Why we're fighting al Qaeda in Iraq

The National Intelligence Estimate on threats to the U.S. has declassified key findings and it is sobering:

The report makes clear that al-Qaida in Iraq, which has not yet posed a direct threat to U.S. soil, could become a problem here.

"Of note," the analysts said, "we assess that al-Qaida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the homeland."

The analysts also found that al-Qaida's association with its Iraqi affiliate helps the group to energize the broader Sunni Muslim extremist community, raise resources and recruit and indoctrinate operatives — "including for homeland attacks."

...

Among the report's other findings:

Al-Qaida is likely to continue to focus on high-profile political, economic and infrastructure targets to cause mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, economic aftershocks and fear. "The group is proficient with conventional small arms and improvised explosive devices and is innovative in creating new capabilities and overcoming security obstacles."

_The group has been able to restore key capabilities it would need to launch an attack on U.S. soil: a safe haven in Pakistan's tribal areas, operational lieutenants and senior leaders. U.S. officials have warned publicly that a deal between the Pakistani government and tribal leaders allowed al-Qaida to plot and train more freely in parts of western Pakistan for the last 10 months.

_The group will continue to seek weapons of mass destruction — chemical, biological or nuclear material — and "would not hesitate to use them."

_Lebanese Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim extremist group that has conducted anti-American attacks overseas, may be more likely to consider attacking here, especially if it believes the United States is directly threatening the group or its main sponsor, Iran.

_Non-Muslim terrorist groups probably will attack here in the next several years, although on a smaller scale. The judgments don't name any specific groups, but the FBI often warns of violent environmental groups, such as Earth Liberation Front, and others.

The publicly disclosed judgments, laid out over two pages, are part of a longer document, which remains classified. It was approved by the heads of all 16 intelligence agencies on June 21.

Michelle succinctly summarizes:

Put that on a bumper sticker.

She also links to this Peter Brookes piece with piercing commentary:

On the same day last week parts of a draft National Intelligence Estimate were leaked, saying al Qaeda might be surging toward pre-9/11 strength, the House of Representatives voted (mostly along party-lines) to end our surge in Iraq against the likes of…well, al Qaeda.

Huh?

Yup, last Thursday in the tawdriest example of pure political theater in quite some time, the House approved a measure calling for the President to begin withdrawing American troops from Iraq—the central front in the fight against al Qaeda--within 120 days.

Of course, the meaningless House bill offered no thoughtful alternatives for how to deal with the challenges in Iraq, including the nightmare of giving a decisive military--and public relations-- victory to al Qaeda. Just withdrawal—plain and simple. 

(Funny how many of the liberals that excoriated the White House for having no plan for going into Iraq, now, ironically, have no real plan themselves for getting us out.)

The next step in the national debate on this is to have the Presidential candidates speak loudly and clearly about what their plans are to counter the threat.   Will the MSM follow through?  I'm not so sure.

Expect huffing and puffing from the Democrats with their moonbat base to exclaim nasally that the report is nothing more than a fear-mongering attempt by the Bush Administration to bolster their current position.

And though I expect the Bush Administration to take advantage of the information being released and to champion it accordingly, I also expect to be, once again, deeply disappointed.

Where's Fred when you need him?

Comments

[Erasmussimo]

There is a major non-sequitur in this post. Prior to our invasion in 2003, there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq. Mr. Hussein made sure of that. Now, Iraq is the main operational training ground for al-Qaeda, and AQI is its most powerful subsidiary.

Doesn't that mean that it was our invasion and occupation of Iraq that brought AQI into being? Opponents of the war warned from the outset that this would happen, and sure enough, they turned out to be absolutely correct on this point. A recent political cartoon is a mock-up of the old Uncle Sam recruiting poster, only it shows Osama bin Laden saying "I want YOU to invade Iraq!" It seems that we played right into his hands, giving him the best possible recruiting and training ground.

So what do we do now? Keep that recruiting and training ground humming along? That strikes me as pretty stupid. The fastest way to drive al-Qaeda out of Iraq is to walk away, let the inevitable civil war take place, and let the Shias smash the Sunnis into submission. Iraq will end up as a Shia state closely tied to Iran. Not a good outcome, certainly, but we have screwed this situation up so badly that there are NO good outcomes.

[tim]

What does it matter if AQ wasn’t in Iraq before the war? They are there now and they are our enemy. We are to be blamed for where our enemy chooses to fight? Who cares were they choose to die?

It’s not as if Saddam was against terrorism. Saddam Hussein made payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Is that not aiding terrorists? Saddam Hussein supported terrorists such as Abu Nidal, the Palestine Liberation Front, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Abu Musab al- Zarqawi network . According to the State Department Saddam did, in fact, harbor and support these groups.

AQ will not leave Iraq if we leave. What an absolutly ignorant thing to believe. They will be embolded by our defeat. Coupled with us leaving Somalia, Lebonon and Vietnam they will use it as a recruiting tool to strength their ranks. They will set up shop in Iraq and use it as their training ground just like Afghanistan pre 9/11.

To endorse genocide speaks volumns about the mentality of someone who would let that happen. Ironically, many are the same people who fault this nation for doing nothing about Darfur.

Lastly, anyone who thinks we are to blame for the bloodshed that is taking place now in Iraq and labels us as “occupiers” is simply niave or exposing their hatred for Pes. Bush, this country and our military.

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Bin Laden is not emboldened when he sees the American soldier coming. He's emboldened when he sees the American soldier abandoned by his fellow citizens back at home.

"...our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger." Bin Laden, during an interview, on fighting American forces in Somalia. He didn't declare a fatwa on the United States because he thought it was his fundamentalist providence to do so. He did it because he thought it would be easy. It was a business decision. Tragically, the 9-11 attack itself was a business decision, one he might not have made if he thought he was dealing with a more resilient opponent. Time will tell if he was right or not. Meanwhile, that's thousands of fellow citizens dead, because we didn't present a stronger picture of unity with ourselves beyond the water's edge.

This illustration seems apropos:
http://www.imao.us/archives/008190.html

No Al Qaeda in Iraq prior to 2003? Nobody's qualified to say what was going on in Iraq prior to 2003. That's what all the fuss was about. Saddam was ordered to put his hands over his head, and he refused to take them out of his pockets. Anything short of military force, would have been insane -- no, worse than insane. Anything short of military force would have been a repeat of what had been tried before, and had already found to be inadequate.

I have a text file I like to upload anytime someone makes the assertion that Saddam Hussein did not, and could not, have any connection with Al Qaeda before the coalition's invasion of Iraq. It's got a lot of factual information in it, and nobody's been able to contest any of it. Here it is:

"Iraqi intelligence documents from 1992 list Osama bin Laden as an Iraqi intelligence asset. Numerous sources have reported a 1993 nonaggression pact between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The former deputy director of Iraqi intelligence now in U.S. custody says that bin Laden asked the Iraqi regime for arms and training in a face-to-face meeting in 1994. Senior al Qaeda leader Abu Hajer al Iraqi met with Iraqi intelligence officials in 1995. The National Security Agency intercepted telephone conversations between al Qaeda-supported Sudanese military officials and the head of Iraq's chemical weapons program in 1996. Al Qaeda sent Abu Abdallah al Iraqi to Iraq for help with weapons of mass destruction in 1997. An indictment from the Clinton-era Justice Department cited Iraqi assistance on al Qaeda 'weapons development' in 1998. A senior Clinton administration counterterrorism official told the Washington Post that the U.S. government was 'sure' Iraq had supported al Qaeda chemical weapons programs in 1999. An Iraqi working closely with the Iraqi embassy in Kuala Lumpur was photographed with September 11 hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar en route to a planning meeting for the bombing of the USS Cole and the September 11 attacks in 2000. Satellite photographs showed al Qaeda members in 2001 traveling en masse to a compound in northern Iraq financed, in part, by the Iraqi regime. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, senior al Qaeda associate, operated openly in Baghdad and receved medical attention at a regime-supported hospital in 2002. Documents discovered in postwar Iraq in 2003 reveal that Saddam's regime harbored and supported Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who mixed the chemicals for the 1993 World Trade Center attack -- the first al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil.

"Then, on March 21, 2004, Richard Clarke, a former top counterterrorism offical with access to all of this information, made a stunning declaration: 'There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever.'"

-- The Connection, Stephen F. Hayes, ISBN 0-06-074673-4, pp. 177-8

There's a lot of stuff to respond to here. We could easily get ourselves into a long, rambling rant on Iraq and I'd like to stay focused on the issue of the connection between our occupation of Iraq and its effects on al-Qaeda.

First off, tim writes:

anyone who thinks we are to blame for the bloodshed that is taking place now in Iraq and labels us as “occupiers” is simply niave or exposing their hatred for Pes. Bush, this country and our military.

Um, when the American military uses weapons and people die, I think it's pretty fair to blame the Americans for that bloodshed. Yes, there's a lot more sectarian bloodshed, but inasmuch as we're the ones who destabilized the country, we certainly share some -- not all, but some -- of the blame.

And yes, we are occupying Iraq. What other verb would you use? Vacationing? Sojourning?

The American occupation of Iraq is motivating thousands of Muslim men to volunteer for al-Qaeda and other groups. Our intelligence services have seen a steady increase in recruitment by terrorist groups. We're making matters worse by fighting on. The best thing we could do to hurt al-Qaeda is to eliminate the biggest motivation for recruitment.

The claim is often made that, if we don't fight them in Iraq, we'll end up fighting them here. That claim is silly for two reasons: first, we're already fighting them here -- ever noticed the increased security at airports? Second, they can bring resources to bear in Iraq that they could never use in America. There they can use low-skill recruits who don't speak English, who blend right into the population. Put that same recruit on a plane for the USA and he'll never get past immigration control. In Iraq, they have access to lots of weapons and munitions. Here, they'd have to buy their weapons at a gun shop.

We have to decide what our real objective is: hanging on in Iraq or fighting terrorism. If we want to fight terrorism, our best strategy is to get out of Iraq and beef up our forces in Afghanistan.

[Mark E]

al Qaeda was in Iraq before invasion. Though the evidence takes some effort to find I've documented it repeatedly and extensively at www.regimeofterror.com