NY Times Has No Clue On Al Qaeda

It's difficult to know what one is suppose to make of this New York Times editorial: Al Qaeda Resurgent.

As pointed out at The Moderate Voice:

What if, as is highly probable, reversing al Qaeda’s comeback requires the U.S. to bomb its training camps in Pakistan? Even if Musharaff were to approve in private, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that he would in public.

The Times blames Bush for removing troops from Afghanistan and sending them to Iraq as the reason for this so-called resurgence. And talk about begging the question, we have nothing but the Times opinion that both Iraq and Afghanistan are unwinnable. Both are ultimately winnable, assuming America stays the course.

At a crucial moment, the Bush administration diverted America’s military strength, political attention and foreign aid dollars from a necessary, winnable war in Afghanistan to an unnecessary, and by now unwinnable, war in Iraq. Al Qaeda took full advantage of these blunders to survive and rebuild. Now it seems to be back in business.

And as they themselves point out, Afghanistan isn't the principle problem as regards Al Qaeda, Pakistan is.

Al Qaeda has rebuilt its notorious training camps, this time in Pakistan’s loosely governed tribal regions near the Afghan border. Camp graduates are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq — and may well be plotting new terrorist strikes in the West.

Amazing that editorialist's who warn of initiating a confrontation with Iran suddenly think any number of US troops could have simply flooded over the Afghan-Pakistan border to dispatch Al Qaeda on a whim, particularly as that region represents some of the deadliest fighting terrain for an organized army known to man.

Having failed to finish off Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Washington now finds itself fighting Qaeda-affiliated groups on multiple fronts, most recently in Somalia. Al Qaeda’s comeback in Pakistan is a devastating indictment of Mr. Bush’s grievously flawed strategies and misplaced Iraq obsession. Unless the president changes course, the dangers to America and its friends will continue to multiply.

If the NY Times thinks Al Qaeda arrived in Somalia during the Bush administration, they were either high, or more likely working for Clinton during the decade before. What the Times fails to grasp is that, in many ways, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Somalia matter very little, so long as there is a next nation state ripe for Al Qaeda to move into and start to build organization. And the effort Bush is undertaking in Iraq is designed to ultimately result in the ending of that very thing.

Only by bringing more and more potential terrorist states on line with the rest of the world, where free people enjoy free government, will we remove the potential for Al Qaeda to find another, new or next deadly home.

And, to its discredit, democratizing Iraq is the single most massive and practical solution to combating world terrorism the NY Times refuses to get, no doubt because it's a Bush, or Republican solution.

When all is said and done, the Times offers nothing  except talk and throw money as a solution to defeating Al Qaeda. That's precisely what we did during the decades Al Qaeda became such a dangerous force in the first place. Suggesting that somehow reverting to that too smart by half, failed strategy now will accomplish anything is just another sad joke we so often find coming from the Times editorial staff.

Comments

[Mullah Cimoc]

Mullah Cimoc say:

Ameriki need google: mighty wurlitzer +cia

this him teach media not free is usa. this not amerika of mr. thomas jefferson .

the fox news espeically bad for design for only most stupid 20% of amerika people. this kind of admission of guilt. admit stupidest of aemrikans when admit watching the fox news.

this william kristol. who am him. why rupert murdoch pay and pay for this magazine never make profit, never come close for make profit.

this admission weekly standard magazine not for make money but for be part of mighty wurlitzer keep ameriki people so stupid.

and this juan williams. him fake liberal? is this trick or this dumb dumb man make the comment?

[Rhod]

C'mon, Murtha. Quit fooling around.

[Terry Gain]

They must think their readers are stupid. (They may be right). Al Q fledt Afstan for Pakistan a full 15 months before Bush started his "unnecessary war" in Iraq. NYTwits.

[Fred Beloit]

In my world the NYT is simply irrelevant. They long ago decided to take the propaganda road and can walk it without me.

[Jon G]

There was no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Iraq wasn't "ripe for moving into" until we made it so.

And if you want more wars, you're going to have to start supporting a draft. The Army is just about broken and we can't continue with endless cycling of National Guardsman without breaking it too.

Even President Bush has given up the "stay the course" rhetoric. There's an election coming up - the republicans in Congress are gong to start moving away from Bush - real fast - if The Surge doesn't show quick progress.

[Terry Gain]

The Surge is already showing progress even though only 1/4 of the U.S. forces to be deployed in Baghdad have in fact been deployed. And nobody wants more wars-not even those like you Jon G, who don't understand that showing weakness will boost the fortunes of al Qaeda.

[Phoenix]

"There was no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq."

Prove it.

Seems the 'bad guys' attacked us long before Bush came into office. There is no debating that. It became obvious, in case you missed the earlier attacks, on 9/11.

So, Jon, maybe taking over San Francisco as a base to fight these bad guys would have been better?

[BobInStamford]

Speaking of Al Qaeda, any of you heros seen bin Laden? It's been 5 years, patriots - where is he??? Talk about clueless...

[Jon G]

THe 9/11 commission report said that:

The report, the 15th released by the commission staff, concluded, “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States.”

There were no Iraqs involved in the 9/11 hijackers, there were a bunch of Saudis though. Al Qaeda started in Saudi Arabia in the Wahabi schools. Al Qaeda trained in Afghanistan, not Iraq.

Oh yeah, while you're bashing the Times, here's what the Army says:

The Army's highest-ranking officer said Friday that he was unsure whether the U.S. military would capture or kill Osama bin Laden, adding, "I don't know that it's all that important, frankly."

"So we get him, and then what?" asked Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the outgoing Army chief of staff, at a Rotary Club of Fort Worth luncheon. "There's a temporary feeling of goodness, but in the long run, we may make him bigger than he is today.

"He's hiding, and he knows we're looking for him. We know he's not particularly effective. I'm not sure there's that great of a return" on capturing or killing bin Laden

[Phoenix]

Jon,

What you've provided as evidence is still supposition. Even from the most august 9/11 Commission Report. Besides, anyone who actually thinks we the people *know* everything is nuts. We maybe know 50% of what is really going on.

And so what? The connection or not means absolutely nothing in this global war. We need a strategic base to fight this enemy. San Francisco is probably not a good place.

Have to agree with the generals about bin Laden. I daresay they know exactly where he is and have known all along that they'd not take him out for the furor that would create. Best to let him die in his cave. We need Musharraf in power, not dead because of riled-up insurgents in his country.

[Jon G]

BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing.

So you're for attacking a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, but for letting the mastermind of the attack escape.

Some patriot you are.

[91B30]

Saddam sheltered one of the 1993 WTC bombers, that always seems to get lost in the shuffle.

Afghanistan is a terrible place to try and fight. Mountainous and landlocked so that we can't use armor and our supply lines are at the mercy of a nation that has its own Islamist problems-Pakistan.

There are all sorts of arguments in favor of fighitng in Iraq, I won't rehash all of them here-though the administration has done a poor job of it. Terrorists can always pick up and move somewhere else, so long as the government where they take up residence is willing to turn a blind eye. If we were not willing to remove someone like Saddam who had been a thorn in our side for over a decade, no government who might shelter terrorists would take us seriously.

[Terry Gain]

Saddam sheltered one of the 1993 WTC bombers....

Abdul Rahman Yasin is his name.

There have been numerous reports that Yasin was on Saddam's payroll, but of course we don't have the cancelled cheques signed by Saddam and even if we did who's to say there's any connection between being on the payroll and the first WTC bombing. For all we know he was Saddam's valet or maybe his gardener.

And, of course, the daily breaches of the ceasefire resolution counts for nought. There's no way Saddam would have re-constituted his weapons programs the day sanctions ended. And even if he had, he would have had no interest in attacking the United States. He was content to take his revenge for being forced out of Kuwait by attempting to kill GHWB.

And those terrorist training camps at Salam Pak? Please Jon G, do tell, and while you're at it please enlighten us to the service of General George Bush at Tora Bora.

[ajacksonian]

Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, southern regional commander for Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen militia, 'The Butcher of Basra' certainly believes there was a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Multiple FMSO documents show that Iraq was meeting with an Arab organization in Afghanistan while the Taliban were in power, and that organization was headquartered in Kandahar... al Qaeda. Meetings with them included one of Saddam's VPs and personal emmisary to al Qaeda, along with supplying them with COINTEL training materials. But that was only back in the late 1990's... Iraq was seen as the major organizer behind the '93 WTC bombing as no other group had the clout to get so many disparate terrorist organizations together and make something like that work. al Qaeda, itself, botched the next majo plot badly, demonstrating its inability to properly coordinate such until they took a different operatiional template than that of the WTC bombing.

The Iraqi attitude was that of training *any* terrorist group that would further its PR of Saddam being a Pan-Arab leader and opposing the west, of which al Qaeda was one of many organizations to avail itself of the training and supplies that could be offered from Iraq. His monthly checks to the al Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Islam in the Kurdish regions shows a working level affilitation with al Qaeda and cooperation between the two. The Kurds will more than readily attest to the number of al Qaeda personnel that went through Ansar al-Islam, along with the supplies and backing garnered from same.

Somehow those don't seem to count as actual, working level cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda for many. The US was just one target out of many for Saddam, although the highest priority. Just like al Qaeda in that regard...

[Terry Gain]

Ohmigod, Salam Pak = Salman Pak. Please don't let the typos distract you from your mission Jon G. The balls in your anti-liberationist court.

[Jon G]

You guys know who assasinated Kennedy? Must've been Iraq, right?

You can fantasize about Iraqi / Al Quaeda links all you want: They didn't exist. Yeah there were probably an occasional Al Qaeda rep in Iraq, just like they came to Germany and the US and manage to get trained. There are no factual links to support the claim of any working relationship between them.

As for your war of liberation. I could have sworn we went to Iraq because they had chemical and nuclear weapons to unleash on us. I don't think the American public is interested in waging wars of liberation across the globe. And we certainly don't have the resources.

[Terry Gain]

"I could have sworn we went to Iraq because they had chemical and nuclear weapons to unleash on us."

I see the problem. Can't retain more than one thought at a time. We've known since '04 that Saddam had either shipped out or destroyed his WMD. We've stayed to help the Iraqis establish a democracy -which, if you had been paying attention, was one of the announced goals before we went in. It's proving difficult. That must mean it's not worth while. Typical liberal.

[Jon G]

Here's part of Bush's speech announcing we're going to war. We went to war over WMDs, not some humanitarian ideal of building a democracy. Typical conservative, distorting the facts.

Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly -- yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.

[Terry Gain]

Very selective quote Mr. liberal. Typically dishonest -and stupid, given the historical record. Here's an excerpt of Bush's speech to the U.N. General Assembly on September 12, 2002.

"Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause, and a great strategic goal. The people of Iraq deserve it; the security of all nations requires it. Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest, and open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder. The United States supports political and economic liberty in a unified Iraq. ...

If we fail to act in the face of danger, the people of Iraq will continue to live in brutal submission . The regime will have new power to bully and dominate and conquer its neighbors, condemning the Middle East to more years of bloodshed and fear. The regime will remain unstable -- the region will remain unstable, with little hope of freedom, and isolated from the progress of our times. With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors". [italics added]

[Jon G]

Historical record is absolutely clear: We went to war over WMDs, not to build a democracy. As for your quote, he's talking about liberating Iraqis from Saddam, not building a western-style democracy.

[Terry Gain]

Sure. The historical record is not what the Bush Admiintration said; it's what you allege they said. Case closed.

[Jon G]

I guess all you've got left is the hope you can snow people into believing we went to war to bring democracy to Iraq. But you know that's total BS. The case for war was made on WMDs and Ms. Rice's image of mushroom clouds. Without 9/11 and the fear of another attack, the American Public would never jave supported war in Iraq. Colin Powell's case before the UN was all about weapons, not building Democracy.

Remember the aluminum tubes? WMDs? Yellow cake in Niger? Drones that were going to cross the Atlantic to attack us?

Here's your historical record - word by word. First from Colin Powell, then Condi Rice

Powell says:

This is important day for us all as we review the situation with respect to Iraq and its disarmament obligations under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441.

Last November 8, this council passed Resolution 1441 by a unanimous vote. The purpose of that resolution was to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had already been found guilty of material breach of its obligations, stretching back over 16 previous resolutions and 12 years.

POWELL: Indeed, by its failure to seize on its one last opportunity to come clean and disarm, Iraq has put itself in deeper material breach and closer to the day when it will face serious consequences for its continued defiance of this council.

My colleagues, we have an obligation to our citizens, we have an obligation to this body to see that our resolutions are complied with. We wrote 1441 not in order to go to war, we wrote 1441 to try to preserve the peace. We wrote 1441 to give Iraq one last chance. Iraq is not so far taking that one last chance.

Rice Says:

"We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon," she told me. "And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought -- maybe six months from a crude nuclear device."

"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

[Phoenix]

That's public record. I wonder what went on behind the scenes.

You don't really think they tell us everything, do you? What every leader has to do is keep his people calm and prepared. Every presser Bush has when a world leader comes to visit is carefully scripted so that one or the other can 'chastise' if they need to - all for the sake of saving face and keeping their people happy. The leaders work together on this and behind the scenes do what has to be done. Then the New York Times makes up the rest.

[Jon G]

You're exactly right about the Times Phoenix. All those stories the Times ran about WMDs written by Judy Miller from info provided by Ahmad Chalabi - fiction.

[Officious Pedant]

We've known since '04 that Saddam had either shipped out or destroyed his WMD. We've stayed to help the Iraqis establish a democracy -which, if you had been paying attention, was one of the announced goals before we went in. It's proving difficult. That must mean it's not worth while. Typical liberal.

Posted by: Terry Gain | Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 07:26 PM

For which there is not an ounce of proof. None. Zero. Just more of that made up drivel you seem so intent on sucking down. Well, mission accomplished.

[Officious Pedant]

Wow, Dan, you managed to get all over the road on this one, didn't you?

Kind of a poor man's "I don't know how to defend this, so I'll blather in every direction until I hit something.

Listen, dufus, if the Taliban is resurgent (which seems likely), and they were our mortal enemy for harboring OBL, then, yeah, our leaving is probably responsible. Or is leaving a fair portion of your mortal enemy alive, while you go fight a war against a country that DIDN'T attack us, some new strategy to bring down the Taliban?

Love the line about Pakistan, though. That was sheer stupidity genius. Really. The problem isn't Afghanistan, it's Pakistan? Wow. So abandoning the fight against the Taliban, and allowing them to find shelter in Pakistan (our purported ally and Muslim Nuclear power) is Pakistan's fault?

That bit of idiocy dovetails pretty nicely into your historical blindness. We sure could cross the Afgha-Pakistani border, and fight in that terrain. How do I know this? Well, we invaded one of the most formidably mountained countries in the are when we invaded Afghanistan, you moron. Mountain trained troops and special forces fought across some of the same terrain that shattered the Russian Army, and won, and now I have to read some addle-brained halfwit try to explain to me that fighting in the mountains is hard? Just...wow.

Oh, yeah. While you fantasize about winning this occupation (you can't really call it a war after mission accomplished, the purple fingers, and "last throes"), do you have any clue why we haven't managaed to best an insurgency in a small country, with little or no surviving infrastructure, while maintaining nearly universal superiority in every technology that makes war possible? Take your time, Dan.

[Terry Gain]

Well of of course it takes all kinds.

"Here" we have anonymous posters decrying the attempt to bring to others the peace and stability that we take for granted. These anonymous posters fake concern for the tropps while being oblivious to the fact that they endanger the troops and encurage the enemy every time they spout off. Their concern of course is not the welfare of the troops or the beneficiaries of the troops' service, about whom they could give a damn. Their concern is to play politics with their country's national security- even as soldiers lay their lives on the line- just so they can demonstrate how clever they are (in their delusional self regard) even if they must continually lie while they do so.

"Over there" is another kind of American. (from Power Line today)

"CSM James Pippin, which is on Michael Yon's excellent site, and was linked and is being discussed at the Forum, here:

I am resolved to fight these bastards for however long it takes, every day until my retirement.
I am stationed in Mosul, Iraq and things are busy. We have about 15 - 20 incidents a day. An “incident” is an IED attack, enemy ambush, rocket attack against our vehicles, or a mortar attack against our FOB (Forward Operating Base aka where we live). We win every time whenever they stay and fight. But mostly, they hit us, then run away and blend into the crowd. We’re winning a day at a time. And we are taking the fight to them.

People back home may not realize how effective this enemy is using the media as a weapon. Every time some talking head gets on the TV and shouts anything negative about this war, it motivates our enemy, who interprets dissent as weakness and who uses our free press against us. That is exactly how “the terrorists” win. For the Terrorist does not have to defeat us, he just has to outlast us."

Hard to believe the anonymous posters here and the courageous soldier over there come from the same country.

[Jon G]

BS - you don't have a corner on patriotism.

It's a civil war - the Shia / Sunnis have a long-running violent feud going on that's far older than this country. They don't need to watch CNN or Fox News to get jacked up to go out and kill each other - it's in their blood. And your concern for the Iraqi people seems a bit ill-informed. The majority of Iraqis want us to withdraw and believe that our presence is actually inciting violence.

And I'm still waiting for someone from the Bush or Cheney family to enlist and go over and help fight the damn war.

Face it, you've been wrong about the war from the start. And you're still wrong.

[Officious_Pedant]

"Here" we have anonymous posters decrying the attempt to bring to others the peace and stability that we take for granted. These anonymous posters fake concern for the tropps while being oblivious to the fact that they endanger the troops and encurage the enemy every time they spout off. Their concern of course is not the welfare of the troops or the beneficiaries of the troops' service, about whom they could give a damn. Their concern is to play politics with their country's national security- even as soldiers lay their lives on the line- just so they can demonstrate how clever they are (in their delusional self regard) even if they must continually lie while they do so.

Posted by: Terry Gain | Monday, February 26, 2007 at 05:04 PM

Nice one, Terry.

Maybe you could point to some of that "peace and stability we take for granted". Six hours of electricity, an abundance of killing by the various militias (some closely associated with the ruling party), tens of thousands dead SINCE the "pacification" of Iraq, hundreds of thousands of weapons unaccounted for, several tons of explosives unaccounted for (that we were in control of when they were taken), and billions of dollars unaccounted for when we held the purse strings of the country.

More to the point, please feel free to explain, from your vast supposed "knowledge" of the situation, how leaving our troops (the ones you purport to give a crap about) as targets of an ongoing insurgency "gives a damn" about them. Maybe you could explain the net benefit of repeated deployments, attempts to cut their benefits, and inadequite supply to the troops. All the while ignoring how demands for additional troops were repeatedly ignored by this administration, until the Democrats gained control of Congress, and simultaneously attempting to portray the surge as anything other than a blatant political ploy. Good luck with that.

[91B30]

"Maybe you could explain the net benefit of repeated deployments, attempts to cut their benefits, and inadequite supply to the troops."

Simple-most of those things you cite are rather outrageous lies. For instance, the charge that benefits were cut-when Congress created an entirely new chapter for the GI Bill (chapter 1607) which greatly expanded the amount of GI Bill available to reservists-shows how little officious pedant knows about the charges he makes.

We aren't "targets", officious pedant-we're fighting a war. And we know who really supports us and who doesn't.

[91B30]

And again officious pedant demonstrates his ignorance when he says: "We sure could cross the Afgha-Pakistani border, and fight in that terrain. How do I know this? Well, we invaded one of the most formidably mountained countries in the are when we invaded Afghanistan, you moron."

Of course, that isn't exactly what happened. We used air power with SF help on the ground to support the Northern Alliance who drove the Taliban out of the cities which are not in the mountains. But then the Taliban did what Afghanis did against the Russians and retreated into the mountains where our efforts to dislodge them were frustrated. Our ability to fight in the mountains is limited by a wide variety of factors, not the least of which is that we can't use armor there.

But, since officious pedant is apparently some kind of military expert, maybe he can tell us why not even the UK Royal Marines-the most well trained military force on the planet-were unsuccessful in driving the Taliban insurgents out of the mountains.

[91B30]

Edit-"...why not even the UK Royal Marines-the most well trained military force on the planet-could drive the Taliban insurgents out of the mountains."