Osama Bin Laden

Obama's War: Afghanistan Is Spelled V-I-E-T-N-A-M

dlindorff — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:24:57 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

President Barack Obama has staked his presidency on winning his “necessary” war in Afghanistan. Coming into office, one of his first acts, on Feb. 18, was to boost US troop levels in that country by 17,000, bringing the total number of soldiers and Marines in the country to about 57,000, to which one must also add 74,000 private contractors who are doing jobs normally done by uniformed military, and about 33,000 other soldiers from NATO countries and Australia. That’s 164,000 foreign soldiers fighting against Taliban fighters.

Ominously, even with the new US troops, US military commander Admiral Mike Mullen this month has described the situation in Afghanistan as being “serious and deteriorating.” The Afghani national government—if an organization that is basically confined to the capital city of Kabul and a few other cities can be called a national government, is hopelessly corrupt and ineffective, and a current national election, which US forces sought to “protect” by sending troops to election districts, appears to have been a disaster, plagued by vote rigging and with low turnout.

The US war in Afghanistan, billed as part of a war on terror begun by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in September 2001, is now eight years old, and while the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan at that time has been ousted from Kabul, its insurgency grows by the day in strength and popular support.

The US, meanwhile, is identified as an occupier and as the sole support of a corrupt regime of drug lords, thieves and charlatans.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It is a replay of what America did in Vietnam.

The roots of the current Afghanistan War lie in the period when the Soviet Union was occupying the country and backing a Communist-led government in the 1970s, and the US was conducting a proxy war against the Soviets, with the CIA training and funding both the Taliban and foreign fighters, mostly Arab, led by the likes of Osama Bin Laden. In the end, the Taliban, with the help of groups like Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, triumphed, pushing the Russians out. But over time, as the Soviet Union crumbled and the US became more focused on the Middle East, successive US administrations became less and less happy with the power arrangement in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, following the US Gulf War in 1990-91, Bin Laden and other Arab fighters in Afghanistan and elsewhere began to see the US as an enemy, and the US began to shift its military focus from being based upon anti-Communism to being anti-Arab, or at least anti Arabist, as defined as being opposed to those Arabs who wanted to overthrow the corrupt dictatorial leaderships in the oil states of the Middle East.

When the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked in 2001, the Bush/Cheney administration, which had already planned to overthrow the government in Iraq, launched an attack on Afghanistan, claiming that its Taliban government was harboring Al Qaeda, which was blamed for the attacks. The Afghanistan War was on. The Taliban was quickly ousted from Kabul, and Al Qaeda was largely driven into the remote tribal areas of Pakistan, but the war was not won. Indeed, since then, it has gone from bad to worse for the US, as the Taliban has clawed back territory and recovered much of its prior power.

The background of the war in Vietnam dates from 1954, when Vietnam, after a long struggle, won its independence from its colonial ruler, France. Two years later, the US blocked a UN-supervised national referendum, effectively splitting the country into two parts, a Communist north led by the hero of Vietnam’s independence struggle, Ho Chi Minh, and the south, led by the corrupt former French colonial stooge Ngo Dinh Diem.

With elections off, a small group of partisans, the Viet Cong, began an insurrection against the government in the South in early 1959, which the US became committed to opposing, initially sending in “advisers” to train and direct the South Vietnamese army. That war went from bad to worse, and when, in 1964, it became clear to US police-makers, that the Viet Cong were likely to win, President Lyndon Johnson made a decision to send in massive numbers of US troops and to begin a major bombing campaign against the North Vietnam. From 2000 US troops in Vietnam in 1961, there were 16,500 in 1964, and by mid 1965, 100,000. That number continued to rise, reaching 200,000 by 1966, and ultimately, at the height of the war, over 500,000. But the Viet Cong, and later, the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese troops sent down from the north, were never defeated. Indeed, they continued to grow in number and in their control of the countryside. While they suffered horrific losses because of the superior firepower of US forces, and an American scorched-earth policy in the countryside, the Vietnamese forces continued to gain more and more support from the Vietnamese people. In the end, after suffering over 58,000 dead, the US cried uncle and left Vietnam. By 1975, the puppet regime in Saigon fell, and Vietnam was finally unified again, under Communist rule.

From the beginning of America’s involvement in Vietnam, the country, a poor nation of peasant farmers, was presented to the American public as a critical threat to the security of the United States. If Vietnam were to “fall,” Americans were told, the rest of Southeast Asia, like a chain of dominos, would fall—first Cambodia and Laos, then Thailand and Malaysia, then Indonesia, and finally, even Australia would be at risk. Of course, no such thing happened. The Vietnamese Communists were always, and remained, a nationalist movement, and after winning their multi-generational struggle for independence, focused on developing their country (though they did step in and overthrow a genocidal Communist regime that had taken over in Cambodia, installing a saner government).

It had been a giant scam on the American people from the beginning, and it ended up costing several million Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian lives, and 58,000 American lives, though that scarcely tells the toll, in terms of those crippled mentally and physically, those poisoned by the widespread spraying of toxic defoliants, and the laying of millions of anti-personnel mines that are still killing and maiming people in Indochina today.

Now a new president, Obama, like Johnson before him, is telling Americans that a war half a world away is “necessary for American security.” This is a ludicrous assertion on its face. If Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, and really hardly a country at all, is a threat to US national security, so is Malawi, Burundi and Fiji.

Let’s be rational for a moment. The Taliban, whatever their irrational Islamic fanaticism and their misogyny, have no interest in America, other than to drive our troops out of their country. When they were in charge in Kabul back in 2001, they had their hands full just trying to hang on in the face of the war lords and drug kingpins who held (and still hold) sway in various parts of the country, and when they eventually win and drive the US and its NATO allies out of Afghanistan, they will have their hands full again, just clinging to power.

American national security is not to the slightest degree threatened by the Taliban.

Okay, so back in 2001 there was a gang of Arabs in Afghanistan which had since 1990, at least, expressed some hostility towards the US, but that crew, after all, had been set up by the CIA in the first place, and anyway, by 2002 it had been largely shattered and driven out of Afghanistan, and into Pakistan and parts unknown.

The current Afghanistan War, which President Obama claims is so necessary to American security, is not against Al Qaeda though; it is against the Taliban, and it simply cannot be won, anymore than the US war against the Vietnamese could be won.

Today, as in the late 1960s, the Pentagon is telling the president that it needs more troops. There is a military imperative not to lose a war. No general or admiral wants to be the guy in charge when the jig is declared up, and the troops have to be brought home as losers. And so they are asking for more and more troops and weapons, in hopes of hanging on until they get get cashiered out.

Obama, like Johnson before him, will buy into this criminal policy, because he too doesn’t want to “lose” a war before he leaves office.

That should be pretty scary, since I’m sure Obama is hoping that he will be in office not just through 2012, but through 2016. That’s a long time to keep escalating a hopeless and pointless conflict, just to avoid having to say it was a mistake in the first place.

But lest you say that it cannot happen, recall that the first US advisers went to Vietnam in 1959, the big escalation began in 1964, and the US didn’t leave until 1974. That’s 15 years of war and ten years of major warfare.

Because the Bush/Cheney administration was always more interested in invading Iraq than in invading Afghanistan, and pulled out many troops from the latter country in late 2002 to ship them to Iraq, the Afghan War has escalated more slowly than the Vietnam War did. But I’d say that today we are about where we were in Vietnam at the start of 1965. That is, the big lie, and the big escalation in the fighting, are both just getting going.

If the American people don’t rise up and demand an end to this thing right now, we could be in for another 8-10 years of brutal and bloody warfare, and in the end, the United States is, once again, going to lose.
____________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-area journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Osama Bin Forgotten

Bob Fertik — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:17:00 -0500

Guess who Bush never mentioned at his final press conference? Eric Boehlert writes:

Noticing anything missing from that list? Like the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, which for years, we were told, was the administration's top priority since bin Laden was behind the terrorist attack that killed more than 3,000 Americans.

Since the press conference though, I haven't seen or heard any press reports mention that glaringly obvious gap in Bush's list. Instead, reading off the White House play sheet, the press no longer thinks bin Laden matters.

Lapdogs to the end.

UPDATE: A check of the transcript shows that Osama bin Laden, the man who defined Bush's presidency, was never mentioned by either Bush or anyone in the press corps during the president's expansive, 45-minute farewell press conference.

A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

dlindorff — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:34:51 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

Before the odor of burned gunpowder has left the air of the Taj
Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, the US is lecturing India not to go off
half-cocked and attack Pakistan, simply because all of the attackers in
the terrorist assaults in that city arrived by boat, apparently from
neighboring Pakistan. US officials, including Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, are calling on India to engage in a “transparent” and
“thorough” investigation into the attacks to establish who was
responsible.

How different this is from the American government’s response to the 9-11 attacks in the US!

`Instead of a “transparent” investigation, we got secret sessions
of the Congressional intelligence committees, closed-door interviews of
key officials, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney by
the 9-11 Commission, and of course the secret round of thousands of
mostly Islamic people living in the US, many of whom were held of
months incommunicado and without charge, some of whom were subjected to
torture, and many other of whom were deported to likely arrest, torture
and even death.

Instead of a calm assessment of what had happened and who was
responsible, the Bush Administration rounded up Saudi members of the
Bin Laden family, and others connected to the regime in Saudi Arabia,
whence came most of the people reportedly involved in the hijacking of
the four planes used in the attacks, and, with no attempt at
interrogation, flew them home to Saudi Arabia. Then, again with only
minimal evidence, the US launched an all-out war within days upon
Afghanistan, with the goal of ousting and destroying the Taliban
government of that country. Shortly after that aggressive move, the
Bush/Cheney administration shifted its focus and launched an even
larger all-out war against Iraq, a nation that had no connection
whatsoever with the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

So much for transparency and measured responses.

Here again, we have an example of the US expecting one mode of behavior for the rest of the world, and another for itself.

We Americans, it would appear, are not required to operate in a
logical manner, are not required to think through the consequences of
our actions, are not required to obey international laws, and are not
required to listen to the counsel of others. If the United Nations will
not support our plan to attack and topple the government of another
sovereign nation, we will just do it ourselves. But other countries may
not behave in this manner.

There is another way that India and the US are different which has
come to light in this latest atrocity. Following the Mumbai attacks,
India’s minister of security resigned, in an admission that his
department had failed to discover an attack that was clearly at least
six months in planning, and had failed to prevent the massive loss of
life because of inadequate preparation of police and troops for such an
eventuality (police and soldiers were not equipped even with sniper
rifles and scopes that might have enabled them to shoot and kill some
of the 10 terrorists with minimal threat to their hostages).

Nobody resigned for the manifold failings that led up to and allowed
for the 9-11 attacks. Nobody resigned for intelligence failures, nobody
resigned for air defense failures, nobody resigned for investigative
failures, nobody resigned for the lies that were the basis for the
attack on Afghanistan and the war against Iraq. There has indeed been
zero accountability in the US for the biggest national security
disaster since Pearl Harbor. But in India, it took only days for the
chief person responsible for security in the Indian government to
resign his post in disgrace.

Let us hope that saner heads prevail in India when it comes to Pakistan, as the story of this latest terror action is exposed.

And let us hope that Americans finally demand an honest accounting
of what happened on 9/11/2001 and that those who are guilty of allowing
it to happen, and of sending the country off on a pointless, bloody and
seemingly endless jihad in the Middle East as a result are exposed and
forced to pay for their ineptness and their crimes.
__________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Did Bush Let Bin Laden Escape?

Bob Fertik — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:23:47 -0400

One interesting aspect of Ron Suskind's revelations about former Iraq Intelligence Chief Tahir Jalil Habbush was the urgent need on the part of the Busheviks to keep Habbush quiet so no one would know that he told us before the invasion that Saddam had no WMD's.

Habbush did nothing wrong, and in fact cooperated completely with the U.S. But Bush kept him hidden in Jordan (even though the only person he had to fear, Saddam Hussein, was also in U.S. hands) and paid him $5 million in "hush money."

This week we also learned of another prisoner who cooperated fully with the U.S., but was also locked away - apparently for the sole purpose of keeping his story out of the media. His name is Salim Ahmed Hamdan, better known as Osama Bin Laden's driver.

Hamdan was acquitted on charges of actual terrorism (despite John McCain's lie) and convicted only on "material support" for terrorism. And even though he could have been sentenced to life in prison, a military jury gave him a light sentence of 6 years with credit for the 5.5 years he already served. Why such a light sentence?

sources familiar with secret testimony for the defense given July 31 said the information revealed in that testimony likely angered the jurors.

Two senior Army Special Forces officers told a closed session of the trial of an "opportunity" that Hamdan had offered them in Afghanistan in the first weeks after his Nov. 24, 2001, capture. That chance was "squandered" by the government, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, a defense lawyer, said in his closing argument before Wednesday's verdict.

Speculation has focused on a blown opportunity to capture bin Laden, as Hamdan might have known his whereabouts.

Holy crap - a "blown opportunity to capture bin Laden"??? Shouldn't this be the biggest news story of the year???

The New York Times gives more detail:

In testimony during public sessions of the two-week-old trial, it was clear that Mr. Hamdan had provided details about Mr. bin Laden’s possible whereabouts, even taking interrogators to some of Mr. bin Laden’s Afghan homes and training camps.

The testimony to which Commander Mizer referred was given Thursday by two Special Forces officers in a closed courtroom.

The public session information is plenty damning - we can only imagine what was said in the closed courtroom. But it's not hard to imagine how bin Laden's driver could have either led us directly to bin Laden, or helped us figure out how to find him.

Congress should demand to know what exactly the "opportunity" was - and how and why it was squandered!

Obviously the Busheviks don't want to tell the media, because they might be tried for treason. But why would Hamdam hesitate to tell the media what he willingly told U.S. interrogators?

The government case against Hamdan also was based almost entirely on information the defendant gave willingly in interviews with at least 40 U.S. government interrogators in the first two years of his captivity. Defense lawyer Charlie Swift said that information was of vital importance yet ultimately used against the cooperative captive.

In other words, Hamdam sounds very much like Habbush - someone with personal firsthand knowledge of our most hated enemy, who cooperated fully with U.S. interrogators. In both cases, there was no need to lock them up or punish them in any way.

But in both cases, Bush wants them hidden away so they won't tell the media what they told the U.S. government - because their stories would lead first to the impeachment of George W. Bush, and then to his indictment on war crimes and treason.

Update 1: Another interesting case is that of the Taliban's former Intelligence Minister, Mullah Mohammed Khaksar, who wanted to help us capture Mullah Omar but couldn't get any interest from the CIA.

The US is not interested in help from a high-level Taliban informant. Mullah Mohammed Khaksar was the Taliban’s intelligence minister and is currently their deputy interior minister. He is in charge of security in the Afghan capital of Kabul and regularly meets with other high ranking Taliban leaders. But since 1997, he has also been secretly providing a steady stream of intelligence to the Northern Alliance, the enemies of the Taliban. Further, he had offered to help the US defeat the Taliban, and several times before 9/11 CIA agents disguised as journalists visited him to solicit inside information (see April 1999). [Washington Post, 11/30/2001] However, in the weeks after 9/11, he passes letters to get in contact with US intelligence, but never hears back from them. Time magazine will later report, “Khaksar said he was ready to pass on information that might lead to the capture of the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar and to some al-Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan. But he waited days, weeks, months, and nobody contacted him.” [Time, 2/25/2002] Finally in late November 2001, he will publicly defect to the Northern Alliance, thus ending his ability to get real-time information on the movements of Omar and others. [Knight Ridder, 11/29/2001] The US will continue to remain uninterested in what Khaksar has to say (see February 25, 2002).

Extra! Dog Bites Man! Read All About It!

dlindorff — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:23:00 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

In the category of yawn-inducing stories that we knew all about
before they happened, comes word that the jury of senior uniformed
officers sitting in judgement of Osama Bin Laden’s chauffeur in the
first Bush-league military tribunal to actually go to a hearing at
Guantanamo Naval Station found the prisoner, Salim Hamdan…

Drum roll please…

Guilty of supporting terrorism.

I pause here for gasps of astonishment.

It’s awfully silent…

Really, did anyone expect anything else? The officers, who all have
careers to think about that would surely be severely crimped if they
went off script and found the man innocent of the charges, heard
evidence that was obtained through torture. They heard reports of
confessions from a man who himself was subjected to torture, by the
admission of the military itself, and who was never afforded an
attorney during those interrogations.

Okay. So now we need to ask, do we all feel safer, knowing that a
car driver whose claim to fame is that he used to drive the Evil One
from house to house and wife to wife is going to be locked up for life?

Wait a minute. He is already being locked up for life. At least, he
was captured in November 2001, and shipped to Guantanamo in May 2002,
and he’s been held there ever since—for over six years—awaiting this
trial, er, I mean tribunal. There certainly was no prospect of his ever
being let go before the tribunal, so I’m not sure what the point of
this exercise was really.

So now we can move on to the next tribunal—this one involving Ahmed
Khadr, a Canadian boy picked up in Afghanistan at the age of 15, who’s
been held now for six years on the base. His “crime” is that he was
bombed by the US Air Force, and then shot up (in the back) by US
Special Forces, but he somehow managed, at least allegedly, to toss a
grenade at his attackers, killing one (actually there is some testimony
that he didn’t actually toss the grenade, but then, why quibble about
details, right?).

Does anyone want to guess about the outcome of his “trial”?

Back in journalism school, I remember being told that the classic
definition of a news story was “Man Bites Dog!” The notion was that if
something totally predictable happens, like a dog biting a man, it
ain’t really news. Only if it is unexpected does it have any real news
value. By that standard, Hamdan’s conviction should be relegated to a
one-sentence notice in the news briefs section, but I’m guessing it’ll
be page one tomorrow all over America: Terrorist Convicted!

What we really need to be asking is why taxpayer dollars are being
spent on this shameful farce, which makes a joke of American “justice”
around the world.

Salim Hamdan is one of three things:

* a vile terrorist, in which case he should be tried in a regular
court of law by a jury of citizens, with all the rights available under
our Constitution

* a prisoner of war, in which case he should be sent back to
Afghanistan, since that war is now technically over (he is not a member
of the Taliban).

* an innocent schmuck who was working for a living driving a rich
bearded guy around the Hindu Kush, and who got picked up instead of his
boss, who’s still plotting ways to blow us all up while the US
government wastes its time and its personnel prosecuting his driver.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Then again, maybe it is news after all: “US Attacked By Terrorist Gang, Mastermind’s Driver Gets Life Seven Years Later”
__________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a journalist and columnist based in
Philadelphia. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St.
Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work
can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Democrats Push Legislation On Catching "Osama Been Forgotten"

Bob Geiger — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:54:09 -0500

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the entire Republican administration don’t seem to care about capturing Osama bin Laden but Democrats, led by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), continue to demand answers on the whereabouts of the man who claimed responsibility for the 2001 attacks on our country.

Dorgan has offered as an amendment to the 9/11 Commission recommendations, a simple bill that demands accountability from the Bush administration on bin Laden and mandates "a report to Congress on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the leadership of al Qaeda."

The North Dakota Senator pointed out that we just passed the 2,000-day mark since September 11, 2001 with Osama still at large, while listening to repeated assertions from the White House that they do not care about capturing the terrorist leader.

"The perpetrators who boasted that they committed the terrorist acts against our country that murdered so many thousands of Americans remain, apparently, in a secure hideout in Pakistan and still taunt us. They send the television and the radio stations their videos and their voice tracks telling us their views of world events," said Dorgan. "I don't understand when the President says he is not concerned about him. The top intelligence chief said this is the greatest threat to our country. We better be concerned about him -- the President and the Congress and the American people. We ought to be concerned enough to decide this is a priority; it is a priority for us to bring to justice those who are the greatest threat to our country, the greatest terrorist threat."

The Dorgan amendment, which is cosponsored by Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), is so simple and easy to read, I'm going to print the key requirements verbatim:

(1) A statement whether or not the January 11, 2007, assessment provided by Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte to the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate that the top leadership of al Qaeda has a ``secure hideout in Pakistan'' was applicable during the reporting period and, if not, a description of the current whereabouts of that leadership.

(2) A statement identifying each country where Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the leadership of al Qaeda are or may be hiding, including an assessment whether or not the government of each country so identified has fully cooperated in the efforts to capture them, and, if not, a description of the actions, if any, being taken or to be taken to obtain the full cooperation of each country so identified in the efforts to capture them.

(3) A description of the additional resources required to promptly capture Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the leadership of al Qaeda.

Isn't it amazing that the Congress even has to ask for this? What's even more extraordinary is that Dorgan offered the same bill before the Republican, do-nothing Congress and it was dead on arrival.

In a speech on the Senate floor Monday, Dorgan cited statements from Former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte that are at complete odds with how little Bush and Cheney care about bin Laden's whereabouts.

Mr. Negroponte was the Director of National Intelligence until about two weeks ago. He and the current leader of the intelligence service have said the same thing in open testimony before the Congress:

"Al-Qaida is the terrorist organization that poses the greatest threat to U.S. interests, including to the homeland."

He also said this:

"Al-Qaida continues to plot attacks against our homeland and other targets with the objective of inflicting mass casualties. And they continue to maintain active connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders from a secure hideout in Pakistan."

Again, it says from their secure hideout in Pakistan. On September 15, 2001, 4 days after 9/11, recognizing it was al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida leadership that attacked this country and boasted about it, the President said this:

"We will not only deal with those who dare attack Americans; we will deal with those who harbor them and feed them and house them."

Two months later he said:

"As a part of our offensive against terror, we are also confronting the regimes that harbor and support terrorists."

Two months following that he said:

"Osama bin Laden has no place to train his al-Qaida killers anymore. And if we find a training camp, we will take care of it."

Well, the head of intelligence for this country says he knows where the al-Qaida leadership is. We saw last week film clips on television of al-Qaida training camps. Yet somehow there is a giant yawn about all of this. In fact, the President later said, in 2003:

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It is not important, and it is not our priority."

He also said:

"I am not truly that concerned about him."

Dorgan blasted Bush on his lack of concern that bin Laden is still roaming free and podcasting threats against America.

"If the head of intelligence for this country says the greatest threat posed to this country by a terrorist organization is a threat that comes from al-Qaida, a threat to our homeland to inflict mass casualties, and they are in a secure hideout in Pakistan, and if, in fact, the President previously said as a part of our offensive against terror we are also confronting the regimes that harbor and support terrorists, and if Pakistan is our ally and al-Qaida is located there to train new terrorists, why on Earth are we not going after the leadership of al-Qaida?" asked Dorgan. "What explains that? It, frankly, escapes me."

Dorgan also made clear that the Bush-McCain Doctrine of escalating the pointless war in Iraq continues the trend of the United States being sucked further into that quagmire while ignoring the real and potential threats to our country.

"I have said before on the floor of the Senate in recent weeks, if we have 21,000 soldiers to surge somewhere, I would much prefer those 21,000 soldiers be surged to find the leadership and eliminate the leadership of al-Qaida," said Dorgan. "I don't understand why this administration says: We don't know where he is. I have no idea and really don't care. It is not that important. It is not our priority."

"What on Earth is that? I don't understand it."

Join the club, Senator Dorgan. Join the club.

You can read more from Bob at BobGeiger.com.

Senator Byron Dorgan: bin Laden is "Osama Been Forgotten"

Bob Geiger — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 14:58:59 -0500

In a speech on the Senate floor designed to counter Jon Kyl's (R-AZ) arguments in favor of the Bush-McCain Doctrine of escalating the Iraq war, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) turned his attention to the people who actually attacked our country on September 11 and charged the Bush administration with abandoning that mission.

Citing testimony given to the Senate last week by John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence, Dorgan spelled out how the preoccupation with a pointless war in Iraq has taken all focus off actually neutralizing the biggest threats to our nation. Here's an except from Dorgan's floor speech on Monday:

Let me read something that Mr. John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence said last week. He testified before the Select Committee on Intelligence, and here is what he said:

Al Qaeda is the terrorist organization that poses the greatest threat to U.S. interests, including to the homeland.

Al Qaeda is what poses the greatest threat to our interests, including our homeland. Then he went on to say this. This is again John Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence.

Al Qaeda continues to plot attacks against our homeland and other targets with the objective of inflicting mass casualties. And they continue to maintain active connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan.

Dorgan then questioned why al Qaeda has been allowed to run around unchecked everywhere but inside Iraq, why their influence and presence has been permitted to spread throughout the world and asked the question millions of Americans have been asking for over five years -- where's Osama?

"Osama bin Laden, do we know him? Yes. He is the person who ordered -- claimed and boasted -- he ordered the attacks against this country, killing thousands of innocent Americans," said Dorgan. "He still lives, apparently, in a secure hideout, according to the top intelligence chief in this country, in Pakistan. It seems to me the elimination of the leadership of al Qaeda, the organization that attacked this country, that murdered thousands of innocent Americans, ought to be the primary interest of this country."

"Does anybody hear anybody talking about Osama bin Laden anymore? Or perhaps better described as 'Osama been forgotten' these days? Nobody wants to talk about it."

The North Dakota Democrat went on to talk about Bush's plan to ship 22,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq, how overstretched the American military really is and the extent to which the Iraq quagmire has taken away from truly mitigating terrorist threats against the United States.

"The most significant terrorist threat to this country is al Qaeda, and it operates from a secure hideout in Pakistan. If that is true, what are we doing, deciding to find 20,000 troops by pulling some of them out of Afghanistan and moving them to Iraq?" said Dorgan. "If those troops are available, they ought to be dedicated to dealing with al Qaeda and bringing to justice those who committed the attacks against this country. I will have more to say about that at some point, but I did want to make note of what the Director of Intelligence said last week that seems to be almost ignored in this debate about Iraq."

"They are fighting hard to destabilize the Government of Afghanistan. That was our first battle, to go into Afghanistan and kick the Taliban out," he continued. "We need more troops in Afghanistan now, not less, and yet my understanding is the President's plan would divert troops we have in Afghanistan to go to Iraq."

Finally, Dorgan went after Kyl, who had just given a speech in favor of Bush's Iraq escalation plan, while also repeating the same old Republican spin about Democrats having no plan for Iraq.

"My colleague suggested this was a circumstance where some were simply willing to criticize the President but offer no plan of their own," he said in response to Kyl's babbling. "Then he subsequently said the resolution that some of my colleagues will offer in the Senate will advocate a different course of action. That is a plan, I guess, isn't it? If one advocates a different course of action than the President is advocating, it seems to me that is a plan."

I'm pretty sure that Senator Kyl didn’t take the floor again to respond to that question… He was probably on the phone to Karl Rove or the Republican National Committee asking what talking point he should use next.

You can read more from Bob at BobGeiger.com.

Notes and Quotes From Gates Hearings

Bob Geiger — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 10:21:28 -0500

Robert Gates received approval from the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday on his nomination to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and will proceed to a full Senate confirmation vote. This will likely happen as soon as Wednesday's Senate session.

Here's some interesting notes from Tuesday's Senate hearings…

The closest thing to a bombshell came when Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) asked the nominee point-blank "Mr. Gates, do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq?"

"No, sir," came the blunt response from Gates, thus totally contradicting everything that's come out of George W. Bush's mouth on the subject in 2006.

In case anyone was unclear on what Gates meant -- which White House Spokesman Tony Snow clearly was when he tried to talk around the Defense nominee later in the day -- John McCain (R-AZ) picked up the question during his time with Gates.

McCain: I'd like to follow on what Senator Levin said. We are not winning the war in Iraq; is that correct?

Gates: That is my view -- yes, sir.

McCain: And, therefore, status quo is not acceptable?

Gates: That is correct, sir.

Lindsey Graham (R-SC) got another useful piece of information when he asked Gates "Is Iraq the central battlefront in the war on terror?"

"I think that it is one of the central fronts in the war on terror," said Gates, sounding more like Russ Feingold (D-WI) than Bush.

Feingold has been talking for years about all the other trouble spots we should be watching, while Bush and his team tell anyone who will listen that Iraq is the focus of the entire effort.

* * * * *

Levin gave a good introductory statement to his questions for Gates:

"If confirmed as secretary of defense, Robert Gates will face the monumental challenge of picking up the pieces from broken policies and mistaken priorities in the past few years.

"First and foremost, this means addressing the ongoing crisis in Iraq. The situation in Iraq has been getting steadily worse, not better. Before the invasion of Iraq, we failed to plan to provide an adequate force for the occupation of the country, or to plan for the aftermath of major combat operations.

"After we toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, we thoughtlessly disbanded the Iraqi army and also disqualified tens of thousands of low-level Baath Party members from future government employment.

"These actions contributed to the chaos and violence that followed, and to alienating substantial portions of the Iraqi population.

"We have failed, so far, to secure the country and defeat the insurgency. And we have failed to disarm the militias and create a viable Iraqi military or police force. And we have failed to rebuild the economic infrastructure of the country and provide employment for the majority of Iraqis.

"The next secretary of defense will have to deal with the consequences of those failures."

* * * * *

Here's a comforting bit of clarification, based on a question from Robert Byrd (D-WV), showing some acknowledgement from Gates that Bush's authority has limits:

Byrd: Do you believe the president has the authority, under either the 9/11 war resolution or the Iraq war resolution, to attack Iran or to attack Syria?

Gates: To the best of my knowledge of both of those authorizations, I don't believe so.

Byrd: Would you say that an attack on either Iran or Syria would worsen the violence in Iraq and lead to greater American casualties?

Gates: Yes, sir, I think that's very likely.

* * * * *

Ted Kennedy (D-MA) gave a good opening statement -- here's an excerpt:

"We know, since you have been nominated now -- 59 Americans have been killed just in the 27 days since you've been nominated.

"In the 27 days just prior to that, 92 Americans were killed. And in the 27 days prior to that, 81 Americans were killed.

"We don't know in the 27 days prior to the first of the year, when we're going to have these, evidently, decisions and judgments and a new policy, how many more Americans are killed.

"And the people, the families, in my state want to know whether you're going to be that figure that Senator Warner talked about, that fearless champion of the service men and women that is going to be consistent with our national security."

* * * * *

Bill Nelson (D-FL) broached the touchy subject of renewing a military draft:

Nelson: Now, you say, then, that we can meet our recruiting goals without a draft. Explain that to the committee.

Gates: Well, sir, I think that the first encouraging aspect statistically, based on the limited exposure I've had, is the great success we've had in retention in the services. So we don't have a hole in the bottom of the bucket of much consequence.

My impression is that the Army was authorized to add an additional 30,000 troops and that they have recruited, I think, 23,000, or thereabouts, of that 30,000.

I would tell you, my candid opinion is that I think once -- one of the military officers that I was talking to told me that one of the concerns that he had about recruitment was that first we'd lost the moms and now we were starting to lose the dads in terms of encouraging young people to join the services.

Obvious statement of the day by Gates on meeting recruiting goals: "In all honesty, I think that when people perceive that joining the services is not a direct ticket to Iraq, our opportunities for increasing the numbers are going to be significant."

* * * * *

Levin and many of the Senators thanked Gates for his forthrightness and candor during the hearings. Here's Levin:

"Your acknowledgement that we're not winning in Iraq, frankly, is a necessary, refreshing breath of reality that is so needed if we're going to look at ways of changing course in Iraq to maximize the chances of success. I thank you for that and the other candid responses that you've given here."

And I'll let my own Senator, Hillary Clinton (D-NY), wrap up with her comments on candor before the committee:

"Your candor to this committee, to the American people, and especially to our men and women in uniform, is crucial to our success. We need a strong secretary of defense -- but that doesn't mean strong- headed.

"And I appreciate your openness and willingness to engage with this committee today.

"Part of that candor was evident when you responded to Senator Levin's question about whether we are winning the war in Iraq, contrary to what your predecessor told us from that very chair and what the president has told the American people."

We'll end with Clinton's parting slap at Donald Rumsfeld that she gave when thanking Gates: "Dr. Gates, thank you for your candor. That's something that has been sorely lacking from the current occupant in the position that you seek to hold."

You can read more from Bob at BobGeiger.com.

Kennedy, Leahy Blast Bush's Iraq Wake-Up Call

Bob Geiger — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:01:17 -0400

In the wake of a press conference today that had George W. Bush babbling such inanities as "my view is the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done" and asserting that "Al Qaeda is on the run" despite the unknown whereabouts of the guy who attacked us on September 11 -- you know, that dude named bin Laden? -- Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) was quick to call Bush on his contrived, newly-discovered flexibility on Iraq.

“It’s deeply disturbing that it takes a close election – not in Iraq, but in America – to get this White House to even talk about flexibility and changing course," said Kennedy. "American and Iraqi deaths didn’t do it. The growing insurgency and increasing sectarian violence didn’t do it. The conclusion in April by our intelligence community that the Iraq war is a rallying cry for anti-American extremism didn’t do it. Only the prospect of losing his rubber stamp Congress and the President’s own low polls seem to penetrate the wall of denial around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

Kennedy also rebutted Bush's recent claim that his longstanding stay-the-course mantra has been a figment of 300 million Americans' imaginations.

"Sadly, the bottom line is that it's still a stay-the-course strategy from the White House. The President may have abandoned the label but he has not abandoned the failed strategy," said the Massachusetts Senator.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) also responded quickly, saying that Bush's mild admission that things may not be going just peachy in Iraq and his replacement of the notion of a troop-withdrawal timeline with the word "benchmark," are clearly a function of the looming midterm elections.

“For years the President has said his policy in Iraq is to ‘stay the course’ and he ridiculed anyone who urged him to change course," said Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Now, as the crisis worsens and November nears, he declares that ‘stay the course’ is no longer operative. He has conveniently changed his words, but not his policies."

Leahy's strongest response was for Bush's claim that the midterm elections should be decided on the economy and on "who will best protect this country."

“It is appalling that after spending hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars and sacrificing 2,700 American lives, our country is less secure today," said Leahy. "The Bush-Cheney Administration’s bad decisions and poor planning have squandered our resources and our opportunities to make America safer."

"Imagine how different today’s world would be if the Bush-Cheney Administration had not diverted our forces to Iraq and if we had put muscle into capturing Osama bin Laden and rebuilding Afghanistan."

You can read more from Bob at BobGeiger.com.

Update: Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) just issued this statement on Bush's press conference today:

"The President’s head-in-the-sand approach to the worsening situation in Iraq is undermining our national security. While his rhetoric may have changed, the President gave no indication that he would change his failed policy in Iraq. The President says he doesn’t want Iraq to become a terrorist haven like Afghanistan was under the Taliban, but his failed Iraq-centric approach has resulted in a recent resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. We need a new policy for Iraq that includes a timetable for the redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq so we can focus on the threats to our national security around the world."

What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:49:08 -0400

The questions I asked in the first year after 9/11 have still not been answered. (WARNING: Many of the links are no longer valid, but a surprising number still are. There’s enough information associated with each excerpt for those who have Lexis-Nexis to be able to find the articles with bad links.)

From MakeThemAccountable.com:

What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?

What did George Bush himself know, prior to the attacks?

What Bush Knew Before Sept. 11, CBS News, May 16, 2002:
“President Bush was told in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack U.S. passenger planes - information which prompted the administration to issue an alert to federal agencies - but not the American public.”

Click here for more articles.

MORE MORE MORE

Why were certain people warned not to fly on or about September 11 (or even earlier), and not the rest of us?

Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel, Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, San Francisco Chronicle, September 12, 2001:
“For Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something was amiss came late Monday when he got a call from what he described as his airport security - - a full eight hours before yesterday's string of terrorist attacks -- advising him that Americans should be cautious about their air travel.”

Click here for more articles.

Did the U.S. know that the attacks were going to happen?

THE COUNTER-TERRORIST, Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker, Issue of January 14, 2002:
“[I]intelligence had been streaming in concerning a likely Al Qaeda attack. ‘It all came together in the third week in June [2001],’ Clarke said. ‘The C.I.A.'s view was that a major terrorist attack was coming in the next several weeks.’ On July 5th, Clarke summoned all the domestic security agencies—the Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard, Customs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the F.B.I.—and told them to increase their security in light of an impending attack.”

Click here for more articles.

Why didn't the Air Force scramble fighters before the third attack plane hit the Pentagon?

My Country Right Or Wrong: Questioning September 11th, Mark Elsis, AttackOnAmerica.net, undated:
“1. The North American Aerospace Defense Command ( NORAD ) had almost an hour and a half to scramble F-16 jets from Langley Air Force Base ( AFB ) to protect Washington D.C. and the Pentagon. How could they incredibly fail to do so? For this most impossible error, the United States government and military only give the lame excuse, we didn't have enough time to respond.”

Click here for much, much more.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com