ABQjournal Opinion: Bush Yardstick Keeps Foes Out of Sight, Mind

Should a country founded on citizens’ right to political dissent have an official measurement for keeping protesters out of sight and out of mind while flag-waving supporters get a front-row spot?

If the treatment of critics and supporters who turned out for a visit from President Bush in Los Ranchos last week is any indication, the answer is yes. …

[P]ut the anti-war folks in the floppy hats on the dirt shoulders of Rio Grande NW, 170 yards away from the entrance to Los Ranchos’ Mayor Larry Abraham’s home where a GOP event is scheduled. Put the pro-Bush folks in the school uniforms across from the gate where everyone attending the fundraiser for Sen. Pete Domenici goes through. …

[N[one of the agencies involved in security for Monday’s event explained why, exactly, the 70 folks with the neon-pink peace signs, the “Impeach Cheney” placards and the “Good Riddance to Gonzales” signs were kept almost two football fields away from the motorcade’s route while the flag-waving kids with the “God Bless George Bush! We Pray for You!” poster were posed a few feet from the motorcade.

http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/editorials/590986opinion09-01-07.htm