I hope JLA, Ish, KLP, and the others advocating attacking Iraq read Pollock's article at least to get the point that there is no connection between Saddam and 9/11.
foreignaffairs.org
I don't blame people for being confused, both 9/11 and Iraq are all over the cable news all the time.
People are mad as hell and they want to lash out at someone. The fight against Al Qaeda is not dramatic enough, they want things to get blown up, they want us to use cruise missiles and daisy cutters.
Stuff we're good at. Stuff that looks exciting on TV, stuff that Geraldo and Christianne can comment on while fires burn in the background.
We aren't very good at fighting Al Qaeda, and we need to learn how.
I don't think we should lose our focus.
The Washington Post just reported that the US military found a huge underground tunnel complex they did not know about, with the largest weapons cache so far, three miles from the Paki border. The incredible thing is that we helped build it and the info was in their possession, but did not make its way across the chain of command. No telling how many Al Qaeda were able to use it to get away while we were bombing things.
>>Zhawar's immense scope was described in military journals well before the SEAL team was sent. An article detailing its deep,
interconnecting tunnels was posted last fall on a Web site operated by the U.S. Army's Foreign Military Studies Office. It was
built with the help of U.S. money in the mid-1980s by mujaheddin forces fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and its
importance to al Qaeda was known long before the Afghanistan war began. Zhawar was struck by dozens of U.S. cruise
missiles in 1998, when President Bill Clinton ordered an attack on the site in response to the bombings of two U.S. embassies
in east Africa.
Even after last month's destruction, U.S. forces remain focused on the site. On Feb. 4, an unmanned drone aircraft operated
from afar by the CIA fired a missile at individuals who U.S. defense and intelligence officials claim were suspected al Qaeda
members but who local residents say were innocent civilians collecting scrap metal.
U.S. military planners were not among those who read the article on the Army Web site. Prior to January's attack, Zhawar was
hit by warplanes during the campaign only once, in November. "I guess the knowledge was imperfectly shared," said Rear
Adm. Craig Quigley, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa. "That knowledge wasn't shared widely enough
with the people who needed to know."
Added Quigley: "Had we known in November of the huge size of the place and the amount of stuff in there, we'd have paid
more attention to it, I suspect."
When the United States began bombing Zhawar on Jan. 3, senior defense officials said they were acting on intelligence that al
Qaeda fighters were using the site to regroup and possibly escape into Pakistan, less than three miles away. Defense officials
now say they cannot rule out the possibility that the delay in attacking the site may have enabled al Qaeda members to get
away.
Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former colonel in the Afghan army who co-authored the article, called Zhawar "very important for [al
Qaeda], politically, strategically and tactically" and said he is surprised that the United States had not zeroed in on it earlier.
"I think many probably escaped from there," Jalali said. "They hit the house but left the door open."<<
washingtonpost.com
That's what I mean about losing focus. Every day, all day and night a part of my mind is worried that my own home town, Washington, D.C., is going to be attacked by those bastards and we let them walk?!?! Expletives deleted. |
