Bush wins back the ditto-heads

He's back in the saddle and Rush is over the moon.

By Digby

Topics:Al-Qaida, War Room, Iraq, Middle East

According to CNN, President Bush used the term “Al Qaeda” 95 times in his windy 29 minute speech today to the poor soldiers at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina. (Who hates the troops again?)

In case people still fail to understand the nuance of the current situation, he said, “There’s a good reason they are called ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq.’ They are Al Qaeda. And they are in Iraq.” I’m glad he cleared that up.

Here’s how Rush listeners heard about it:

RUSH: Can you imagine, ladies and gentlemen, how this irritates the kook fringe base of the Democrat Party and Pelosi and Harry Reid? They are trying to disrupt George W. Bush’s confidence; they’re trying to shred it; they’re trying to get everybody in the country isolated from him, including other Republicans, and he doesn’t care. Second bite here.

THE PRESIDENT: Some note that Al-Qaeda in Iraq did not exist until the US invasion and argue that it is a problem of our own making. The argument follows the flawed logic that terrorism is caused by American actions.
RUSH: Right on, right on.
THE PRESIDENT: Iraq’s not the reason that the terrorists are at war with us.
RUSH: Right on, right on.
THE PRESIDENT: We were not in Iraq when the terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.
RUSH: Right on, right on.
THE PRESIDENT: We were not in Iraq when they attacked our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
RUSH: Right on, right on.
THE PRESIDENT: We were not in Iraq when they attacked the USS Cole in 2000, and we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001. Our action to remove Saddam Hussein did not start the terrorist violence. An American withdrawal from Iraq would not end it.
RUSH: Amen. The only thing that I know many of you are saying, “Where’s this been? We’re all saying it. It needs to have been said by the president.” He said it today. It was at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina. Here’s the last bite.
THE PRESIDENT: Our troops are now working to replicate the success in Anbar and other parts of the country. Our brave men and women are taking risks, and they’re showing courage, and we’re making progress for the security of our citizens and the peace of the world. We must give General Petraeus and his troops the time and the resources they need so they can defeat Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
RUSH: (clapping). Right on, right on. As long as he’s at the helm, that will happen.
It’s kind of ironic to hear the president commenting on his critic’s logic, when his entire line of argument is completely illogical. (And it’s kind of creepy to hear Rush saying “right on, right on” like he’s Barry White or something.) But what would one expect from the president whose country was attacked by terrorists and then proceeded to invade another one that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack? Logic has never been his strong suit.
Sadly, those Rush listeners are getting the message. The New York Times reported today that “Americans’ support for the initial invasion of Iraq has risen somewhat as the White House has continued to ask the public to reserve judgment about the war until at least the fall. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, 42 percent of Americans said that looking back, taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, while 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq.” Bush seems to think this has to do with his recent al-Qaida “revelations” so they have the talk shock troops out there flogging his speech like he was Cicero.
The truth is that he said nothing today that he hasn’t been saying for five years. It’s a bit of a stretch to assume that another rousing speech from Bush, robotically mouthing “Al Qaeda” over and over again is going to turn the tide. Every time he opens his mouth these days, his approval rating goes down. And the same NY Times poll that Rush gushes over also says this:

Americans are divided over whether the Bush administration’s discussion of terrorism reflects a genuine concern or is a political tool. Half of those polled say the administration talks about the threat of terrorism to gain a political advantage; 39 percent say it is a genuine issue.
Continue Reading

: "Digby" has been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a writer whose political and cultural observations have entertained and informed the blogosphere since 2002. They can currently be found at www.digbysblog.blogspot.com. More Digby

- 22Comments
- Permalink
- Print
- Short URL
Share:
- Email
- Twitter
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Digg
- Reddit
- StumbleUpon
- ShareThis

“You Don’t Like the Truth”: Our first look at a Gitmo interrogation

A bewildered Canadian teenager goes to Guantanamo Bay in this disturbing look inside the War on Terror

By Andrew O'Hehir

A still from "You Don't Like the Truth"

Topics:Guantanamo, Our Picks, Movies, Taliban, Documentaries, Afghanistan, Canada, Al-Qaida, Terrorism

In the wake of the extrajudicial killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and several other people in Yemen this week, we’re faced (once again) with the realization that the United States Constitution has become a largely meaningless totem. It gets waved around enthusiastically by people on all sides of the political spectrum whenever it seems to serve their interests, but nobody pays much attention to what it actually says. Presumably President Obama, the military-intelligence establishment and the mainstream media are declaring Awlaki a special case. Thanks to the secret provisions of secret laws, he was deprived of all the rights of citizenship and not subject to the ordinary rule of law that extends back not merely to the Constitution but to the Magna Carta (at least).

Some similar exemption must also be made for the Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who was 15 years old when he was found, badly injured and barely alive, after a 2002 firefight between U.S. troops and Taliban forces in Afghanistan. (Khadr’s father, an al-Qaida supporter and fundraiser, had apparently dropped him off at a Taliban compound a few weeks earlier.) Based on what we see in the painful, revealing documentary “You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantánamo” — the first film to show actual interrogation footage from inside the secret American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — Khadr became a sort of ritual sacrifice by the Canadian government, an offering to its American allies and/or overlords. His case became a hot political issue north of the border, where Canadians pride themselves on a society that is more egalitarian, and more civilized, than that of their American neighbors.

Following a Canadian Supreme Court decision, most of Khadr’s seven-hour interrogation at Gitmo by CSIS officers — the approximate Canadian equivalent of the CIA — has been declassified, and veteran lefty documentarians Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez use that claustrophobic, low-resolution 2003 footage as the basis for “You Don’t Like the Truth.” That sounds like something the interrogators might have said to Khadr, but it isn’t. It’s what he tells them after realizing they don’t want to hear his allegations that he was tortured by American forces, and that all his supposed confessions about knowing Osama bin Laden and attending al-Qaida barbecues were made up on the spot, to stop the pain.

You won’t see Khadr suffer physical torture on these surveillance tapes, although the interrogators rely on time-honored tactics of psychological abuse, alternately berating him and plying him with Big Macs. You will see a teenager who speaks idiomatic North American English, and who is obviously relieved to see fellow Canadians, whom he naively assumes have come to help him. And you’ll see him go through a near-total breakdown, sitting alone in the room weeping for his mother, after he realizes that no one cares about what happens to him and that he’s only interesting to his interrogators as long as he keeps making up stories about Osama and al-Qaida.

I have no idea whether Khadr actually threw a grenade that killed a U.S. Delta Force soldier, as was alleged after his capture. (Khadr has consistently denied it, and photographic evidence suggests that he had been shot through the back and was out cold before the soldier’s death.) But the Canadian interrogators barely mention it, and it feels suspiciously like an inflammatory distraction, thrown in mostly to alienate all possible North American sympathy. At best it’s an ancillary question. If Khadr was a genuine military combatant, then he can’t be prosecuted for killing an enemy soldier in battle. Furthermore, he would have to be considered a child soldier under international law, which theoretically immunizes him even for war crimes. Convicting him on such charges, as the government eventually did in a secret court on secret evidence, required the finding that he wasn’t a soldier but a civilian terrorist (even though he was supposedly linked to two organizations, al-Qaida and the Taliban, with whom the U.S. government has repeatedly said it’s at war).

Côté and Henríquez intersperse brief and highly effective interview segments between snippets of the interrogation tape, with subjects ranging from former U.S. military officers (including Khadr’s lawyer and psychiatrist) to former Guantánamo inmates (including Moazzam Begg, now a leading British activist for other detainees) to Khadr’s mother and sister (wearing full-face Islamic veils) to Damien Corsetti, the much-demonized former soldier who knew Khadr as a guard at Bagram. What comes through repeatedly is that questions of law and reason, or guilt and innocence, played no role in the case of Omar Khadr. He was a vulnerable and confused kid whose own government turned its back on him, which made him a perfect candidate to become one of the few Gitmo detainees convicted of something. He was 15 when he was captured, and will be 31 when he (supposedly) gets out.

“You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantánamo” is now playing at Film Forum in New York, with more cities and dates to follow.

: More Andrew O'Hehir

- 17Comments
- Permalink
- Print
- Short URL
Share:
- Email
- Twitter
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Digg
- Reddit
- StumbleUpon
- ShareThis

U.S. officials: Al-Qaida ops chief killed by CIA

Top Pakistani operative dead after drone strike earlier this week

By Kimberly Dozier, Associated Press

Topics:Al-Qaida, U.S. Military

A top al-Qaida operative was killed earlier this week in Pakistan’s tribal areas, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Thursday. The death landed another blow against the besieged terrorist network.

The man killed was Abu Hafs al-Shahri, whom two U.S. officials describe as al-Qaida’s chief of operations in Pakistan.

Though his name is little known beyond intelligence circles, Al-Shahri is described as dangerous by both the Pakistani and U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe classified counterterrorist operations.

He was apparently killed by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, though officials would not describe the method since the program is classified. A drone strike was reported by locals on Sunday night.

The officials say al-Shahri worked closely with the Pakistani Taliban to carry out attacks inside Pakistan, and was also a contender to assume some duties of al-Qaida’s second in command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman. Al-Rahman was killed by a CIA drone strike in late August.

U.S. officials believe they can cripple the core al-Qaida organization if they take out the top four or five figures, following the killing in May of al-Qaida chief Osama by Laden by Navy SEALs. Eight of the network’s top 20 leaders were killed this year alone, according to the Pentagon’s undersecretary for defense intelligence, Michael Vickers, in remarks this week. Vickers predicted that with sustained counterterrorist operations, “within 18-24 months, core al-Qaida’s cohesion and operational capabilities could be degraded to the point that the group could fragment and exist mostly as a propaganda arm.”

But Vickers and CIA director David Petraeus said al-Qaida’s offshoots will remain a serious threat to the U.S.

A Pakistani intelligence official says Pakistani operations chief al-Shahri was a Saudi national, who had lived in the tribal regions of Pakistan, bordering eastern Afghanistan, since 2002.

One of the U.S. officials said the same individual is No. 11 on Saudi Arabia’s top-85 most wanted terror suspects, where his full name is listed as Osama Hamoud Gharman Al-Shihri. The official said the same person is No. 68 on Interpol’s most wanted list, where his name was spelled “Al-Shehri” and his birthdate was listed as Sept. 17, 1981.

Al-Shahri engaged in liaison mainly with Pakistan’s Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan to conduct coordinated attacks against targets inside Pakistan, one of the U.S. officials said. But al-Qaida also inspired the Pakistani Taliban to undertake its first known overseas attack, when a U.S. based operative tried and failed to detonate a car bomb in Times Square last year.

Al-Shahri’s killing was first reported by NBC News.

Al-Qaida’s senior planner of global terror operations, Adnan Shukrijumah, remains at large.

AP writer Matt Apuzzo contributed from Washington, and AP writer Riaz Khan contributed to this story from Peshawar.

: More Kimberly Dozier

- 9Comments
- Permalink
- Print
- Short URL
Share:
- Email
- Twitter
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Digg
- Reddit
- StumbleUpon
- ShareThis

U.S. accuses Iran of “secret deal” with al-Qaida

Administration says Iranian government provides money and recruits for attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan

By Matthew Lee and Bradley Klapper, Associated Press

FILE - This Monday, Aug. 3, 2009 file photo released by the official website of the Iranian Supreme Leader's office, shows Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, delivering a speech after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seated at left, formally endorsed him for a second term as President during an official ceremony in Tehran, Iran. As Iran's capacity to build nuclear weapons grows, intelligence assessments from nations that follow Tehran's atomic progress discern increasing indecision and squabbling by its leadership on whether to make such arms - and if so, how overtly. Most suggest Ahmadinejad is more circumspect. But an intelligence summary shared recently with The Associated Press sees Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the more cautious of the two and says the Revolutionary Guard is benefiting from the dispute, with some of the authority normally exercised by the president devolving to it. (AP Photo/Office of the Supreme Leader, File) ** EDITORIAL USE ONLY, NO SALES ** EDITORS NOTE AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING SOME EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP WAS PREVENTED FROM INDEPENDENT ACCESS TO THIS EVENT (Credit: AP)

Topics:Iran, Al-Qaida, Terrorism

The Obama administration accused Iran on Thursday of entering into a “secret deal” with an al-Qaida offshoot that provides money and recruits for attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Treasury Department designated six members of the unit as terrorists subject to U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. intelligence community has in the past disagreed about the extent of direct links between the Iranian government and al-Qaida. Thursday’s allegations went further than what most analysts had previously said was a murky relationship with limited cooperation.

David S. Cohen, Treasury’s point man for terrorism and financial intelligence, said Iran entered a “secret deal with al-Qaida allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory.” He didn’t provide any details of that agreement, but said the sanctions seek to disrupt al-Qaida’s work in Iraq and deny the terrorist group’s leadership much-needed support.

“Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world today,” Cohen said in a statement. “We are illuminating yet another aspect of Iran’s unmatched support for terrorism.”

Treasury said the exposure of the clandestine agreement would disrupt al-Qaida operations by shedding light on Iran’s role as a “critical transit point” for money and extremists reaching Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“This network serves as the core pipeline through which al-Qaida moves money, facilitators and operatives from across the Middle East to South Asia,” it said..

Treasury said a branch headed by Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil was operating in Iran with the Tehran government’s blessing, funneling funds collected from across the Arab world to al-Qaida’s senior leaders in Pakistan. Khalil, the department said, has operated within Iran’s borders for six years.

Also targeted by the sanctions is Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, appointed by Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida’s envoy in Iran after serving as a commander in Pakistan’s tribal areas. As an emissary, al-Rahman is allowed to travel in and out of Iran with the permission of government officials, the statement claimed.

The sanctions block any assets the individuals might have held in the United States, and bans Americans from doing any business with them.

No Iranian officials were cited for complicity in terrorism. The others targeted were Umid Muhammadi, described as a key planner for al-Qaida in Iraq’s attacks; Salim Hasan Khalifa Rashid al-Kuwari and Abdallah Ghanim Mafuz Muslim al-Khawar, Qatar-based financial supporters who’ve allegedly helped extremists travel across the region; and Ali Hassan Ali al-Ajmi, a Kuwait-based fundraiser for al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The action comes a day after the top U.S. commander for special operations forces said al-Qaida is bloodied and “nearing its end,” even as he warned that the next generation of militants could keep special operations fighting for a decade to come.

Navy SEAL Adm. Eric T. Olson said bin Laden’s killing on May 2 was a near-fatal blow for the organization created by bin Laden and led from his Pakistan hide out. He said the group already had lost steam because of the revolts of the Arab Spring, which proved the Muslim world did not need terrorism to bring down governments, from Tunisia to Egypt.

Treasury’s public allegations against Iran may reflect part of a strategy to expand the pressure on smaller, less well-established offshoots of al-Qaida as the weakening of the group’s leadership threatens to make its activities more disparate. Washington already has re-focused much attention on al-Qaida’s Yemen-based branch, which has attempted to bomb a U.S.-bound jetliner and cargo planes in recent years.

But the exact nature of Iran’s relationship with al-Qaida remains disputed in Washington, with different branches of the intelligence community disagreeing about whether Iran is supporting al-Qaida as a matter of policy, according to one U.S. official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Some hardline militants backing al-Qaida, members of Islam’s majority Sunnis, see the Shiite Islam dominant in Iran as heretical, and they view Tehran’s regional ambitions as a greater threat than the West. Sunni insurgents in Iraq have used car bombs and suicide attacks against Shiite targets, killing thousands since 2003, as well as targeting Shiite militias allied to Iran.

Since 2001, Iran has appeared a somewhat reluctant host for senior al-Qaida operatives who fled there after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, keeping them under tight restrictions. After an initial period of cooperation with the West, Iran now seems to be a more comfortable haven even if it remains on the edge of al-Qaida’s orbit.

Western officials point to the release earlier this year of an Iranian diplomat who was held for 15 months after being kidnapped by gunmen in Pakistan.

In negotiations for the diplomat’s freedom, they say Iran promised better conditions for dozens of people close to Osama bin Laden who were being held under tight security. These included some of the terror chief’s children and the network’s most senior military strategist, Saif al-Adel.

Still, the life of the al-Qaida-linked exiles in Iran continues to be very much a blind spot for Western intelligence agencies. Few firm details have emerged, such as how much Iran limits their movements and contacts.

: More Matthew Lee
: More Bradley Klapper

- 65Comments
- Permalink
- Print
- Short URL
Share:
- Email
- Twitter
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Digg
- Reddit
- StumbleUpon
- ShareThis

What should we believe about al-Qaida?

Too much of what we "know" about bin Laden and the terrorist group he led comes from anonymous U.S. officials

By Peter Gelling, GlobalPost

Topics:GlobalPost, Al-Qaida, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism

Almost everything we learn about Al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden these days is coming from anonymous U.S. officials.

Wednesday, for instance, U.S. officials told us via The Washington Post that Al-Qaida was on the verge of being totally wiped out. The comments echoed earlier ones from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the former C.I.A. director, who earlier said that only a couple dozen more Al-Qaida militants needed to be killed before the war was over.

Last week the officials were talking to the Wall Street Journal. They told the paper that Al-Qaida would likely be shifting the focus of its attacks to Western targets outside of the United States. They said this was because it had become too difficult for them to strike inside the United States.

The Wall Street Journal said the U.S. officials had come to this conclusion based on evidence gleaned from flash drives found in the compound where bin Laden was killed. Much of the information we are learning about bin Laden and Al-Qaida, in fact, is said (by U.S. officials) to be coming from those flash disks, as well as a computer.

It was from the computer, for instance, that U.S. officials learned that bin Laden liked porn. Everyone ran with that story. It was great story. Not only was it sure to drive traffic, combining two of the most searched items on the internet these days (porn and bin Laden), but it also tweaks the legacy of a man who claimed that a strict adherence to Islam is what guided him in his global campaign of terror.

It is reminiscent of the news, also released by U.S. officials, immediately following the raid that led to bin Laden’s death that, in a vain attempt to protect himself, bin Laden used his wife as a human shield. Not so heroic. That detail turned out to be false. As was news that bin Laden was armed.

The news that bin Laden liked porn also came from U.S. officials. They leaked it anonymously to Reuters and then everyone else reported the Reuters report (including GlobalPost). In fact, all the details about the raid, what transpired and what was found after, has come from U.S. officials.

The New York Times reported on May 6 that the details surrounding the raid and the discoveries that followed have been fluid in their accuracy. It partly blamed a ravenous media, itself included. But it also blamed a desire by the United States to spin facts in order to diminish bin Laden’s legacy.

Was the revelation that bin Laden liked porn part of that spin? What about everything else we are learning from U.S. officials? Is that spin too?

If it’s not spin, all the reports surely play into the hands of the U.S. government. Not only did the Wall Street Journal story infer that our defense measures are working but it justified our continued pursuit of Al-Qaida militants all over the world, both through the war in Afghanistan and the ramping up of drone attacks in Yemen and Somalia.

The Washington Post story, meanwhile, suggests that we have been successful in Pakistan, where drone strikes have been plentiful, but Al-Qaida remained strong in Yemen, where the U.S. plans to increase its use of unmanned drones.

Other things we learned recently about bin Laden: He was planning an attack on the 10-year anniversary of Sept. 11, he had a “direct” role in the planning of the July 7 bombings in London, a belief that runs counter to previous reports, and he was actively planning any number of other attacks as well — all according to “U.S. officials.”

If you say so.

: More Peter Gelling

- 18Comments
- Permalink
- Print
- Short URL
Share:
- Email
- Twitter
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Digg
- Reddit
- StumbleUpon
- ShareThis

Panetta’s profanity-laced, flub-filled trip

The new Defense Secretary's maiden voyage abroad was a memorable one

By Natasha Lennard

FILE - In this July 10, 2011 file photo Defense Secretary Leon Panetta listens to a reporter's question while making an unannounced visit to Camp Dwyer, in southern Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Paul J. Richards, Pool, File) (Credit: AP)

Topics:Pentagon, War Room, Afghanistan, Al-Qaida, Iraq, Iraq war, U.S. Military

Newly minted Defense Secretary Leon Panetta inexplicably sprinkled his recently completed trip to to Iraq and Afghanistan with misstatements and mild profanities, earning some unfortunate headlines. Here are some highlights from the 73-year-old former CIA chief’s travels:

”Dammit, make a decision.” Panetta expresses his frustration with Iraq’s delay in making a decision on whether to ask the U.S. to keep some of its 46,000 troops in the country past the end of the year.
”This damn country has a hell of a lot of resources,” Panetta told troops in Baghdad. The New York Times counted “16 cheerful ‘damns’ and ‘hells’”during 28 minutes of remarks.
During the same speech, he described the operation to kill “that son of a bitch” Osama bin Laden.
Panetta told reporters that the United States would keep 70,000 troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2014. The White House has pledged to bring many more service members home by then and aides were quick to say that Panetta had misspoken.
As President George W. Bush did before him, Panetta suggested the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 was related to the presence of al-Qaida there, telling troops in Baghdad that “the reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked.” This is something the Obama White House has denied.

What could possibly account for Panetta’s seemingly of-the-cuff manner? The Defense Secretary had a suggestion on MSNBC on Monday night: “I’m Italian, what the frick can I tell you?”