Bush Keeps Pumping Al Qaeda As The New Nazis

"Surge Of Facts" To Become The New Bush Co. Mantra

Going against a near endless stream of national, and international intelligence, reports that claim that Al Qaeda in Iraq is a small, but still powerful, influence in the terror attacks in Iraq, President Bush has ramped up his claims that Al Qaeda in Iraq, is the very same Al Qaeda that attacked the United States on 9/11.

As the myth-making has failed to take root in the American mind, Bush is now losing patience with the spin he has been directed to unfurl, in the hope of bumping back up support for the Iraq War and the 'War on Terror'.

Bush needs Americans to see Al Qaeda in Iraq as the new Nazis - a massive, strong, well-armed, ideologically driven enemy worth of half trillion per year defence budgets. But the US Treasury is running low on funds, and the American people are running low on patience.

Bush, however, keeps up the myth-making :

President Bush sought anew on Tuesday to draw connections between the Iraqi group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, and he sharply criticized those who contend that the groups are independent of each other.

At a time when Mr. Bush is trying to beat back calls for withdrawal from Iraq, the speech at Charleston Air Force Base reflected concern at the White House over criticism that he is focusing on the wrong terrorist threat.

“The facts are that Al Qaeda terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they’re fighting us in Iraq and across the world and they are plotting to kill Americans here at home again,” Mr. Bush told a contingent of military personnel here. “Those who justify withdrawing our troops from Iraq by denying the threat of Al Qaeda in Iraq and its ties to Osama bin Laden ignore the clear consequences of such a retreat.”

The Iraqi group is a homegrown Sunni Arab extremist group with some foreign operatives that has claimed a loose affiliation to Mr. bin Laden’s network, although the precise links are unclear.

In his speech, Mr. Bush did not try to debunk the fact — repeated by Mr. Reid — that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist until after the United States invasion in 2003 and has flourished since.

His comments also reflected a subtle shift from his recent flat assertion that, “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on Sept. 11.”

The overall thrust of the speech was that the administration believes that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has enough connections to Mr. bin Laden’s group to be considered the same threat, that its ultimate goal is to strike America...

Mr. Bush referred throughout his speech to what his aides said was newly declassified intelligence in his effort to link Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the central Qaeda leadership that is believed to be operating from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. Although the aides said the intelligence was declassified, White House and intelligence officials declined to provide any detail on the reports Mr. Bush cited.

In stark terms, Mr. Bush laid out a case that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had taken its cues from the central Qaeda leadership, and that it had been led by foreigners who have sworn allegiance to Mr. bin Laden.

Mr. Bush quoted from what aides said was a previously classified intelligence assessment, saying, “The Zarqawi-bin Laden merger gave Al Qaeda in Iraq quote, ‘prestige among potential recruits and financiers.’ ” He added, “The merger also gave Al Qaeda’s senior leadership ‘a foothold in Iraq to extend its geographic presence.’ ”

Some administration officials have been more conservative in their assessments of any ability and desire that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia might have to carry out attacks here.

“When you look at how they are arraying their capabilities, those capabilities are being focused on the conflict in Iraq at this time,” Edward M. Gistaro, one of the principal authors of a recent National Intelligence Estimate on terrorist threats to the United States, said last week

From the Washington Post :

"Some will tell you al-Qaeda in Iraq isn't really al-Qaeda -- and not really a threat to America," Bush said. "Well, that's like watching a man walk into a bank with a mask and a gun, and saying he's probably just there to cash a check. We are fighting bin Laden's al-Qaeda in Iraq."

Critics of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq -- including former intelligence officials, lawmakers and regional experts -- have said that al-Qaeda in Iraq grew up in response to the U.S. occupation and that loyalists of the group represent just a small percentage of the insurgent forces battling U.S. and Iraqi forces. Moreover, al-Qaeda as a whole represents an ideology for extremists as much as it does a functioning organization, some intelligence analysts have said.

But Bush called the Iraqi organization an "alliance of killers" and repeated earlier assertions that a military withdrawal would allow Iraq to be used as a base from which to strike the U.S. homeland.

"Those who justify withdrawing our troops from Iraq by denying the threat of al-Qaeda in Iraq and its ties to Osama bin Laden ignore the clear consequences of such a retreat," Bush said. "If we were to follow their advice, it would be dangerous for the world -- and disastrous for America."

"The masterminds who want to harm this country are in Pakistan while our troops are in Iraq. It doesn't get much simpler than that," said Rand Beers, a former National Security Council aide who is president of the National Security Network, an advocacy group.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) similarly said Bush's handling of the war has intensified the terrorist threat. "The National Intelligence Estimate contradicted what the president said today and made it clear that al-Qaeda is stronger because of our massive military presence in Iraq," he said Tuesday.

Bush also added that another terrorist leader recently captured in Iraq, whom he identified only as Mashhadani, had told U.S. interrogators that the Iraqi organization there went to "extraordinary lengths to promote the fiction" that it was not run by foreigners tied to the central al-Qaeda network. Khalid al-Mashhadani's capture was announced in a news conference last week by U.S. forces in Baghdad.

A Bush administration spokeswoman was quoted in the New York Times story as describing the added emphasis on Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as being part of the 9/11 Al Qaeda network as an element of the "surge of facts" that the White House was using to make its case to stay and keep fighting the 'War on Terror' in Iraq.

But while Al Qaeda-aligned terror groups in Iraq remain small, though formidable, Al Qaeda as a political and war fighting strength continues to grow in strength, capacity and tactical knowledge in the 'badlands' of Pakistan, close to the border of Afghanistan.

The call will grow amongst Americans : why are we fighting in Iraq to defeat Al Qaeda when we should be fighting them in Pakistan?

This is an argument, and debate, that the Bush administration doesn't want to take hold. Pakistan has soaked up more than $10 billion in American 'War on Terror' related funding, but Al Qaeda now appears to be stronger, and more numerous, in Pakistan than anywhere else in th world.

Note : Crooks And Liars noted on July 13 that White House press secretary Tony Snow had used the term "surge of facts" for the first time. It's already getting a strong workout from the Bush Co. spin ministry. Expect to see more of it. We await President Bush's first use of the term. Shouldn't be too long now.

From Palestine To Pakistan, Bush's 'War On Terror' Confronts And Creates Violence, Death And Destruction

Jim Lobe, of Inter Press Service, rounds up the global state of conflict, for which most of the world is looking to the United States to eventually, comprehensively, solve. If only because President Bush has repeatedly stated that the storm of crises now raging are all part of the global 'War on Terror' that Bush himself launched while the imploded ruins of the Twin Towers were still burning in New York City :

Four years after the emergence of the first signs of a serious insurgency in Iraq, US President George W. Bush finds himself beset with major crises stretching from Palestine to Pakistan.

With US-backed Fatah forces routed by Hamas in Gaza this week, Bush's five-year-old vision of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict now looks more remote than ever, while a new Pentagon report in Iraq suggests that his four-month-old "surge" strategy is failing in its primary objective of reducing the violence there.

Meanwhile, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, to whom Washington has provided virtually unconditional support since al-Qaeda's 9/11 attack, faces a growing popular revolt, while much of the country's tribal border regions have come under the control of forces allied with Afghanistan's Taliban.

And Iran, which senior US officials this week accused of arming the Taliban, as well as Shi'ite militias in Iraq, has continued to defy Washington's demands that it halt its nuclear enrichment program, while Tehran's regional allies, Syria and Lebanon's Hezbollah, not to mention Hamas itself, appear to have successfully withstood intensified US-led efforts to isolate them.

This week's events in Gaza, in fact, are also likely to have dealt a heavy blow to US hopes of forging an anti-Iranian coalition consisting of Israel and the "Arab Quartet" led by Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Saudi King Abdullah appeared to have grown disillusioned with Bush even before the US-backed dissolution by Palestine Authority President and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas of the government of national unity whose birth was personally midwifed by Abdullah himself last March.

"There's a strongly held view among our Arab friends that we don't know what we're doing," observed ret. Amb. Daniel Kurtzer, Washington's chief envoy to Israel during Bush's first term and now a professor at Princeton University, earlier this week before Hamas' takeover of Gaza.

Al-Qaeda, which continues to enjoy the protection of its allies in Pakistan and has made the US military occupation in Iraq its primary recruiting ground, has also benefited enormously from the backlash against Washington's policies throughout the region, according to most experts here.

"al-Qaeda today is a global operation – with a well-oiled propaganda machine based in Pakistan, a secondary but independent base in Iraq, and an expanding reach in Europe," wrote Bruce Riedel, a former high-level Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst, in Foreign Affairs magazine last month.

In the article, entitled "al-Qaeda Strikes Back," Reidel, the senior director for Near East Affairs in the White House from 1997 to 2002, predicted that the group would likely set up new operations in northern Lebanon and Gaza and eventually try to provoke "all-out war" between the US and Iran as part of a "grand strategy" aimed at "bleeding" Washington in much the same way that US-backed mujahadin and their Arab allies bled the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

Indeed, like Jason of Greek myth, Bush has sown dragon's teeth throughout the region with a predominantly military policy, particularly his decision to unilaterally invade and occupy Iraq, even as he encouraged right-wing governments in Israel to indulge their propensity for using force to resolve problems with their neighbors.

But, unlike Jason, it looks increasingly doubtful that Bush can subdue the militant forces that have sprouted from those seeds and appear to grow stronger with each passing day.