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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: toddy who wrote (150052)	10/31/2004 1:13:17 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Will Osama Help W.? ___________________________ By MAUREEN DOWD COLUMNIST THE NEW YORK TIMES Published: October 31, 2004 nytimes.com WASHINGTON — Some people thought the October surprise would be the president producing Osama. Instead, it was Osama producing yet another video taunting the president and lecturing America. After bin Laden's pre-election commentary from his anchor desk at a secure, undisclosed location, many TV chatterers and Republicans postulated that the evildoer's campaign intrusion would help the president. O.B.L., they said, might re-elect W. They follow the Bush strategists' reasoning that since President Bush rates higher than John Kerry on fighting terror, anytime Americans get rattled about Iraq and Al Qaeda, it's a plus for the president. And Republicans can keep claiming that Al Qaeda wants the "weak" Democrat elected, even as some intelligence experts suggest the terrorists prefer that the belligerent Mr. Bush stay in power because he has been a boon to jihadist recruiting, with his disastrous occupation of Iraq and his true believer, us-versus-them, my-Christian-God's-directing-my-foreign-policy vibe. The Bushies' campaign pitch follows their usual backward logic: Because we have failed to make you safe, you should re-elect us to make you safer. Because we haven't caught Osama in three years, you need us to catch Osama in the next four years. Because we didn't bother to secure explosives in Iraq, you can count on us to make sure those explosives aren't used against you. You'd think that seeing Osama looking fit as a fiddle and ready for hate would spark anger at the Bush administration's cynical diversion of the war on Al Qaeda to the war on Saddam. It's absurd that we're mired in Iraq - an invasion the demented vice president praised on Friday for its "brilliance" - while the 9/11 mastermind nonchalantly pops up anytime he wants. For some, it seemed cartoonish, with Osama as Road Runner beeping by Wile E. Bush as Dick Cheney and Rummy run the Acme/Halliburton explosives company - now under F.B.I. investigation for its no-bid contracts on anvils, axle grease (guaranteed slippery) and dehydrated boulders (just add water) . Osama slouched onto TV bragging about pulling off the 9/11 attacks just after the president strutted onto TV in New Hampshire with 9/11 families, bragging that Al Qaeda leaders know "we are on their trail." Maybe bin Laden hasn't gotten the word. Maybe W. should get off the trail and get on Osama's tail. W. was clinging to his inane mantra that if we fight the terrorists over there, we don't have to fight them here, even as bin Laden was back on TV threatening to come here. The president still avoided using Osama's name on Friday, part of the concerted effort to downgrade him and merge him with Iraqi insurgents. The White House reaction to the disclosures about the vanished explosives in Iraq was typical. Though it's clear the treasures and terrors of Iraq - from viruses to ammunition to artifacts - were being looted and loaded into donkey carts and pickups because we had insufficient troops to secure the country, Bush officials devoted the vast resources of the government to trying to undermine the facts to protect the president. The Pentagon mobilized to debunk the bunker story with a tortured press conference and a satellite photo of trucks that proved about as much as Colin Powell's prewar drawings of two trailers that were supposed to be mobile biological weapons labs. Republicans insinuated that it was a plot by foreign internationalists to help the foreigner-loving, internationalist Kerry, a U.N. leak from the camp of Mohamed ElBaradei to hurt the administration that had scorned the U.N. as a weak sister. In their ruthless determination to put Mr. Bush's political future ahead of our future safety, the White House and House Republicans last week thwarted the enactment of recommendations of the 9/11 commission they never wanted in the first place. While pretending to be serious about getting a bill on reorganizing intelligence agencies before the election, the White House never forced Congressional Republicans to come to an agreement. So the advice from the panel that spent 19 months studying how the government could shore up intelligence so there wouldn't be another 9/11 may be squandered, even though Dick Cheney's favorite warning to scare voters away from Mr. Kerry is that we might someday face terrorists "in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us," including a nuclear bomb. Wow. I feel safer. Don't you?

To: toddy who wrote (150052)	10/31/2004 8:09:00 AM
From: Keith Feral	Respond to of 281500

That is his big plea?? I reject the whole notion that the people we are fighting in Iraq are not directly linked to Al Quaeda. <"I explained that I hoped that the peaceful citizens of the areas where the terrorists are based will help the government to arrest them," he said. "They assured me that they would work with my government to achieve this." Allawi also said authorities have arrested 167 Arab foreign fighters, who are in Iraqi custody. U.S. officials say the final order for an all-out attack on Fallujah will come from Allawi. Commanders have estimated that up to 5,000 Islamic militants, Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) loyalists and common criminals are holed up in the insurgent bastion.> What are these Arab foreign fighters if they are not Al Quaeda? This ongoing liberal criticism of the US leading some war against terror does not make sense to me. The press has deliberately failed to report the direction of the conflict as an Iraqi mission supported by the US. They have utterly failed to report an information about the people within Iraq and how they feel about these foreign fighters blowing up buses in their cities. The press utterly ignored the Iraqi President when he recently visited the US. I don't think anyone has any information about the real nature of this conflict. Even Soros admits that getting Saddam out of power was a good thing. His only problem is that he thinks the presence of our troops will be weakened because we are not fighting alongside French troops. Well, the last time I checked the head of the largest terrorist network in the world was getting medical treatment in France. I don't think it is reasonable to expect that their cooperation would have been forthcoming. I think we are going to help Iraq in a meaningful way going forward. With our assistance, I believe we will be able to clean up the 5000 terrorists holed up in Fallujah. I think the level of intel will be able to remove this threat once the election in the US is out of the way next week. I admire Bush for not putting the operation at risk by launching the campaign ahead of the election results. Maybe a victory from his side will inspire a negotitation with these terrorists, even though I would prefer to see them strategically removed. In any case, the argument that the war on terrorism is an abstraction is not valid. We have the intel to tell us how they are and where they are holed up. The iraqi government is giving them a chance for peace. Their troops will remove the threat from the foreign fighters if they do not lay down their weapons. I do not see much ambiguity left in this struggle. The only thing I sense is that the Democrats are desperately trying to diminish the success in our war against terrorists.