May 12, 2008 • Vol. 13, No. 33
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If you get your news from NPR, the television networks, the New York Times and the newsweeklies, you could be forgiven if you believe that most of the alleged terrorists the United States is holding (and mistreating) at Guantanamo Bay are of the wrong-place, wrong-time variety. You know, the well-armed goat farmer who just happened to be in Tora Bora during the intense fighting there or the peaceful cleric who got lost and ended up being captured at an al Qaeda outpost on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. For some reason, we hear a lot about them when they are released from Gitmo and, like the al Jazeera cameraman recently freed, their allegations of abuse are broadcast throughout the world.
This powerful editorial in the Wall Street Journal provides a welcome corrective. It turns out that 37 former Gitmo detainees have used their freedom to rejoin the jihad. "Captive 220," a Kuwaiti freed with the help of high-powered American lawyers at Shearman and Sterling, is one of them. He just killed seven people in Mosul.
They, too, were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor in New York, is author of the new, much-discussed book Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. I'm in the middle of reporting two pieces and haven't yet had a spare minute to read it, but it is my top priority when my current obligations are met (next Tuesday). I'll have much more to say about it here at that point.
McCarthy is a razor-sharp thinker and his writing reflects the clarity and precision of his thought. More often than not, when McCarthy sets out to challenge an argument he not only wins but leaves his opponents arguments in tatters. I can't tell you how many emails I've sent him, after reading one of his pieces, that begin with one word: Devastating.
I sent him another one today. Over at National Review Online, McCarthy takes on Laurie Mylroie's error-riddled review of his book. It is devastating. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing, here, but let me just address two points.
First, on Iraq and terrorism. McCarthy writes of Mylroie: "Indeed, for commentators (like Steve Hayes, Tom Joscelyn, and I) who have argued that there were, in fact, important ties between Iraq and radical Islam, Mylroie has been a thorn in the side for years — the analyst whose zany assertions are routinely used to discredit credible evidence of cooperation." He's right, and that was the case not just with those of us outside the government, but those on the inside, too. Mylroie comes up In several of the books written about the Iraq War as a terrorism analyst who led the Bush Administration into making questionable claims about Iraq and al Qaeda. (George Packer, the New Yorker writer and author of the otherwise well-reported book, "The Assassin's Gate," makes this mistake.) This vastly overstates her role. Although her emails may have occasionally made their way to Bush administration officials, no one I know took her arguments very seriously. For good reason. Mylroie has seen an Iraqi hand behind virtually every terrorist attack on American interests. Indeed, in our one brief conversation, she faulted me for failing to understand that al Qaeda is little more than an Iraqi "front group." That's crazy. Iraq was an active state sponsor of terror and, as the recent Pentagon report confirms, a willing sponsor of al Qaeda leaders, their terrorist associates, and a wide variety of jihadist groups.
Second, in her review of McCarthy's book, Mylroie seems to misunderstand -- or misrepresent -- McCarthy's views on the proper U.S. policy approach to terrorism. She argues that McCarthy -- as a prosecutor and an author -- does not take seriously enough the role that states play in sponsoring jihadist terror. As I say, I have not yet read the book, but having discussed these issues with McCarthy on literally dozens of occasions, it's inconceivable that he is guilty of that offense. Indeed, anyone who has read his writings over the past decade knows not only that he understands the role of states but that he sees rogue states as a primary source of the terrorist threat against us.
So, I believe him when he concludes:
A central theme of my book is the incapacity of the criminal-justice system to deal adequately with a national security threat. Another is that, while the threat that confronts us is fueled by a strain of Islamic ideology, terror networks would not be able to project power on a consequential scale absent facilitation by such rogue nations as Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and Sudan. Reading Laurie Mylroie’s review, a reader would come away figuring I must have argued, in contravention of what Willful Blindness actually says, that international terrorism is merely a crime and state sponsorship a trifle. Under the guise of reviewing a book, Mylroie ignores the book, using the opportunity instead to reprise her half-baked theories and cavalier dismissal of Islamic radicalism. It’s a shame the Sun let her do it.
In Afghanistan. I hope this one involves member states actually...y'know, fighting.
NATO will be changing tactics and strategy in Afghanistan, according to the head of the alliance's Operations Section.
"We've learned the lessons and we're refocusing [ISAF's campaign]," said Brett, adding that one strand of ISAF's new effort would be to put a Provincial Reconstruction Team of military and civilian development personnel in each of Afghanistan's 32 provinces.
ISAF's other objectives include efforts "to boost co-operation with Afghanistan's neighbours and to increase [its] support along the [Afghan-Pakistani] border" to counter the Taliban's cross-border manoeuvres, he continued.
Guess not. Hope remains though, as NATO has proven more than willing to jointly bomb the bejesus out of Scotland.
Taliban conventional and suicide attacks in Pakistan have dropped dramatically since the election in February, when the new government has indicated it was willing to negotiate with the terror groups. The Taliban have largely abided by their cease-fire. Meanwhile the U.S. State Department has been pushing the new government to go after the Taliban and al Qaeda in its safe havens inside the Northwest Frontier Province. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said progress is being made on this front, as the Pakistani government is exerting pressure on the Taliban and al Qaeda in concert with efforts on the Afghan side of the border.
"To some extent, the extremists in those areas are now fighting on two fronts," Boucher said at a news conference in Kabul, Afghanistan on March 14. "They have to deal with pressures from the Pakistan side and the pressure from the Afghan side. The more we can do that in concert with each other, the more squeezed the al Qaeda and Taliban supporters in those areas will feel."
The Taliban obviously is not feeling the squeeze, and is brimming with confidence. Yesterday, the Taliban started a two-day conference in the tribal agency of Mohmand. The Taliban have provided their own security and have blocked the roads leading up to the conference.
Taliban leaders will be in attendance. "Local ulema, Taliban leaders and delegations from the Tank and Swat districts of NWFP, and the North and South Waziristan, Kurram, Orakzai and Bajaur tribal agencies participated in the conference," Pakistan's Daily Times reported. "Hundreds of people including Taliban spokesman Maulvi Omar attended the event, despite heavy rain in the area... He said that object of the conference was to enable the Taliban to spread the message of jihad"
None other than Faqir Mohammed, the leader of the Taliban in Bajaur agency who has sheltered al Qaeda number two Ayman al Zawahiri and has been the target of two U.S. airstrikes, is expected to attend the conference. Baitullah Mehsud, the overall commander of the Taliban in Pakistan, declined to attend "due to personal engagements and security reasons."
Meanwhile, the Pakistani government has ordered the Pakistani Army to withdraw from Swat and has ordered a new round of negotiations with the Taliban. The last set of peace negotiations led to the Taliban takeover of North and South Waziristan, Mohmand, and Bajaur agencies and the settled district of Swat.
The Pakistani government knows where senior Taliban leaders are gathering, and has done nothing to kill or capture the men responsible for hundreds of killed and thousands of wounded over the past year in Pakistan alone. Some squeeze.
AFP reports:
The US State Department said Thursday it has advised former US president Jimmy Carter against meeting with the radical Palestinian group Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal if he visits Syria....
The State Department will help Carter with arrangements if he visits Syria but "will not participate in the planning or scheduling of any meetings with Hamas figures in Damascus," McCormack said.
"And in fact we have counseled the former president (against) having such a meeting," he said.
Fine, so the State Department won't schedule Carter's meeting with a man who leads a group officially designated as a terrorist organization by the United States government. More important, will the Secret Service be protecting Carter as he goes to rub elbows with the who's who of world terrorism? And if so, do American taxpayers really have to foot the bill? Carter's made it perfectly clear that he's attending this meeting in his capacity as head of the Carter Center, not as a former President of the United States--so why do I have to pay for it?
I haven't really been following this issue, mostly because I'm pretty sure that whatever the government is doing to these terrorists wouldn't "shock my conscience." Like my man Scalia says, sometimes you're going to have to take these terrorists and "smack them in the face." But, some folks are more easily shocked than I am, and they are in full moral outrage mode this morning with the release of a 2003 memo by John Yoo (now a professor at Berkeley!) approving "harsh interrogation techniques." Oh, the humanity!
Unfortunately, in a sad twist of fate, Andrew Sullivan has taken the week off, and so there will be no calls for a new Nuremberg trial featuring the prosecution of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and everyone else Andrew doesn't agree with. But if you need your fix of self-righteous lefty demagoguery, Glenn Greenwald is a pretty good substitute with his post on "John Yoo's War Crimes."
Jim Gerghaty of the National Review Online found an interesting tidbit in the magazine's archives:
On January 5, [2003] Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's former personal pilot dropped a bombshell that has been ignored by just about every major U.S. news organization: The Venezuelan president, according to the pilot, gave al Qaeda a substantial sum of money following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Memo to Joe Kennedy: How goes that little oil business with your buddy Hugo? Any idea if Osama’s getting his cut?
Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell spoke yesterday at his alma mater, Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. The whole speech is worth a read. Perhaps the most entertaining moment comes when McConnell shares his personal email and that of his assistant with the crowd. In classic DNI fashion, this bit of information has been redacted for the version sent out by his office. Hilarious.
The most important moment of the speech came in response to a question about the greatest current threats to the U.S. For those who took comfort in last year's misleading NIE on Iran, McConnell provides a welcome wake-up call.
My biggest worry at the moment: nuclear weapon in Iran. If the Iranians are successful in achieving fissile material, which they are pursuing, and if they turn it into a nuclear weapon, the dynamics in the Middle East will change literally overnight. We will have a nuclear-arms race because if the Iranians have them, my guess is all of the surrounding nations would immediately attempt to secure nuclear weapons and now we’ve got a situation where we have to have access to energy and not only is in destabilized in the current politics of what we all know about, you have the risk of weapons of mass destruction added to it.
He said: "Those who claim we should withdraw from Iraq in order to fight Al Qaeda more effectively elsewhere are making a dangerous mistake. Whether they were there before is immaterial, al Qaeda is in Iraq now, as it is in the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Somalia, and in Indonesia."
Whether they were there before is immaterial. I understand the point. He said several weeks ago that while he still believes that going to war in Iraq was the right thing to do he wasn't going to spend his time now debating whether it was a wise thing to do. I get that, too.
But lines like the ones above strike me as unnecessary and unwise. We know al Qaeda was in Iraq before the war. Nobody disputes that. Reasonable people can disagree on how much the regime aided them in Iraq and whether Saddam Hussein knowingly gave them sanctuary in Baghdad. But Abu Musab al Zarqawi and two dozen al Qaeda members were in Baghdad before the war. There is no question about that. So taken literally the effect of McCain's statement is to turn a plain fact into a debatable issue.
But the real debate isn't about whether those two dozens jihadists were in Iraq, as McCain surely knows. It's about whether Iraq was part of the global war on terror from the beginning or is now only because we went to war there five years ago. He seems to be saying that the answer doesn't matter. But he's wrong. And the new IDA study makes clear that any serious global war on terror -- or, as McCain prefers, struggle against radical Islamic extremism -- had to include Iraq. In the twelve years before the war, Saddam Hussein was supporting an alphabet soup of jihadist terror groups across the globe -- from Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines to Ayman al Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad to the radicals in northern Iraq to the "Sudanese fighters" he trained on Iraqi soil throughout the 1990s. This matters. And John McCain, who has a better record on Iraq than anyone else who ran for president this year and still probably doesn't get enough credit for fighting back the forces of withdrawal in the Senate last summer, should know better.
We have been among the many conservatives critical of the White House and its inexplicable aversion to making a fact-based case on Saddam Hussein's support for jihadist terror. But for years now, instead of arguments to that effect, George W. Bush simply repeats his assertion that Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror. That hasn't worked, of course, in part because other aspects of the Bush Administration's case for war in Iraq were deeply flawed, even if most Democrats made the same arguments.
Now things are different. We know what Saddam Hussein was up to in the decade before the war and we know it from the best source available -- the Iraqi regime itself. The debate is no longer whether the Iraqi regime would support jihadist terror. It did. It's a fact. That support included backing for members of the al Qaeda leadership and several affiliate groups. Again, that's a fact. And yet the White House still refused even to acknowledge any of this.
Until now. Mark Eichenlaub, who runs the excellent website, Regime of Terror, has an excellent article at National Review online. It's a very straightforward piece that explains in clear language what we have learned from the recently released Pentagon study on Iraq and terrorism. And remarkably, he has managed to coax a quote out of NSC spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe commented to me that the report confirms that Saddam “had ties to regional terrorism” and that in a region where there was “no lack of terrorist groups willing to attack the U.S.,” it was not surprising to see who Saddam had been supporting.
His claims are indisputable, of course, but it's still notable that someone from the Bush Administration other than Dick Cheney is willing to talk on the record about terrorism. (The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the new study when I contacted them two weeks ago for this piece.)
It's a good start. Next, someone should make sure that George W. Bush sees the IDA report on Iraq and terrorism. National Security Adviser Steve Hadley was supposed to have shown Bush the report before it was released publicly. But Hadley is cautious to a fault and believes that there is nothing to gain from revisiting the case for war in Iraq. And there are no indications that he shared the report with President Bush.
Bush would want to see it. Months ago, when we fought to have the Iraqi documents translated and released, Bush's White House staff kept him in the dark. Even after Bush told then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte that he wanted the documents out, the DNI slow-rolled the process and the White House staff argued against sharing the secrets of the Iraqi regime.
Those were mistakes and they have cost the president. But now we have enough of the regime's documents to know that Saddam Hussein support jihadist terror for years. And, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out Monday, it's clear that the CIA underestimated Iraqi support for terrorism. The White House should talk about it.
John Hinderaker at Power Line writes, "…our principal news media outlets have fabricated an alternative reality around the Iraq war by simply misreporting the facts." That’s true, especially with regards to Saddam’s terror ties. And, as Power Line has noted on a number of occasions, the media has gotten a lot of help from partisan members of the U.S. Intelligence Community (both current and former).
Take, for example, this recent column by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek concerning the Iraqi Perspectives Project’s recently released study of Saddam’s intelligence files. You would never know from Isikoff’s piece that the report contains documents linking Saddam’s regime to six terrorist groups that are all part of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist empire, including two groups that form the core of al Qaeda. Nor, would you know that Saddam’s regime cooperated with these groups at various times. Instead, all you’ll find is spin.
The spin is provided by Paul Pillar, a former high-ranking analyst at the CIA who has made his anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war inclinations known. Pillar has spun tale after tale about Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda. He is heavily invested in the notion that Saddam’s "secular" regime did not work with the Islamists of al Qaeda. Pillar is, quite clearly, a man with an agenda. Here are the most relevant lines from Isikoff’s piece:
The report did find plenty of evidence that Saddam's regime had close ties to other (mainly Palestinian) terror groups and had maintained contacts with some radical Islamic movements-including, according to one 1993 document, Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Last week Vice President Dick Cheney said the document showed there was a "link between Iraq and Al Qaeda." But Pillar notes the Egyptian group-headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri-didn't merge with Al Qaeda until years later. "This is the same kind of word game they played before the war," Pillar says.
This is nonsense. Pillar is pretending that because Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad (the "EIJ") had not formally merged with bin Laden until 1998 or 2001 (depending on who you talk to) that a connection between Saddam and the EIJ doesn’t represent a link to al Qaeda. On the contrary, as I pointed out in a recent post over at Power Line, Zawahiri and the EIJ began to work closely with bin Laden in the mid-1980’s--long before their formal merger. Numerous sources, including Zawahiri’s lawyer in Egypt, Montasser al-Zayyat, have reported on the long-standing relationship. Lawrence Wright has also provided numerous details in his reporting for the New Yorker and in his book The Looming Tower.
A clear pattern emerges from the available evidence: Zawahiri and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad were major influences on Osama bin Laden early on, long before their formal merger. There were, of course, tactical differences from time to time, but this never stopped the two groups from working hand-in-glove. In fact, as Wright, al-Zayyat, and other sources have reported, it was Zawahiri and his EIJ lieutenants who steered bin Laden towards the absolute jihadist approach that defines al Qaeda. They were, in fact, always as much a part of al Qaeda as bin Laden himself. It is highly significant, therefore, that the IIS document Pillar and Isikoff refer to says that the IIS and the EIJ had an agreement in place to collude against Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt. (Subsequent documents show that Saddam wanted the EIJ to focus on hunting Americans in Somalia. I’ll have more on this in the near future.)
The evidence is rather unambiguous in this regard. So, we are left with two options: (1) Pillar doesn’t know this, or (2) He is spinning this story to serve his own agenda. Either way, Isikoff’s blind reliance on Pillar to dismiss this important connection between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda does not inspire confidence. Of course, as Robert Novak has reported, Isikoff has relied heavily on Pillar in the past.
Continue reading "Who's Playing Word Games?" »
Afghanistan has its own American Idol!! In fact, Afghan Star just crowned 19-year-old Rafi Naabzada the winner of its third season, and the whole country is going gah-gah for his hip new sound. Actually, his singing voice resembles the screams of a goat passing a kidney stone, but that didn’t stop a third of the Afghan population from tuning in for the season finale. Despite some controversy over a third-place finish by a colorfully, though modestly, dressed female contestant, hundreds of thousands of text message votes were sent. Yeah, apparently they have text messaging in Afghanistan too.
For all the talk about winning the hearts and minds of Afghans and Iraqis, stories about Western culture being successfully exported have been mostly overlooked. That a pop reality show can thrive in a nation ruled just seven years ago by fascist thugs who stoned people for singing and dancing is a cause for hope. And by hope, I am not merely referring to the prospect of a Middle Eastern edition of Flavor of Love. The fact is Afghan Star has almost as much to do with winning their hearts and minds as anything we do militarily.
Guns cannot penetrate the soul. However, popular entertainment combined with consumerism has the potential to refocus the attention of young, prospective terrorist recruits. A new consumer culture can even be used, as with products like Mecca Cola, to provide people a nonviolent means of channeling anti-Americanism. Muslims can maintain the pretense of hating the West even while they subconsciously affirm quintessentially American values like materialism and consumer choice.
The Wall Street Journal offers a particularly strong editorial this morning on Iraq's support for terrorism and links to al Qaeda.
The key conclusion, in my view, is this one: "The main Iraq intelligence failure was over WMD, but the report indicates that the CIA also underestimated Saddam's ties to global terror cartels." [Emphasis in the original.]
The editorial lashes the press corps, John McCain and the Bush Administration for the failure to let the public know about the study and its importance. The entire thing is worth reading -- here -- but I found the editorial's criticism of the Bush Administration particularly compelling.
A new Pentagon report suggests that Iraq's links to world-wide terror networks, including al Qaeda, were far more extensive than previously understood.
Naturally, it's getting little or no attention. Press accounts have been misleading or outright distortions, while the Bush Administration seems indifferent. Even John McCain has let the study's revelations float by. But that doesn't make the facts any less notable or true.
The editorial concludes:
All of these are inconvenient facts for those who want to assert that somehow Saddam could have been easily contained and presented no threat to the U.S. The Harmony files buttress the case that the decision to oust Saddam was the right one -- which makes it all the more puzzling that the Bush Administration is mum. It isn't the first time the White House has ceded the Iraq debate to its opponents.
We are, after all, in the middle of a global war on terror. The great debate over past six years has been about whether Iraq is a central front in that war or a distraction from it. You'd think a study on "Iraq and Terrorism" might be relevant, especially to an dministration that has struggled miserably to communicate on the war. Here is their case, and they're choosing to ignore it.
Iran isn't working with al Qaeda in Iraq? Tell that to some of al Qaeda's opposition. The NEFA Foundation has provided a transcript of an interview with a commander from "Hamas in Iraq," an insurgency group that was formerly a faction of the 1920 Revolution Brigades:
Q: "Is there any evidence of cooperation between the Al-Qaida network and Iran that you are aware of, since you are in a province bordering Iran?"
A: "We have irrefutable evidence of Iran supplying Al-Qaida with weaponry. This was exposed because of the weapons they used in the Diyala province several days ago - specifically on December 25, 2007. Our mujahideen from the Uthman bin Affan Brigade dismantled a car bomb in the Al-Onaq neighborhood in the region of al-Hadid [west of Baquba]. Hidden inside the car were three large rockets, three antitank mines, a quantity of TNT, 53 handgrenades, and a quantity of chlorine hidden inside the gas tank. [These items] were confiscated, and upon examining weapons, we discovered that they were Iranian-made. We also obtained confessions from some of those we have captured from [Al-Qaida] that they had transformed their wounded to border hospitals."
It is never safe to take these characters at their word. But he certainly does not have a pro-American bias. He refers to America as the "enemy" and says that his group will "never, ever cooperate" with American-led forces.
In addition, nothing he says about Iran's support for al Qaeda is all that surprising. As we have mentioned previously, the U.S. military and the new Iraqi intelligence service both confirm that Iran is hunting al Qaeda's enemies, not al Qaeda itself, inside Iraq. Iran is on al Qaeda's side in Iraq--not ours and not the Iraqi citizens. Some in the media seem to have trouble accepting this reality. As Steve Schippert explains, that includes the Boston Globe.
As Steve Hayes and I have previously discussed, the new IPP study documents the relationship between Saddam Hussein’s regime and Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad ("EIJ"). It is worth reproducing the language from the IPP study in this regard once again: "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives."
Indeed, this is a very important fact. Zawahiri has worked closely with Osama bin Laden since the mid-1980’s, when both terror chieftains were organizing and directing recruits for the jihad in Afghanistan. Zawahiri and other Egyptian terrorists, in particular Sheikh Omar abd al-Rahman (aka the "Blind Sheikh"), played instrumental roles in al Qaeda’s evolution. Most likely, al Qaeda would not have become nearly as effective without them. Almost all of the key roles inside al Qaeda were filled by EIJ members early on, and the EIJ remains at the core of al Qaeda to this day. It is no exaggeration to say that Zawahiri is as much a part of al Qaeda as Osama bin Laden himself.
But there is more to the story of Saddam’s relationship with the EIJ. If you take a closer look at one of the documents the IPP study relies upon, you will find that Saddam agreed to work with not only Zawahiri’s EIJ, but also, more broadly, the so-called "Afghan Arabs"--the veterans of the Afghanistan jihad against the Soviets who made up almost the entire first generation of al Qaeda--in general. (Of course, the EIJ’s members were themselves "Arab Afghans.")
The key is the January 25, 1993 memo from the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to Saddam that I discussed in my first post in this series. Recall that just one week earlier, on January 18, Saddam had ordered his minions to use terrorists to "hunt" the Americans throughout the Muslim world, and especially in Somalia. One of the groups the IIS identified as capable of fulfilling this mission was Zawahiri’s EIJ.
According to the January 25 memo, Iraqi Intelligence had recently met with a leading figure in Sudan’s ruling National Islamic Front party, Sheikh Ali ‘Uthman Taha. It was Taha who negotiated a renewal of the relationship between Saddam’s Iraq, on the one hand, and Zawahiri and the Blind Sheikh’s sister organizations on the other. Sudan was then playing host to the Arab Afghans.
Continue reading "Reading Saddam's Intelligence Files, Part 5: The Arab Afghans" »
Eli Lake, whose been covering this issue for years, reports for the New York Sun:
Mr. McCain's national security adviser, Randy Scheunemann, told The New York Sun, "There is ample documentation that Iran has provided many different forms of support to Sunni extremists, including Al Qaeda as well as Shi'ia extremists in Iraq. It would require a willing suspension of disbelief to deny Iran supports Al Qaeda in Iraq."
Responding to Mr. Scheunemann's remarks, a senior foreign policy adviser to Senator Obama, Susan Rice, yesterday told the Sun, "It's very bizarre." She noted that Mr. McCain had "made the same statement three times in as many days. Surely he must know, as Senator Lieberman reminded him, that Iran is not engaged with Al Qaeda in Iraq. I don't know if he is confused, or is he cynically trying to conflate Al Qaeda and Iran as Cheney and Bush did Al Qaeda and Iraq in 2002 and 2003?"
Ms. Rice stipulated in the interview that she was not saying Iran and Al Qaeda have never worked together, but that "there is no body of evidence to suggest Iran is aiding Al Qaeda in Iraq."
Rice echoes what Brian Katulis of the left-wing Center for American Progress said yesterday, calling the intelligence on this a "gray area." Likewise, Rice won't say that Iran and al Qaeda don't work together, so it's hard to see what all the fuss is about. And whatever relationship exists, Iran isn't going to advertise it. In this gray area, the Obama camp leans one way (assuming our enemies don't collaborate) and the McCain camp leans another (assuming they do). Fact of the matter is that what little evidence exists suggests they do work together--and of course when they don't work together there will be no evidence. If Obama makes it to the White House, he can raise the issue with Ahmadinejad during their summit at Camp David--I'm sure he'll get a straight answer (maybe there really is no al Qaeda, or homosexuality, in Iran).
With the ongoing imbroglio over Senator McCain’s comments linking Iran and al Qaeda, it is worth reviewing what Saddam’s own files have to say about Iran’s support for al Qaeda. Not only do Saddam’s Intelligence files confirm that his regime had a significant relationship with al Qaeda, but they also provide more evidence of Iran’s hand in al Qaeda’s terror. Some may say this is impossible: How could two states that hated each other as much as Saddam’s Iraq and the mullah’s Iran support the same terrorist group(s)? However, such thinking is very narrow-minded.
The IPP study proposes that we think of our terrorist enemies as cartels. In this sense, each of these parties competes in some important ways, but they are also capable of collaborating when it suits their interests. The IPP’s paradigm for understanding terrorism is very similar to the one Michael Ledeen proposed in his book, The War Against the Terror Masters. Ledeen has proposed that our terrorist enemies are best compared to rival mafia families, who can bitterly fight one another only to band together when facing a common foe, like law enforcement agencies. James Woolsey, the former head of the CIA, has proposed a similar way of understanding modern Islamic terrorism as well. For Woolsey, terrorist organizations and their sponsors are capable of forming "joint ventures" to fulfill their common interests--e.g. attacking Americans.
Numerous examples of such collaboration can be found throughout the history of Middle Eastern and Islamic terrorism. For example, Yasser Arafat and his PLO allied with both Iraq and Iran at various points throughout Arafat’s terrorist career. Hamas, a terrorist group which is the ideological cousin of al Qaeda and likewise an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has drawn support from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and previously Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Today, the Sunni Hamas is strongly allied with Iran. And the man who served as Osama bin Laden’s protector and mentor from 1991 through mid-1996, Hassan al-Turabi, was quite open about his relationships with both Saddam Hussein (who he called a "close" ally) and the Iranian Mullahs. Turabi turned his Sudan into a melting pot of terrorism, bringing together disparate groups under a common anti-Western, anti-American banner. (See here and here for my two part series on Turabi.) This does not mean that Saddam’s Iraq and Iran necessarily had to cooperate with each other (although they did when it came to illicit deals under the oil-for-food program), just that each was capable of supporting terrorist groups that shared their immediate interests.
Continue reading "Reading Saddam’s Intelligence Files, Part 4: Iran & al Qaeda" »
Accompanying the IPP report were four volumes of backup materials. In all, the five total volumes contain more than 2,000 pages of documents, translations and other related materials, which are collectively housed in the so-called Harmony Database. The database contains a massive warehouse of materials collected in post-Saddam Iraq. Many of the documents contained in the four backup volumes were not discussed in the first volume of the IPP report, which was the actual study produced by the Institute for Defense Analyses.
One of those documents is a provocative letter from the Iraqi embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Dated January 17, 2003, the letter is addressed to Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its subject is listed as "Al-Qa’eda Activities." Here is the relevant portion of the U.S. government’s translation of the document:
Attached is a report, furnished by source code number 6841, which includes the following:
1- Al-Qa’eda dispatched elements and personnel with fake passports to Arabic Countries under fictitious [sic] alias to target American interests in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain.
2- The Yemeni (Abu-Muhammad) was sent to Algeria carrying a passport with the name Saydi Ahmed Habiballah, to contact the Algerian "Salafist group for the calling of Jihad" and deliver money to them; however he was killed in an armed skirmish between Algerian security forces and the above-mentioned group. Algerian authorities were able to trace his real name and his families [sic] address in cooperation with the Yemeni embassy in Algeria. His real name is (‘Imad ‘Abdul-Wahid Rahman ‘Ulwan) from the "Ta’iz" village and he was a member of Al-Qa’eda.
A careful reading of the translated letter raises a number of questions and observations:
• What was contained in the "report, furnished by source code number 6841"? The volume of documents produced as part of the study does not contain a copy of the actual report, which was apparently included with the letter. Only a copy of the translated cover letter was included. Does the U.S. government have a copy of the actual report too? Or, is it missing? If the government does have a copy of the full report, what does it say?
• Why does source 6841 know so much about al Qaeda’s activities? It is possible that 6841 was an Iraqi spy tasked with monitoring al Qaeda on behalf of the Iraqi regime. But if that is the case, then Iraq had a particularly well-placed mole. Not only did he know that al Qaeda had sent terrorists to three different countries "to target American interests," but he also knew that one al Qaeda member had been sent to Algeria to "deliver money" to still other al Qaeda operatives. Al Qaeda is a highly compartmentalized organization, just as Saddam’s intelligence services were. Yet, source 6841 seems to know details that only someone with sufficiently senior access inside the al Qaeda organization could know.
Continue reading "Reading Saddam’s Intelligence Files, Part 3: Source 6841" »
Eli Lake reports for the New York Sun:
The news that American forces had captured Iranians in Iraq was widely reported last month, but less well known is that the Iranians were carrying documents that offered Americans insight into Iranian activities in Iraq.
An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." The source was careful to stress that the Iranian plans do not extend to cooperation with Baathist groups fighting the government in Baghdad, and said the documents rather show how the Quds Force — the arm of Iran's revolutionary guard that supports Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite death squads — is working with individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna.
But yesterday the New Republic's film critic, Chris Orr, assured us that "Al Qaeda is, after all, a Sunni group, and Iran, a Shiite nation," so we needn't worry about collaboration between the two. Maybe the military just got the translation wrong.
As discussed in my first post in this series, Saddam tasked his minions with hunting Americans throughout the Muslim world and especially in Somalia in 1993. The Iraqi Intelligence Service identified eleven groups with which it had relations and that were capable of carrying out the mission. One of the groups identified was the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam party, otherwise known as the JUI, in Pakistan. According to a U.S. Government translation, here is what the IIS had to say about its relationship with the JUI in its January 25, 1993 memo:
Jam’iyyat ‘Ulama’ Al-Islam (J.U.I.), (translator’s note: "The Society of Islamic Scholars")
1. It was established in 1948 and is considered one of the political parties that influence the Pakistani arena and in particular the northern region [Baluchistan] and Punjab. It is headed by Mulana (translator’s note: or Mawlana) Fadil Al-Rahman.
2. It depends on its financing on its organizations in Pakistan and foreign aid from Iraq and Libya.
3. Secretary of the Party, Mulana Jawid Ahmad Nu’mati, has a close relationship with our apparatus since 1981 and is willing to perform any mission that he would be assigned.
The JUI has been one of the strictest Islamist parties in Pakistan. It is as far from secular as you can get; its goal has been to turn Pakistan into a theological state. Moreover, the JUI has practiced an extremist brand of Islam for decades. Yet, according to this IIS document, the JUI was receiving aid from both Iraq and Libya--two nominally secular states headed by ruthless dictators who one would not think of as especially religious, to say the least. Not only was the JUI receiving aid from Iraq, the IIS reported a "close relationship" with the group’s secretary since the early 1980’s and his willingness "to perform any mission that he would be assigned." Since this was written in the context of Iraq’s quest to launch anti-American terrorist operations in Somalia and elsewhere, "any mission" would presumably include just such a task. However, it is not known if the JUI ever contributed to such attacks in any way, and it might well not have.
What the IIS memo does not note is that the JUI was then training future cadres of Taliban members. Indeed, the JUI is widely considered the mother organization for the Taliban. The U.S. government’s translation of the IIS document notes that the JUI is headed by "Mulana Fadil Al-Rahman." There are a number of alternative spellings of Rahman’s name floating around, but a more common English translation of his name is Maulana Fazlur Rahman.
But, as Steve Schippert has previously noted, you can just call him the "godfather" of the Taliban.
Continue reading "Reading Saddam’s Intelligence Files, Part 2: The Taliban Connection" »
(Note: Over the next few days, I will be blogging about documents captured in post-Saddam Iraq. Some of these documents were analyzed in a new study written for the military by the Institute for Defense Analyses. That report is part of the Iraqi Perspectives Project and is titled, Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents. Hereafter, I refer to the study as the "IPP Report.")
On January 18, 1993, Saddam’s personal secretary sent a "very urgent" note to the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Saddam wanted his goons to "hunt" Americans present on Arab soil:
Follow up to our memo 7184/K on 20 Dec 1992, the [Baath] Party has decided to snipe (translator’s note: or hunt) Americans that are present on Arab soil, particularly in Somalia, utilizing Arab, Asian Muslims or friendly elements.
The note was directed to the head of Saddam’s foreign intelligence service, who was told he "should meet to study the method of performing the said directive and to notify me of your opinion as soon as possible."
One week later, on January 25, 1993, the Iraqi Intelligence Service sent a reply to Saddam:
In reference to your memo Top Secret Personal and Very Urgent 425/K dated 18 Jan 1993. Below are the groups with whom our agency has relations, and who have elements dispersed on the Arab land and have the expertise to carry out the aforementioned mission.
Eleven terrorist groups/individuals were listed including: (1) the Abu Nidal Organization (aka the Fatah Revolutionary Council), (2) the Palestinian Liberation Front, or "PLF" (3) Force 17, (4) an obscure group called the "Organization of AI-Jihad and AI-Tajdid," (5) the Al-Murabitun Organization, (6) The Palestinian Abd-al-Bari AI-Duwayk (Abu Dawud), (7) Abd-al-Fattah Abd-al-Latif Fakhuri (Abu Yihya), (8) the Egyptian Islamic Jihad Organization, or "EIJ" (9) the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam, or "JUI", (10) the Islamic Afghani Party, or Hezb-e Islami and (11) the Pakistani Scholars Party.
Saddam was clearly keeping some nasty company. The Abu Nidal Organization was one of the most deadly terrorist organizations of the 1980’s, having killed hundreds and wounded hundreds more.
But what is particularly interesting about this document is that the IIS noted its relationship with two parties that are directly allied with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda (the Egyptian Islamic Jihad Organization, which is one of the core groups that makes up al Qaeda, and the Islamic Afghani Party, which has allied with bin Laden since the 1980’s) and one group which is, in many ways, the mother organization for the Taliban (the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam).
In coming posts we will explore the ties between Saddam’s regime and these three groups, including what Saddam’s intelligence files say about these relationships. It is clear that Saddam saw his support for all of these organizations in the context of striking his enemies, especially Americans.
After all, the IIS said these groups, including core al Qaeda members, were ready to "hunt" Americans.
When the 9-11 Commission’s final report was published in July 2004, some in the press were quick to trumpet one line in the report that appeared to dispense with the issue of Saddam’s ties to al Qaeda. The Commission reported on a number of contacts between the two sides, but ultimately concluded: "to date we have seen no evidence that these or earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship."
For many, that was the end of the story. But re-read the Commission’s report carefully (as some did at the time) and you realize it found a number of disturbing threads tying Saddam’s Iraq to al Qaeda. For example, the Commission reported that Ayman al Zawahiri set up at least one and maybe two meetings between al Qaeda and Saddam’s regime in 1998. The Commission explained that Zawahiri was in a position to act as a liaison since he had "ties of his own to the Iraqis." The Commission did not explain further.
But now, thanks to the release of a new study on Saddam’s ties to terrorism, we learn more about Zawahiri’s "ties" to Iraq. The Iraqi Perspectives Project report (which we’ve discussed here, here, and here) explains:
Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.
As Steve Hayes pointed out again this morning, the study cites an Iraqi Intelligence document dated March 18, 1993. The translation of the document provided in the study begins:
We list herein the organizations that our agency [IIS] cooperates with and have relations with various elements in many parts of the Arab world and who also have the expertise to carry out assignments indicated in the above directive [the cited directive has not been discovered yet].
Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad is one of the nine terrorist organizations then discussed in the extracts of the document cited:
Islamic Jihad Organization [Egyptian Islamic Jihad]
- In a meeting in the Sudan we agreed to renew our relations with the Islamic Jihad Organization in Egypt. Our information on the group is as follows:
- It was established in 1979.
- Its goal is to apply the Islamic shari' a law and establish Islamic rule.
- It is considered one of the most brutal Egyptian organizations. It carried out numerous successful operations, including the assassination of Sadat.
- We have previously met with the organization's representative and we agreed on a plan to carry out commando operations against the Egyptian regime.
So we now know that Zawahiri’s "ties" to Iraq included an agreement to cooperate on "commando operations against the Egyptian regime." This would seem to be evidence of an "operational collaborative relationship." That Saddam’s regime was willing to sponsor the EIJ’s operations should be a major blow to those who would argue that Saddam and al Qaeda could never, ever cooperate. It sheds new light on the 9/11 Commission’s report, and raises a number of questions.
Continue reading ""Ties of His Own"" »
Over at the New York Sun Eli Lake has an excellent write-up on the new military report, which (contrary to what many press outlets are reporting) details Saddam’s extensive ties to regional and global terrorist groups, including al Qaeda. I’m sure we will be following up with more commentary in the coming days (and make sure to read Steve Hayes’s initial take here), but for now I think it is worth pointing out that the report ties Saddam’s regime to at least five different al Qaeda associated groups, including two groups that formed the core of al Qaeda.
The Iraqi Intelligence documents discussed in the report link Saddam’s regime to: the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (the “EIJ” is al Qaeda number-two Ayman al Zawahiri's group), the Islamic Group or “IG” (once headed by a key al Qaeda ideologue, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman), the Army of Mohammed (al Qaeda's affiliate in Bahrain), the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (a forerunner to Ansar al-Islam, al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq), and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (a long-time ally of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan), among other terrorist groups. Documents cited by the report, but not discussed at length in the publicly available version (they may be in a redacted portion of the report), also detail Saddam’s ties to a sixth al Qaeda affiliate: the Abu Sayyaf group, an al Qaeda affiliate in the Philippines.
Both the EIJ and the IG were early and important core allies for Osama bin Laden as he forged the al Qaeda terror network, which comprises a number of affiliates around the world.
The report also says that Iraqi Intelligence documents demonstrate Saddam’s willingness to support the Somali terrorist groups who famously terrorized U.S. forces in the early 1990s. Although the report does not include any direct evidence of Saddam’s regime collaborating with Osama bin Laden’s terrorists in this regard, the report’s authors note that this was one example where the two organizations’ interests coincided. No wonder one of Saddam’s favorite movies was Black Hawk Down. As the war in Iraq got underway in March 2003, Saddam even reportedly distributed copies of the film to his troops--showing them how he thought the Americans could be defeated through guerilla-style terrorist warfare.
Of course, as Steve pointed out, some will continue to seize on one misleading line in the executive summary to claim that the report dismisses the idea the two were linked in any way. The overwhelming bulk of the report and the actual evidence cited therein, however, tell a different story. There’s more to come.
The other night I attended an electrifying debate by Intelligence Squared U.S. about U.S. interrogation techniques in the war on terror. Despite the recent brouhaha about John McCain allegedly backtracking, I think it’s clear that the presidential candidates of both parties will dismantle many of the Bush administration’s policies once in office. Yet I left the debate feeling the question of U.S. interrogation techniques will not become irrelevant in the next year.
Many of the interrogation techniques employed by the CIA and now barred by the Army field manual do not amount to what most Americans would call torture. While it’s easy to understand why waterboarding is controversial, I cannot say the same about depriving detainees of sleep, being disrespectful to them in a good cop/bad cop context, and subjecting them to loud music (unless it is Hanson’s “MMMBop”). These are all practices currently barred by the Army Field Manual, but which the CIA is permitted to employ against high-value terrorist detainees.
Whether or not America should allow these techniques to be used, I found it very peculiar that opponents of the resolution took for granted that we would win the hearts and minds of Muslims if only we abandoned these techniques. Polls have shown that only small minorities of several predominantly Muslim countries believe al Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Nothing we do or have done--certainly not the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo--is responsible for these delusions. To say otherwise is naïve, and evidence actually suggests that in the last four years, there has been declining support for Bin Laden and suicide bombing among Muslim populations.
The speaker who struck me as most loopy was John Hutson, a former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, who refused to draw any nuance about the different interrogation techniques used by the CIA. He called everything torture, and even proclaimed “This is not an existential war” and that “Killing us isn’t their goal.” I encourage Mr. Hutson to get to know our enemy a little better by reading about al Qaeda’s field manual. That should give him a better understanding of what torture really is and the nature of their goals.
One of Her Majesty's Finest vs. 150 Taliban. Good odds, it appears.
A BRITISH soldier who almost single-handedly took on 150 Taliban after he and his 50-man convoy were ambushed in Afghanistan has been awarded the Military Cross.
Fusilier Damien Hields used his grenade machinegun to destroy seven Taliban positions before his ambushers realised he was their main threat. After peppering his vehicle with bullets, they hit the 24-year-old soldier. He had to be dragged off for treatment by his driver after he tried to continue fighting. They were on their way back to Kandahar on June 3, driving south in a valley, when the Taliban attacked. One of the Land Rovers hit a landmine and was flipped upside down by the blast. “There were Taliban dug in all around and they started hitting us with AK47s and mortars. We could not see where they were at first.”
Hields followed the trail of RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades coming towards him and started firing grenades one at a time, trying to home in. “Then I switched to automatic fire,” he said. A grenade machine gun has a box with 32 grenade rounds. “I emptied a box onto that position and you could see all the dust and smoke flying about where they hit. “After that no fire came back from that position and I moved on to the next one. One or two rounds until I got onto the target, and switch to automatic and empty the box.” Realising that Hields was the main threat to them, the remaining Taliban fighters homed in on him with their RPG7s, Dushka heavy machineguns and Kalash-nikov rifles. Hields was undaunted and continued firing.
“I got through six boxes in about 15 minutes and we were winning the fight,” he said. “They started it. We were going to finish it.”
Democrats have spent the last year loudly insisting that Afghanistan is the "real" war on terror. But when it comes to making meaningful recommendations for what actually needs to be done to reverse the situation in Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban, they have been notably vague and lethargic. Barack Obama--despite being the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee responsible for overseeing NATO’s military operations in Afghanistan--hasn’t bothered to hold a single hearing on the Atlantic Alliance’s flagging mission there. In fact, the putative Democratic commander-in-chief has never even taken the time to visit Afghanistan and talk to our commanders on the ground there (nor did he take the time to talk to the Captain whose stories of shortages in that theater he so badly mangled).
The explanation for this behavior, of course, is that the overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress couldn’t care less about the hard realities we face in Afghanistan or how to turn them around. Rather, they see Afghanistan as a political tool to justify retreat and defeat in Iraq. It’s the kind of cynical manipulation of national security that has increasingly become the norm among the politicos of the left.
By contrast, Joe Lieberman today has an op-ed in the Washington Post that offers a sober and serious policy proposal for reversing Afghanistan’s slide: expand the Afghan National Army. Here’s hoping that the administration--and Republicans, more broadly--listen to him and reclaim this issue from the Democrats.
Why is Iran going after al Qaeda’s enemies in Iraq? A few days ago, Iraqi spymaster Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani accused Iran of trying to sabotage al Qaeda’s opposition. "We have information confirming that Iranian secret services have sent agents to sabotage the Sahwa [i.e. the "Awakening"] experience in Iraq," Shahwani said shortly before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Iraq. Shahwani "stressed the need for the Iraqi people to be vigilant in facing these activities."
The U.S. Military has apparently confirmed and added supporting details to Shahwani’s accusation. According to Adnkronos International (AKI), U.S. military spokesman Adm. Gregory Smith explained: "the American military recently obtained confessions from detainees who are members of the Al-Quds Brigade and other Shia group who have been arrested in various parts of Iraq, who said that they were assigned to carry out armed operations to kill the leaders and the members of the Awakening Councils, in order to destroy this experiment."
So, here we have yet another instance in which Iran’s interests coincide with al Qaeda’s. Upon reading these latest accusations I cannot help but think of all those who believe that Iran and America have common interests in Iraq. For example, in "Iran: Time for a New Approach," America’s foreign policy elite, including Zbigniew Brzezinski and the now current Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, argued:
Although they may differ profoundly on specifics, both the United States and Iran want postconflict governments in Iraq and Afghanistan that respect the rights of their diverse citizenries and live in peace with their neighbors. The hostility that characterizes U.S.-Iranian relations undermines these shared interests and squanders the potential benefits of even limited cooperation. As tenuous new governments in Baghdad and Kabul embark on precarious post-conflict futures, the United States and the region cannot afford to spurn any prospective contributions to the region’s stability.
What "shared interests" do the United States and Iran have in post-Saddam Iraq? Beats me. As for the "specifics," we are against al Qaeda and Iran is not. That is indeed a profound difference.
At some point we are going to have to recognize that Iran and al Qaeda are allies, no?
CJCS to Military: Ditch the peacetime mentality...
In a broad-ranging all-hands meeting with Joint Staff members here today, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen discussed the stand-up of U.S. Africa Command, the challenges of leadership in a changing world, and the increased speed of war.
Military officials need to adopt a wartime attitude, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. Mullen said he believes that, more than six years into the war on terror, people still follow a peacetime frame of mind. “There are things that we’re still doing that’s under peacetime rules,” he said. “We’re in a couple of wars, and too often we get caught up in what I call peacetime responses or adapting peacetime rules, policies, regulations to what we need to do in responding very rapidly." . . .
Changes in the world have convinced the chairman that U.S. conventional forces are going to have to take on some of the attributes of special operations forces. Conventional forces are going to have to be more culturally aware; they are going to have to build relationships with other peoples and make quick decisions under constant and extreme pressure, he said.
Both Stuart Koehl and I have received our fair share of angry letters for suggesting that the military needs to lose the chickenshit attitude and rediscover the "damn the torpedoes" warrior ethos that has characterized America's historical dominance on the battlefield. Now that the Chairman has gone on record saying what is in effect the exact same thing, I'm hoping that the administrative military takes a strong look inward.
This war stops on a dime and changes direction in the blink of an eye. It is perhaps one of the fastest paced conflicts that we've ever had to fight, in that the military is forced to continuously reinvent the wheel so as to stay one step ahead of an enemy unencumbered by the administrative suck. The bad guys move fast, while the peacetime military--still prevalent in our ranks--has built career officers and NCO careers in a bureaucratic fashion straight out of the Dilbert comic strips. Focus groups and committees, risk aversion, bloated command structures and a disproportionate ratio of bosses to war fighters, all bring operations that should be fast-paced, flexible, and innovative to a screeching halt.
That the top man in uniform has said "enough!" is one small step for the military, one giant leap for the war on terror. I'm eager to see Admiral Mullen's vision translated into policy, and hope that step one in the implementation strategy is a force-wide ban on Microsoft Powerpoint. That’d do a hell of a lot more for military productivity than a ban on blogs.
Cat's out of the bag:
Prince Harry has been serving on the front line with his British army unit in one of Afghanistan's most lawless and barren provinces.
Harry is the first royal to serve in a combat zone since his uncle Prince Andrew flew helicopters during Britain's war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982.
British officials had hoped to keep the 23-year-old's deployment secret until he had safely returned, but they released video of Harry serving in Helmand Province after a leak appeared on the U.S. Web site the Drudge Report.
The planned deployment had been disclosed to reporters, with no specific date, but was not reported previously under a pool agreement between the Ministry of Defense and all major news organizations operating in Britain, including The Associated Press. The news blackout was intended to reduce the risk to the prince and his regiment.
This type of leadership impresses me to no end. Prince Harry didn't just request to be sent to the front lines, he demanded it. And equally impressive is the restraint shown by both the Ministry of Defense and the tabloid driven British media, sitting on a bombshell of a story for what appears to be all the right reasons.
But, for the same reason that Prince Harry was denied a deployment to Iraq, the Ministry of Defense will now be forced to separate the royal from his men. He's simply too rich of a target, and the knowledge that he's active in what is certainly the hottest combat zone in the CENTCOM AOR undoubtedly has the area's sizable Taliban and al Qaeda contingent licking their lips like hungry wolves. This doesn't just place Prince Harry at unnecessary risk, but his entire regiment.
Tragedy that it is to part an effective platoon leader from his troops, the MoD has little choice.
Yesterday’s airstrike in Pakistan’s tribal agency of South Waziristan, which killed 13 Arab al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban, has raised once again the question of whether last month’s airstrike in North Waziristan claimed the life of Adam Gadahn, the American traitor and al Qaeda propagandist. Rumors swirled last month that Gadahn was killed along with Abu Laith al Libi, a senior al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan. Gadahn was reported missing by associates, and he has not produced an al Qaeda propaganda tape since the January strike.
Rusty S | | | |
