From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 19, 2007 6:34:14 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: For Bush to Be "Winning," He'd Need to Be Working for
Al-Qaeda, not US
Even Bush recognized that his campaign had been rescued by bin Laden.
"I thought it was going to help," Bush said in a post-election
interview about
the videotape. "I knew it would help remind voters that if bin
Laden doesn’t
want George Bush to be President, [he] must be doing something right."
Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com.
From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: July 19, 2007 5:03:04 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Bush Is al-Qaeda's Strategic Ally
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/071907.html
*Bush Is al-Qaeda's Strategic Ally*
By Robert Parry
July 19, 2007
U.S. officials have finally admitted what has long been obvious:
that George W.
Bush's "global war on terror" has been an expensive failure,
costing hundreds of
billions of dollars and claiming possibly hundreds of thousands of
lives, but
making the world no safer and quite likely more dangerous.
Bush's top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged as much on July
17 in releasing
a summary of a National Intelligence Estimate that represented the
consensus view
of the U.S. intelligence community.
The report, entitled "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland,"
described a
resurgent al-Qaeda that has regrouped in remote sections of
Pakistan while
exploiting Muslim anger over the war in Iraq to increase its
operational strength
internationally and to take aim at American targets, again.
"We assess that al-Qaeda will continue to enhance its capabilities
to attack the
[U.S.] homeland through greater cooperation with regional terrorist
groups," the
N.I.E. said. "Of note, we assess that al-Qaeda will probably seek
to leverage the
contacts and capabilities of al-Qaeda in Iraq [A.Q.I.], its most
visible and
capable affiliate and only one known to have expressed a desire to
attack the
[U.S.] homeland.
"In addition, we assess that its association with A.Q.I. helps
al-Qaeda to
energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources,
and to recruit
and indoctrinate operatives, including for [U.S.] homeland attacks."
In other words, Bush's repeated warnings that the United States
must fight
Islamic extremists in Iraq so "we don’t have to fight them here" or
so "they
won't follow us home" turn out to be the opposite of the truth:
because U.S.
forces are occupying Iraq, al-Qaeda has more resources and more
recruits
determined to bring the war to the United States.
The underlying reality is that Bush remains the perfect foil for al-
Qaeda and
other Islamic extremists. The surging anti-Americanism, which
derives from a
widespread hatred of Bush, represents a recruitment boon for al-
Qaeda, so much so
that Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders understand that
Bush and his
stubbornness are indispensable assets to their cause.
Almost six years into the "war on terror," Bush has overseen a
strategy that has
simultaneously alienated world public opinion -- with torture
scandals over
Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and secret C.I.A. prisons -- while
fueling Islamic
extremism and giving new life to the 9/11 masterminds.
*Unilateralist Arrogance*
Much of the current dilemma can be traced to Bush's special mix of
arrogance and
rashness. In 2001, even before the 9/11 attacks, Bush adopted a
"unilateralist"
approach to the world, asserting U.S. global hegemony under a
strategy laid out
by the neoconservative Project for the New American Century.
At the center of this grandiose scheme was the belief that the oil-
rich Middle
East could be remade through violent "regime change" in hostile
Arab countries
like Iraq. Bush later broadened his target list to the "axis of
evil," tossing in
Iran and North Korea and making clear that other lesser enemies
included the
likes of Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela.
While this neoconservative plan wrapped itself in the noble
language of
"democracy," the concept was always less about respecting the will
of indigenous
populations than in restructuring their economies along "free
market" lines and
ensuring compliant leaders.
Bush also grew enamored with his "gut" instincts about war,
especially after
U.S.-backed forces ousted Afghanistan's Taliban leaders more
quickly than many
expected. Even though he let top al-Qaeda leaders slip away from
Tora Bora in
late 2001, Bush ignored warnings that he needed to finish the job
there before
turning America's attention elsewhere.
Bush redirected the U.S. military toward Iraq, a country that
wasn’t involved in
9/11 and actually had served as a bulwark against Islamic
fundamentalism, both
the strains from Shi'ite-ruled Iran and Sunni-dominated al-Qaeda.
But Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was something of a Bush family
obsession since
he angered President George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf War of
1990~91. In
March 2003, Bush launched an invasion of Iraq and toppled Hussein’s
government in
three weeks.
After basking again in public adulation as the victorious "war
president," Bush
stubbornly refused to acknowledge the growing seriousness of an
Iraqi insurgency
that rose up to challenge U.S. forces.
The U.S. occupation of Iraq -- combined with the abuse scandals at
U.S.-run
prisons -- fed popular anger across the Middle East. Thousands of
young
jihadists rallied to the cause of ousting the Americans from Muslim
lands.
As the body count in Iraq grew, Bush dug in his heels even deeper.
When Iraq
slid into chaos and then civil war, Bush again refused to
acknowledge the facts
in a timely fashion.
Meanwhile, over the past six years, the wily and ruthless leaders
of al-Qaeda
came to understand that Bush was an invaluable poster boy. The
more he was
viewed as the "big crusader," the more they could present
themselves as the
"defenders of Islam." The al-Qaeda murderers moved from the
fringes of Muslim
society closer to the mainstream.
So, in fall 2004, with Bush fighting for his political life against
Democrat John
Kerry, bin Laden took the risk of breaking nearly a year of silence
to release a
videotape denouncing Bush on the Friday before the U.S. election.
Bush’s supporters immediately spun bin Laden's tirade as an
"endorsement" of
Kerry and pollsters recorded a jump of several percentage points
for Bush, from
nearly a dead heat to a five- or six-point lead. Four days later,
Bush hung on
to win a second term by an official margin of less than three
percentage points.
[For details, see our new book, "Neck Deep: The Disastrous
Presidency of George
W. Bush": http://www.neckdeepbook.com/ ]
*Boomerang Effect*
The last-minute intervention by bin Laden -- essentially urging
Americans to
reject Bush -- had the predictable effect of driving voters to the
President.
After the videotape appeared, senior C.I.A. analysts concluded that
ensuring a
second term for Bush was precisely what bin Laden intended.
"Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President,"
said deputy
C.I.A. director John McLaughlin in opening a meeting to review
secret "strategic
analysis" after the videotape had dominated the day’s news,
according to Ron
Suskind's "The One Percent Doctrine," which draws heavily from
C.I.A. insiders.
Suskind wrote that C.I.A. analysts had spent years "parsing each
expressed word
of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. What
they’d learned
over nearly a decade is that bin Laden speaks only for strategic
reasons. …
Today's conclusion: bin Laden's message was clearly designed to
assist the
President’s reelection."
Jami Miscik, C.I.A. deputy associate director for intelligence,
expressed the
consensus view that bin Laden recognized how Bush's heavy-handed
policies were
serving al-Qaeda's strategic goals for recruiting a new generation
of jihadists.
"Certainly," Miscik said, "he would want Bush to keep doing what
he's doing for a
few more years."
As their internal assessment sank in, the C.I.A. analysts were
troubled by the
implications of their own conclusions. "An ocean of hard truths
before them --
such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin Laden would
want Bush
reelected -- remained untouched," Suskind wrote.
Even Bush recognized that his struggling campaign had been helped
by bin Laden.
"I thought it was going to help," Bush said in a post-election
interview about
the videotape. "I thought it would help remind people that if bin
Laden doesn’t
want Bush to be the President, something must be right with Bush."
Bin Laden, a well-educated Saudi and a keen observer of U.S.
politics, appears to
have recognized the same point in cleverly tipping the election to
Bush.
*Prolonging the War*
Al-Qaeda's leaders understood that a U.S. military withdrawal from
Iraq might
mean a renewed assault on them as well as the loss of their cause
celebre for
recruiting new jihadists. With Bush ensconced for a second term,
that concern
lessened but didn’t entirely go away.
According to a captured July 9, 2005, letter, attributed to al-Qaeda’s
second-in-command Zawahiri, al-Qaeda leaders still fretted over the
possibility
that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could touch off the disintegration
of their
operations, as jihadists who had flocked to Iraq to battle the
Americans might
simply give up the fight and go home.
"The mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion
of the
Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence
the fighting
zeal," said the "Zawahiri letter," according to a text released by
the office of
the U.S. Director of National Intelligence.
In another captured letter, dated Dec. 11, 2005, a senior al-Qaeda
operative
known as "Atiyah" wrote that "prolonging the war [in Iraq] is in
our interest."
[For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Al-Qaeda’s Fragile Foothold":
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/100306.html ]
Now, as the new N.I.E. makes clear, al-Qaeda's "Bush-second-term"
strategy
continues to pay big dividends. As U.S. forces remain bogged down
in Iraq and
Bush rebuffs urgent appeals from both Democrats and Republicans in
Congress for a
reversal of course, al-Qaeda expands its base and takes aim again
at the American
homeland.
In that sense, Bush remains al-Qaeda's most important strategic
ally. Arguably,
too, al-Qaeda serves a symbiotic role for Bush, helping to keep the
American
public forever afraid and thus unwilling to challenge the
president's leadership.
~~~
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for
the
Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, "Secrecy &
Privilege: Rise of
the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq," can be ordered at:
secrecyandprivilege.com
It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, "Lost
History: Contras,
Cocaine, the Press, & 'Project Truth'."
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------------------------
"America is a nation founded on the principle that all human life
is sacred…
Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not
ethical."-- G.W.
Bush on the occasion of vetoing Congressional bill on stem cell
research…
June 20, 2007
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