Intelligence report: Al-Qaeda not vanquished
July 18th, 2007 by ashish
This must be the greatest failure of President Bush’s watch. The most powerful man of the world, with an incredibly powerful military and an awesome economic backing behind him, has been unable to break an organization composed of some people. It becomes even more incredulous when you start wondering as to how the Government of Afghanistan that supported Al-Qaeda was removed, and both the countries that overall host the base Al-Qaeda along with its 2 principal leaders (Osama Bin Laden and Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri), namely, Pakistan and Afghanistan, are both essentially under the US’s control. In the meantime, the war in Iraq has created a new breeding ground for terrorists. So, the new intelligence report is even more stark, but not truly surprising.
The Al Qaeda terror network, responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, has reestablished a safe haven in Pakistan, retained its top leadership, and trained new operatives in Iraq — and now poses a “heightened threat” of another massive attack on the United States, according to the summary of a joint American intelligence assessment.
Despite large-scale US efforts to capture and kill fugitive leader Osama bin Laden after driving his organization from Afghanistan six years ago, the report concludes, Al Qaeda remains an elusive, resilient organization that has rebuilt itself. It has joined forces with other like-minded groups and has used the US invasion of Iraq to recruit and train disaffected Muslims.
Even though the White House claims this to be a report that justifies the need for a continued military campaign in Iraq, it is actually a report that speaks more about lost chances. It’s been 6 years now since the WTC attacks in 2001, and yet the top leaders of the organization have not been captured. And the situation is said to be so bad that Al-Qaeda, with active Pakistani non-interference, has been allowed to regroup and re-arm itself to the extent that it is now taken as a renewed threat to the US. This is scandalous, and just shows how the war in Iraq let the US ease off pressure on Al-Qaeda. It is even more problematic where the US has been regularly snookered by the Pakistani President Musharraf. He has managed to extract massive funds and support from the US, and at the same time, entered into a peace pact with the Taliban (and by extension the Al-Qaeda) that allows it to re-group. Osama Bin Laden could not have planned this deal better.
And now onto the war in Iraq. The invasion happened a long time back, and the clock cannot be turned back. But subsequent steps such as the low number of military men in Iraq, the disbanding of the Iraqi army, the slow pace of re-construction, the slow pace of political movement in Iraq; all these are measures that have prevented the stabilization of Iraq. In particular, the insurgency in Iraq has allowed Al-Qaeda in Iraq to proclaim the insurgency as a battleground against the US, and one in which the US resolve is waning. So, to some extent, President Bush is right that we cannot let the terrorists win in Iraq, but to claim that this report justifies the continued war in Iraq is bogus. There are other reasons for this war, but the report should not be used as a justification.
