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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Another shining Bush victory...oh, wait.
Posted by Jill | 6:10 AM
Another Mission Accomplished:

President Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged today that the strategy for fighting Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan had failed, as the White House released a grim new intelligence assessment that has forced the administration to consider more aggressive measures inside Pakistan.

The intelligence report, the most formal assessment since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks about the terrorist threat facing the United States, concludes that the United States is losing ground on a number of fronts in the fight against Al Qaeda, and describes the terrorist organization as having significantly strengthened over the past two years.

In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence, intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an attempt to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.

“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”

While Bush administration officials had reluctantly endorsed the cease-fire as part of their effort to prop up the Pakistani leader, they expressed relief today that General Musharraf may have to abandon that approach as the accord now appears to have unraveled.

But American officials make little secret of their skepticism that General Musharraf has the capability to be effective in the mountainous territory along the Afghan border, where his troops have been bloodied before by a mix of Al Qaeda leaders and tribes that view the territory as their own, not part of Pakistan.

[snip]

Ms. Townsend declined to describe what may be alternative strategies for dealing with Al Qaeda’s threat in Pakistan, but acknowledged frustration that Al Qaeda had succeeding in rebuilding its infrastructure and its links to affiliates, while keeping Mr. bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The intelligence report, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, represents the consensus view of all 16 spy agencies that make up the American intelligence community. The report concluded that the United States will face a “persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years.”


In other words, "Blame Pakistan." Granted, Musharraf has walked a delicate tightrope for the last six years as he tries to retain power in Pakistan and ward off a growing Islamist insurgency, but blaming him for the failure to capture Osama Bin Laden is just another incidence of George W. Bush avoiding responsibility, in this case the failure to capture him at Tora Bora at the beginning of the Afghanistan invasion.

At least until now, Osama Bin Laden has been George W. Bush's best friend. The Administration has trotted out video of Bin Laden and of Ayman al-Zawahiri every time it has needed a boost in the polls -- and until recently, it's worked like a charm. It will be interesting to see whether Americans respond to this report by groveling at the feet of the Big Daddy who has put them in this mess, or if they have finally realized that instead of keeping them safer, the neocons and their puppet in the White House have just poured more gasoline on an already-simmering fire.

As much as I despise Maureen Dowd, for after all, it's her willingness to buy into and perpetuate the "effete, effeminate Democrats" meme that got us into this mess in the first place, she's right on the money here:

Oh, as it turns out, they’re not on the run.

And, oh yeah, they can fight us here even if we fight them there.

And oh, one more thing, after spending hundreds of billions and losing all those lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’re more vulnerable to terrorists than ever.

And, um, you know that Dead-or-Alive stuff? We may be the ones who end up dead.

Squirming White House officials had to confront the fact yesterday that everything President Bush has been spouting the last six years about Al Qaeda being on the run, disrupted and weakened was just guff.

Last year, W. called his “personal friend” Gen. Pervez Musharraf “a strong defender of freedom.” Unfortunately, it turned out to be Al Qaeda’s freedom. The White House is pinning the blame on Pervez.

While the administration lavishes billions on Pakistan, including $750 million in a risible attempt to win “hearts and minds” in tribal areas where Al Qaeda leaders are hiding and training, President Musharraf has helped create a quiet mountain retreat, a veritable terrorism spa, for Osama and Ayman al-Zawahiri to refresh themselves and get back in shape.

The administration’s most thorough intelligence assessment since 9/11 is stark and dark. Two pages add up to one message: The Bushies blew it. Al Qaeda has exploded into a worldwide state of mind. Because of what’s going on with Iraq and Iran, Hezbollah may now “be more likely to consider” attacking us. Al Qaeda will try to “put operatives here” — (some news reports say a cell from Pakistan already is en route or has arrived) — and “acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear material in attacks.”


But don't think MoDo has had a change of heart, for no column can be published without a smack at the Democrats' masculinity, and she gratuitously slips one in right after the above passage:

(Democrats on cots are ineffectual, but Al Qaeda in caves gets the job done?)

[snip]

Just as we outsourced capturing Osama at Tora Bora to Afghans who had no motive to do it, we outsourced capturing Osama in Pakistan to Mr. Musharraf, who had no motive to do it.

Pressed by reporters on why we haven’t captured Osama, especially if he’s climbing around with a dialysis machine, Ms. Townsend sniffed that she wished “it were that easy.” It’s not easy to launch a trumped-up war to reshape the Middle East into a utopian string of democracies, but that didn’t stop W. from making that audacious gambit.

The Bushies, who once mocked Bill Clinton for doing only “pinprick” bombings on Al Qaeda, now say they can do nothing about Osama because they can’t “pinpoint” him, as Ms. Townsend put it. She assured reporters that they were “harassing” Al Qaeda, making it sound more like a tugging-on-pigtails strategy than a take-no-prisoners strategy.

[snip]

W. swaggers about with his cowboy boots and gunslinger stance. But when talking about Waziristan last February, he explained that it was hard to round up the Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders there because: “This is wild country; this is wilder than the Wild West.”

Yes, they shoot with real bullets up there, and they fly into buildings with real planes.

If W. were a real cowboy, instead of somebody who just plays one on TV, he would have cleaned up Dodge by now.


And perhaps if Maureen Dowd and the other lackeys in the media (*cough* Chris Matthews *cough*) hadn't allowed themselves to go weak-kneed over Bush's cowboy posturing, we might have elected men with the smarts to avoid this mess, men who when presented with a PDB that said "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" would have heeded it, men who when a Richard Clarke tells them something is brewing don't go on vacation, and we wouldn't be in this mess now.

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