Forty Days and Forty Nights
It will rain in Washington for the next forty days and nights. The acid rain of
partisan politics will sour the earth, confuse those who don't pay attention and finally bring fresh sunshine.
The deluge began this week with an all-out lefty assault on the administration's handling of the Iraq War.
There were three main attacks - former President Clinton's appearance on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, the
faux Senate hearing on the Rumsfeld military and the distorted leak of the current combined intelligence assessment.
The initial thrusts came from that part of the MSM now fully committed to lefty propaganda without regard for balanced
journalism. The defense came largely from the Internet's independent bloggers who had the research skills to fact
check what was being said.
After a week of skirmishes, the battle is still a toss up.
Clinton vs Fox News. Slick Willy re-appeared on the national scene on Sunday, September 24th when President
Clinton went off on Fox anchor Chris Wallace. Asked if he could have done more to get Osama, Clinton launched a
finger-jabbing, red-faced rant against his right-wing enemies that looked for all the world like his interviews
about Monica.
As taught by the Clintons, the art of lying has two basic elements: (1) always shout when you are lying because
it will distract the questioners so much that they can't effectively follow up and may be easily diverted and (2)
wherever possible, tell half-truths. Mostly, as we will see, that consists of leaving out part of the answer. For
example, "I never had sexual relations with that woman (although she did have sex with me)."
Some 11 times during his television appearance, President Clinton asserted that Richard Clarke understood the situation
and his writings would vindicate the Clinton performance. In Clarke's defense of Clinton for the missile attack
at the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, Clarke said that (1) there was a tie between Iraq and
terrorism, (2) Iraq had made an effort to manufacture nerve gas, and (3) there was a tie between Osama bin Laden
and Iraq.
What the left proposes is a return to the Clinton policies of regarding the Islamofascist attacks as police actions
requiring police responses, not war. Under those policies, the United States endured but did not respond in any
serious way, to the following:
- 1994 - Operation Bojinka, a plan to bring down multiple airliners at once,
was foiled in the Philippines. The U.S. funded increased law-enforcement cooperative programs with them.
1995 - AQ bombed the Office of Program Manager in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
and five Americans were killed and 60 wounded. The U.S. assigned an FBI
team to investigate.
1996 - AQ bombed the barracks of the pilots patrolling the "no-fly" zone, killing
some 19. The FBI was sent in to investigate.
1997 - AQ, by now, had consolidated its position in Afghanistan. Bin Laden issued repeated declarations
of war on the U.S. including a major television
appearance calling for the death of American soldiers. The Clinton administration
did not respond.
1998 - AQ bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Some 224 were killed including 12 diplomats. President
Clinton quite properly ordered cruise
missile strikes in retaliation. The record show that his actions were heavily
supported by the Republican leadership. However, the State Department was
ordered to tell Pakistan ahead of time. They were told and they tipped Osama
who abandoned the target sites.
1999 - Under Richard Clarke, the AQ Millennium plots were disrupted because he forced cooperation between
the agencies. Over Clarke's objections, policy soon reverted to the status quo.
2000 - In January AQ tried and failed in its attack on the U.S.S.The Sullivans off the coast of Yemen. In
October, they succeeded in damaging the U.S.S. Cole,
killing 17 and wounding 39. Clarke then presented a plan to launch a large-scale missile campaign against AQ which
was rejected by the Clinton cabinet. Predator drones spotted Osama three times in 1999 and 2000 but nothing was
done. As President, Bill Clinton could not summon the will to order the FBI, CIA or military into action. He passed
on no plan to the new administration although Sandy Berger did manage to steal a Clarke 1999 after action memo
that identified
colossal national security weaknesses.
The Rumsfeld Gotcha. On Monday, September 25th, Democrats held a make-believe hearing which the AP reported
as if it were not a staged political event. Since they are in the minority, the Democrats cannot hold real hearings
but they can get access to official hearing rooms. It is, of course, a long-standing understanding that retired
general officers refrain from meddling in civilian politics. The Senate Democratic Policy Committee staged a faux
hearing in which three retired officers gave "testimony."
The lead witness, Army Maj Gen John Batiste blamed Rumsfeld, who had passed Batiste over for promotion, for being
incompetent to lead, for reducing force levels to unacceptable points, micromanaging the war and tolerating unconscionable
things.
Army Maj Gen Paul Eaton supported the attack on Rumsfeld (i.e. George Bush) by saying the Secretary of Defense
was "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically." Eaton called for Rumsfeld and his immediate
team to be replaced.
Marine Col Thomas Hammes took issue with the Pentagon on not supplying the best equipment and called it a moral
failure. "Why are we asking our soldiers and Marines to use the same armor we found deficient in 2003?"
he asked.
The Democrats, who also announced plans this week to starve the war budget if they were put in charge of Congress
and to enforce a strict and short timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, were all smiles at this point. Then someone
asked what the Generals would do instead.
They would not cut and run, it turns out.
The officers called for more troops, more time and more money.
"We must mobilize our country for a protracted war," Batiste said.
"We should plan to be there for at least a decade," Hammes added.
"We are, conservatively, 60,000 soldiers short," Eaton, who was in charge of building the Iraqi Security
Forces, concluded.
Asked what would be the result of a rapid draw down of our forces, Batiste concluded that we needed to stay in
Iraq. "The result of an early withdrawal would be a civil war of some magnitude that would turn into a regional
mess….There must be support for making a bigger effort in Iraq, Batiste said, "God help us if there is not."
New York Times Fiasco. Also on the 24th, journalist Mark Mazzetti, writing in the New York Times, launched
a stink bomb that boomeranged. His headline? Expert spies think that Iraqi war has produced a worse terror threat.
To arrive at that headline, Mazzetti calls upon a leak of a classified document - The National Intelligence Estimate
written in February of this year and released to those with clearance in April. The author states that he has not
read any of the report. He quotes from his leaker without any knowledge of what else is in the document. At times,
he even quotes a portion of a single sentence, leaving out the part that counters his argument.
The White House countered this attack by releasing the whole executive summary.
It shows that the NIE did not offer any conclusions about success or failure. It does, however, spell out the consequences
of both:
- We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist
leaders and operatives. Perceived jihadist success there would inspire more
fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.
The Iraq conflict has become the "cause celebre" for jihadists, breeding a
deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating
supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq
perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer
fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.
The report establishes the idea that the insurgency will collapse when Iraqis grow strong enough to defend themselves
and rebuild their infrastructure in peace. A victory in Iraq would seriously damage the radical Islamist movement,
perhaps even mortally.
This badly misrepresented report illustrates that we have no chance to win by retreating. For both sides, the battle
at hand is the determining event. Communications intercepted
from AQ in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub Al Masri, also suggest that they view the immediate conflict as critical and that
they are suffering heavy losses. He calls for a renewed effort including indiscriminate chemical and biological
warfare.
Has the war increased the number of terrorists? It's likely that they would call for more recruits when they are
being pummeled. The expansion of the jihadist movement comes from petro-dollars Just imagine the rush of global
jihadist recruits if America retreats and they think that they are winning
The underlying pacifist theme that we would be better off if we didn't fight is historical nonsense. That path
leads to submission to barbarians.
September 29, 2006
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