US Papers Wednesday: Al Qaeda Not on the Run
AL QAEDA ON THE RUN? NOT SO MUCH
iraqslogger.com
President Bush's strategy against al Qaeda in Pakistan "has failed," aides acknowledged, according to Mark Mazzetti and David E. Sanger of The New York Times. The NIE released yesterday said al Qaeda has grown stronger in the tribal areas of Pakistan and the U.S. is losing ground in the war on terror on a number of fronts. This report lands smack-dab in the middle of the Senate debate over U.S. strategy in Iraq, with Bush aides saying it proves Iraq is the central front in the war on terror (uh, how, exactly?) while war opponents say it proves the U.S. has been distracted by Iraq from the real war on terror -- in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. (That makes more sense.) A White House spokeswoman said Iraq was the central front because Osama bin Laden regarded it as such, too, thereby affirming the always-winning strategy of letting the enemy define the battlefield.
Scott Shane writes the Times' analysis on the NIE report, and concludes that after almost six years of warfare in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere, the battlefield looks much like it did in August 2001: Al Qaeda leaders bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are sitting in their mountain redoubts, like Fu-Manchu, plotting attacks against the West. As Daniel L. Byman, a former intelligence officer and the director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, said, the NIE's headline might as well have been the same as the one on Aug. 6, 2001: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."
Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post cover much of the same ground as the Times -- not surprising considering they're all working from the same document -- but they provide a bit more backstory, noting that an April 2006 NIE "described a downward trend in al-Qaeda capabilities" since the 2001-2002 invasion of Afghanistan. Both NIE reports, however, said the Iraq war was a primary recruitment video for al Qaeda and senior intelligence officials said they expected al Qaeda to continue trying to "leverage" Al Qaeda in Iraq. (The primary strength of al Qaeda comes from the feckless response of Pakistan to the lawlessness of the Northwest Territories.) Most alarmingly, perhaps, are the warnings from Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, who said, "They're working as hard as they can in positioning trained operatives here in the United States. ... They have recruitment programs to bring recruits into ... Pakistan, particularly those that speak the right language, that have the right skills, that have the right base that they could come to the United States, fit into the population ... and carry out acts." Perhaps most interesting, however, is why this NIE is so gloomy after six years of relatively upbeat assessments (along with lots of public happy-talk from the Bush administration.) The reason? The intelligence community, which in the past tended to build on previous NIEs, has decided that earlier assessments were no longer "sacred text."
The Post drafts Michael Abramowitz as its analyst round-up dude, and he damns the White House with, well, no praise, actually, saying Team Bush "retreated to familiar ground" to highlight the parts of the report that favors the president's Iraq policy. Indeed, Bush met with reporters in the Oval office yesterday and concentrated on "a single paragraph," talking about al Qaeda's attempts to "leverage" al Qaeda in Iraq. Other analysts simply blamed the U.S. presence in Iraq for creating more terrorist by giving Osama bin Laden evidence that the U.S. wants to occupy Muslim lands.
Richard Willing of USA Today reports on how the NIE report fuels the debate on Iraq. " 'Al-Qaeda in Iraq' is a Bush-fulfilling prophecy (that) has helped al-Qaeda energize extremists around the world," said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Presidential Race. Which is why the U.S. must remove troops from Iraq....
ROUNDUPS
Meanwhile, back in Iraq, Alissa J. Rubin for the Times writes of 39 dead in Iraq on Tuesday and the emerging details of a massacre of Shi'ite civilians in Diyala province on Monday that killed 29 people. The attack on Dulayiya came in the late afternoon as villagers had gathered to watch a soccer match between Iraq and Oman in the Asian Games. Gunmen wearing Iraqi military uniforms and driving civilian pickup trucks surrounded several houses and shot into the houses or dragged the people out. The gunmen killed mostly young men and later mutilated 10 of the bodies. A witness from the village blamed Sunni Arab insurgents for the attack, the third such mass killing in Diyala province. Other violence included a car bomb in the Zayouna neighborhood of Baghdad that killed 20 and wounded 20, a car bomb near the Iranian embassy that killed four and the finding of 24 bodies in Baghdad on Tuesday. Following yesterday's devastation in Kirkuk, Kurdish officials in the north suggested sending 6,000 pesh merga to the outskirts of Kirkuk to provide security and protect oil and power lines. Additional Kurdish troops so near the disputed city could lead to complications. Rubin also reports that Moqtada al-Sadr's parliamentary bloc ended its boycott.
The Post's Megan Greenwell reports a more gripping account of the Dulayiya massacre, getting more first-hand reports but with a number of differences with the Times' report. A witness described about 125 men in "official looking vehicles" and the shooting that happened not in the afternoon, but in the darkness of the early morning. She notes that the attack occurred just a few hours before Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs, arrived in Iraq where he said he is optimistic about efforts to stem the country's violence. She also mentions previous reports from American and Iraqi officials who claimed violence was going down in Diyala province thanks to Operation Arrowhead Ripper. Greenwell also notes al-Sadr's coming back to parliament following a government promise to rebuild the shrine. (Hm. Wasn't that same promise made last year when it was first blown up? Yes, it was.) The cabinet boycott -- over the failure to set a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal -- continues. She wraps up with the day's mayhem much as reported in the Times. She gets more eyewitness accounts, however.
IN OTHER COVERAGE
Christian Science Monitor
Brad Knickerbocker gets in on the surge of contractor stories, writing yet another overview of the phenomenon of private citizens working in a war zone and doing duties traditionally done by militaries. Knickerbocker notes that the numbers could be as high as 180,000, as first reported in the Los Angeles Times, but fails to note the majority of those workers are Iraqis. Then he makes the odd comparison that in World War II and the Korean war, contractors only made up 3 to 5 percent of the force deployed. Korea wasn't an occupation and Seoul was a functioning state with its own military; while World War II was an existential conflict that conscripted much of the nation's young men. What is also missing in all these stories is some historical context. Not that long ago, only a couple of centuries back, an army was surrounded by a cloud of camp followers -- cooks, tanners, cobblers, whores and various other tradesmen who took care of the men in uniform -- all for a price, of course. An army doing all the work of conquering a country while at the same time handling all the occupation duties and its own logistical capabilities is a relatively new thing.
New York Times
Thomas Friedman is outraged that the Iraqi parliament is taking August off because it's too hot, while American troops are out on the street dying so the Iraqi parliament can have a holiday. In his op-ed, he calls for a diplomatic surge of America's best deal-makers to go to Iraq and not leave until they hammer out a deal or realize that it's hopeless, at which point the U.S. steps aside to let the Iraqis fight it out. "We owe Iraqis our best military — and diplomatic effort — to avoid the disaster of walking away," he writes. "But if they won't take advantage of that, we owe our soldiers a ticket home."
Maureen Dowd pens a biting op-ed (as usual), pointing out that "everything President Bush has been spouting the last six years about Al Qaeda being on the run, disrupted and weakened was just guff."
USA Today
USA Today continues its yeoman's work on MRAPs, as Tom Vanden Brook and Kathy Kiely report on the request to Congress by Defense Secretary Robert Gates for $1.3 billion to speed up production of the mine-resistant vehicles. Democrats are supportive of the measure.
Thomas Frank writes a separate story from Baghdad on the return of the Sadrists to parliament, and uses it to describe the usual scene inside the deputies' chamber. Dozens of legislators refuse to come out of fear of attack, while the atmosphere is toxic between Sunnis and everyone else. "The situation here does not encourage you to stay," Shiite lawmaker Mohammed al-Hemedawi said. He was talking about parliament, not Iraq, if you were confused. Washington Post
...In the continuing sage of the alleged Haditha massacre, Sonya Geis reports that a squad-mate to one of the accused Marines knew there were women and children in a room and shot them anyway. "I told him, there's women and kids in that room," Lance Cpl. Humberto M. Mendoza said of Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum. Tatum's response was, "Well, shoot them," Mendoza said. Another squad member testified Tuesday under immunity that Tatum signed a pack belonging to a slain marine with his name and 24 hatch marks -- the number of civilians killed in Haditha -- next to the words, "This one's for you." Howard Meyerson, a regular op-ed contributor, calls GOP moderates in the Senate "spineless" for not supporting a pullback measure sponsored by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Jack Reed, D-R.I. The bill is the one currently up for debate in the Senate and would require a withdrawal start date 120 days from enacting the law. "Instead, they have drafted legislation that would require the administration to draw up plans for a pullback -- but not to implement them. Indeed, they act continually as if George Bush and Dick Cheney are amenable to argument and open to facts."
Finally, Josh White looks at a new program from the Army about PTSD and brain traumas, using a "chain-teaching" method that would reach all U.S. soldiers -- including the more than 150,000 stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan -- within 90 days. The goal is to remove the stigma attached to the ailments so that soldiers will get help. Most PTSD and brain traumas among soldiers go untreated because of the military culture. "There is a huge culture issue here, and it is this: that those leaders or soldiers who seek help could be perceived as being weak," said Lt. Gen. James L. Campbell, director of the Army staff. "And the whole thrust behind this program is that if you are in fact someone who needs help, that your desire to get that help is not perceived as a weakness but rather as a strength, as a personal courage to do it." |
