Tape a 'big blow' to Bush
BY CRAIG GORDON
WASHINGTON BUREAU
January 20, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The White House said a new audiotape shows Osama bin Laden is "on the run," but counterterrorism experts said it instead pointed up an embarrassing fact for President George W. Bush: It appears bin Laden is alive and well four years after Sept. 11.
More than that, some counterterror analysts pointed to parallels in a 2004 bin Laden tape where he offered a similar "truce" to European leaders, only to have the London subway bombings take place about a year later.
U.S. officials said yesterday that they had picked up no increased "chatter" signaling an imminent attack inside the United States, despite bin Laden's threat that a strike is in the works.
The Department of Homeland Security said it has no plans to raise the national terror alert level of yellow, the middle step of five.
The CIA confirmed the voice is bin Laden's and believes the audiotape was made recently, a senior administration official said. The al-Qaida leader refers to Bush's alleged desire to bomb Al-Jazeera television, first reported on Nov. 22.
In the tape, bin Laden said "it's only a matter of time" before another attack on the United States, but offered a "long-term truce" with unspecified terms, something the White House flatly rejected.
"We do not negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business," said Bush spokesman Scott McClellan.
As bin Laden has eluded capture, Bush has sought to downplay his importance, saying in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks that he wanted him "dead or alive," but later saying he was not that concerned about bin Laden. Some analysts recently questioned whether bin Laden was dead.
But counterterror experts said the tape complicates White House efforts to marginalize bin Laden, because it shows he still has the ability to surface when needed and rally the faithful.
"It's a big blow to the U.S. and the U.S. attempts to minimize his relevance," said Juliette Kayyem of Harvard University, who served on the National Commission on Terrorism from 1999 to 2001. The tape "suggests he's not on the run but is at least capable enough to respond and basically provoke."
But several terrorism experts also say it's not clear how much the centralized al-Qaida leadership still can order operations, and how much is being carried out by loosely affiliated terror groups inspired but not directed by bin Laden.
Peter Bergen, who has written two books about bin Laden, told a Brookings Institution forum yesterday that he doubted the group could pull off another massive Sept. 11-style attack in the United States, but said al-Qaida followers could sow terror through smaller attacks, like the subway bombings in Madrid and London.
"I think we'll see a lot more 3/11s," Bergen said, using the name given to the Madrid subway bombings, carried out on March 11, 2004.
Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he did not believe the tape meant an attack was imminent but questioned whether bin Laden was signaling his followers to act.
"Just because he's talking about there being an attack in and of itself means nothing," King said. He believes bin Laden released the tape to rally supporters after an air strike in Pakistan, which is believed to have taken out several al-Qaida leaders.
newsday.com |
