It’s no surprise that President Bush seized on selected snippets of an important intelligence report to underscore his belief that U.S. forces ought to stay in Iraq, seeing as how al-Qaeda is judged to be a growing power there.
The only surprise is that anyone would think such a transparently political move could counterbalance the administration’s sagging credibility on Iraq.
Politics aside, the National Intelligence Estimate paints a bleak picture of terrorist threats in hotspots around the world nearly six years after the Sept. 11 attacks and four years after the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq – a pre-emptive move aimed at tamping down terrorism and seizing weapons of mass destruction.
The assessment, a declassified portion of which was made public Tuesday, contends al-Qaeda may try to attack the U.S. by using the terrorist network’s followers in Iraq.
Wait a minute. Last year’s intelligence assessment, compiled by 16 U.S. spy agencies, said the U.S. presence in Iraq had increased Islamic radicalism and worsened the threat of terror around the world.
It would seem that the administration is engaging in circuitous logic. When you put the pieces together, it goes something like this: The U.S. invasion created an incubator for radicals who are searching for weapons and means to attack the U.S. Given the situation, we can’t possibly leave Iraq.
“Al-Qaeda would have been a heck of a lot stronger today had we not stayed on the offensive,” Bush said.
The declassification and release of the report, which was completed in June, came on the same day that Senate Democratic leaders planned an all-nighter at the Capitol in the hopes of coaxing reluctant Republicans to drop support for the president’s war strategy.
Democrats tried, but failed, to get a vote on a measure urging the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by spring. Bush has fumed that it’s not the place of Congress to meddle in war strategy. But certainly federal lawmakers have considerable interest in the war and, importantly, the power to fund it.
Though the administration pulled out the stops in its release of the report and deployment of administration officials to talk up the need to continue the war effort, a careful reading of the assessment is anything but supportive of Bush’s Iraq strategy.
The assessment says al-Qaeda “has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability” by significantly strengthening its ranks in Pakistan. So, while U.S. forces were presiding over the disintegration of Iraq into civil war, our so- called allies in Pakistan were allowing al-Qaeda to regroup? That doesn’t sound like effective strategy. It sounds like the administration took its eyes off the ball in an all-encompassing effort to wrestle Iraq into submission.
The latest National Intelligence Estimate actually weakens the president’s already shaky reasoning for continuing his war policy. On top of that, the White House recently gave Iraq a decidedly mixed progress report on benchmarks for military, security and political progress.
The current Iraq strategy isn’t working. It’s time for the president to accept that truth and devise a plan that takes into account the harsh realities of the situation.
