Policy Forum

Secret Intelligence and the 'War on Terror'

Link: The New York Review of Books: Secret Intelligence and the 'War on Terror'.

New Iraq Policy - Cut and Run?

According to a recent article in the Boston Globe there is a push among some to decrease the troop presence in Iraq. Perhaps this may be the best policy, have some semblance of an election in January, turn over the keys to the victors, and get our troops home.

A growing number of national security specialists who supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein are moving to a position unthinkable even a few months ago: that the large US military presence is impeding stability as much as contributing to it and that the United States should begin major reductions in troops beginning early next year.

Their assessments, expressed in reports, think tank meetings, and interviews, run counter to the Bush administration's insistence that the troops will remain indefinitely to establish security. But some contend that the growing support for an earlier pullout could alter the administration's thinking.

[....]

Said Ken Adelman, a member of the Defense Policy Board who predicted the Iraq war would be a "cakewalk": "If there is a [stable] Iraqi government after January you can withdraw. I would be OK with that."

Condi's Record

President Bush has named Condoleezza Rice to succeed Colin Powell as Secretary of State. The Center for American Progress has complied some data on Dr. Rice's record of the past four years.

INATTENTION TO TERRORISM: According to the 9/11 Commission report, chief White House expert on terrorism Richard Clarke sent Rice an urgent memo just days after she took office, stressing the severity of the terrorist threat. She did not respond, and although the national security leadership "met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks…terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions." The first meeting on al Qaeda did not occur until 9/4/01.

MISLEADING STATEMENTS PRE-WAR: Rice was one of the primary perpetrators of misinformation in the push for war with Iraq. In September 2002, she claimed, "We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon." Weapons inspector David Kay and his successor, Charles Duelfer, debunked that outright, saying Saddam had no nuclear program. Rice also pushed the phantom nuclear threat by charging that certain aluminum tubes Saddam sought were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs." A 10/3/04 New York Times article exposed that as false.

RICE GIVEN LEADERSHIP ROLE IN IRAQ, FIZZLES: In October 2003, President Bush announced he was "giving his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, the authority to manage postwar Iraq." With great fanfare, Rice was put in charge of the "Iraq Stabilization Group." Seven months later, the Washington Post reported "the four original leaders of the Stabilization Group have taken on new roles, and only one remains concerned primarily with Iraq." Even within the White House, "the destabilized Stabilization Group is a metaphor for an Iraq policy that is adrift." According to the White House website, the Iraq stabilization group hasn't been publicly mentioned for more than a year.

MISLEADING STATEMENTS POST-WAR: Even after the invasion of Iraq failed to turn up any evidence of weapons of mass destruction, Rice continued a calculated effort to keep the nonexistent threat in the public eye. On 9/7/03, she ominously warned, "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." On 3/18/04, Rice said that "It's not as if anybody believes that Saddam Hussein was without weapons of mass destruction." In fact, the administration's handpicked weapons inspector, David Kay, had publicly said – two months earlier – that he didn't believe Saddam had WMD before the March 2003 invasion. When Kay resigned in January he said "he did not believe banned stockpiles existed before the invasion" and that pre-war intelligence that said Iraq possessed WMD was probably "all wrong."

RICE UNDER OATH: Rice initially refused to appear before the 9/11 Commission. When she finally agreed to testify, she refused to play it straight. Called before the Commission to examine potential White House inattention to the al Qaeda threat before the attacks, Rice was asked about a Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) the president received on 8/6/01. In front of the Commission, Rice testified there was "nothing about the threat of attack in the U.S." in the PDB. Under further questioning, she admitted that, in fact, "the title [of the PDB] was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'"

POLITICIZING NATIONAL SECURITY: Breaking with the precedent that dictates the director of national security should remain above the political fray and away from the campaign trail, during the 2004 campaign National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice took time out from her busy national security duties to stump for the president across key battleground states. She was roundly criticized by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter, who "said the national security adviser is the 'custodian' of the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and should be seen as an objective adviser to the president."

NEWS video may be linked to missing explosives in Iraq

EXCLUSIVE:
5 EYEWITNESS NEWS video may be linked to missing explosives in Iraq

Using GPS technology and talking with members of the 101st Airborne Division, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has determined the crew embedded with the troops may have been on the southern edge of the Al Qaqaa installation, where the ammunition disappeared. The news crew was based just south of Al Qaqaa, and drove two or three miles north of there with soldiers on April 18, 2003.

During that trip, members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS news crew bunker after bunker of material labelled "explosives." Usually it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get into the bunkers and see the material identified by the 101st as detonation cords.

"We can stick it in those and make some good bombs." a soldier told our crew.

There were what appeared to be fuses for bombs. They also found bags of material men from the 101st couldn't identify, but box after box was clearly marked "explosive."

In one bunker, there were boxes marked with the name "Al Qaqaa", the munitions plant where tons of explosives allegedly went missing.

Once the doors to the bunkers were opened, they weren't secured. They were left open when the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew and the military went back to their base.

"We weren't quite sure what were looking at, but we saw so much of it and it didn't appear that this was being secured in any way," said photojournalist Joe Caffrey. "It was several miles away from where military people were staying in their tents".

Officers with the 101st Airborne told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that the bunkers were within the U.S. military perimeter and protected. But Caffrey and former 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS Reporter Dean Staley, who spent three months together in Iraq, said Iraqis were coming and going freely.

"At one point there was a group of Iraqis driving around in a pick-up truck,"Staley said. "Three or four guys we kept an eye on, worried they might come near us."

On Wednesday, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS e-mailed still images of the footage taken at the site to experts in Washington to see if the items captured on tape are the same kind of high explosives that went missing in Al Qaqaa. Those experts could not make that determination.

The footage is now in the hands of security experts to see if it is indeed the explosives in question.

Winning the War on Terror

The Century Foundation has prepared a new report detailing how the war on terror can be won.

The international jihadist network of radical Islamic terrorist groups is far more extensive than just al Qaeda, and it has conducted twice as many attacks in the three years since September 11, 2001 as it did in the three years prior to that date. Defeating the Jihadists: A Blueprint for Action (Century Foundation Press, 2004), assesses the nation's successes and failures on homeland security and calls for a stronger, more effective strategy for dealing with jihadists, including al Qaeda. The forthcoming report offers a detailed action plan for neutralizing the international movement at the core of worldwide terrorism. The report also describes the nature of the jihadist threat; provides comprehensive profiles of the various jihadist groups; and offers a rationale for the effort and money that would be needed to make the plan a success. The plan presented in the report builds on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and serves as a road map for winning the war against the jihadists.

Excerpts from Defeating the Jihadists: A Blueprint for Action

Senator Carl Levin: News Release

Senator Carl Levin: News Release

Senator Levin has produced a new report on the intelligence failures in the build up to the war in Iraq.

full report (PDF)

"We didn't go in with a plan. We went in with a theory"

Post war planning in Iraq, "to be provided." From Knight-Ridder:

WASHINGTON - In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration's plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.

Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material - and for good reason.

The slide said: "To Be Provided."

A Knight Ridder review of the administration's Iraq policy and decisions has found that it invaded Iraq without a comprehensive plan in place to secure and rebuild the country. The administration also failed to provide some 100,000 additional U.S. troops that American military commanders originally wanted to help restore order and reconstruct a country shattered by war, a brutal dictatorship and economic sanctions.

In fact, some senior Pentagon officials had thought they could bring most American soldiers home from Iraq by September 2003. Instead, more than a year later, 138,000 U.S. troops are still fighting terrorists who slip easily across Iraq's long borders, diehards from the old regime and Iraqis angered by their country's widespread crime and unemployment and America's sometimes heavy boots.

"We didn't go in with a plan. We went in with a theory," said a veteran State Department officer who was directly involved in Iraq policy.