Back in April, John McCain and his allies taunted Barack Obama as the choice of Hamas in the wake of remarks by a spokesman for that organization. Now with the news that Al Qaeda web sites are seemingly backing McCain for President, the Republican might want to reconsider that line of attack. And to be sure, John McCain should steer clear of touting "Osama the Terrorist" at his rallies.

As the Washington Post detailed Wednesday, Al Qaeda cadres see a McCain as the best bet to perpetuate the policies of President Bush they see bankrupting the United States and the West:

"Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the "failing march of his predecessor," President Bush...

...It further suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the election to McCain and guarantee an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world.

"It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda," said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. "Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America."

Of course, the claim that John McCain is supported by Al Qaeda is hyperbole that normally would deserve no place in American politics. (That said, the ironies abound for the man who said "I know how" to get Osama Bin Laden and would follow him to "the gates of hell.") But as recent history shows, slanders have become the centerpiece of the McCain campaign.

In April, as you might recall, John McCain showed no compunction in claiming Barack Obama was supported by Hamas.

Continue reading »

Will Bunch:

There's been a huge debate within the newspaper world -- and beyond -- about a fiery DVD targeting Islamic extremism called "Obsession" that over the last couple of weeks has been packaged in newspaper ads and distributed to hundreds of thousands of readers, especially in swing states. (The Philadelphia Inquirer was one of those papers.) Proponents say it's an honest portrayal of anti-American jihadism, while critics said the video would stir up hatred toward decent God-fearing Muslims, not just those involved in or supporting terrorism. Some wonder if it's all just a big ploy to help John McCain and the GOP, who want to focus the campaign on the threat of Islamic extremists. [..]

There's no more key battleground state in America than Ohio -- and sure enough thousands were delivered there on Monday in a number of newspapers, including the Dayton Daily News, which is in a hotly contested corner of the Buckeye State.

 Four days later, this happened as Muslims in Dayton attempted to worship:

DAYTON - Baboucarr Njie was preparing for his prayer session Friday night, Sept. 26, when he heard children in the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton coughing. Soon, Njie himself was overcome with fits of coughing and, like the rest of those in the building, headed for the doors.

"I would stay outside for a minute, then go back in, there were a lot of kids," Njie said. "My throat is still itchy, I need to get some milk."

Njie was one of several affected when a suspected chemical irritant was sprayed into the mosque at 26 Josie St., bringing Dayton police, fire and hazardous material personnel to the building at 9:48 p.m.

Someone "sprayed an irritant into the mosque," Dayton fire District Chief Vince Wiley said, noting that fire investigators believe it was a hand-held spray can.

Many in Dayton are wondering if the mass distribution of "Obsession" has anything to do with this. It's unclear whether or not this was in the works before or after the attack on the mosque, but religious leaders were meeting in Dayton yesterday to talk about the DVD:

 The Rev. Gary Percesepe, executive director of Greater Dayton Christian Connections, characterized the DVD as "fanning the flames of fear and prejudice against Muslims, with the potential to inspire hate crimes."

I've said that I have some practicing Muslims in my family (as well as Jews, Catholics, evangelical Christians and atheists, we're one big mixed-faith family).  This kind of dehumanizing of people sickens me.  And you see the result: blind acts of violence on innocent victims.  And yet I'm sure that person feels superior to the "terrorists" he hates, rather than recognizing he has become one of them.

Jon Perr has more examples of the GOP getting their hate on.

I fear he is correct. But as I've previously argued, it's the second part of Obama's Pakistan policy that really needs implemented - not the first.

With the anniversary of the September 11 attacks once again upon us, Bush's Law of Bin Laden is also again on display. That is, in the Bush playbook, the threat posed by Osama Bin Laden is directly proportional to the threat to the President's own political standing.

At the White House on Wednesday, press secretary Dana Perino played down the Bin Laden danger to her lame-duck boss' flatline political standing, if not to the American people:

Q: But Osama bin Laden is the one that - you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11 -

PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he's sitting in jail right now.

But back in January 2006, President Bush was singing a much different tune. Trying to fight back against the growing public outcry over his illegal domestic wiretapping program, President Bush used the Bin Laden bogeyman during remarks at the National Security Agency. Bush lashed out at his critics:

All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously. When he says he's going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it. I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously.

Continue reading »

[McCain speaking in front of the NRA in May, 2008]

John McCain's campaign won't say whether he's for or against allowing suspected terrorists to buy guns, as he tries to pander to his lobbyist pals and the Republican pro-gun base but wanders into the "War On Some Terror" minefield by mistake.

Sen. John McCain portrays himself as a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights. But does that extend to gun rights for suspected terrorists? His campaign won't say where he stands on a bill to eliminate a gun-control loophole that even the Bush administration wants closed: a gap in federal law that inhibits the government from stopping people on terrorist watch lists from buying guns. The bill was inspired by an official audit covering a five-month period in 2004 which found that, because of the loophole, the Feds had to greenlight 35 out of 44 cases where a gun buyer was on a terrorist watch list. One group opposed to closing the loophole is the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun manufacturers' trade association. Until this spring, one of its congressional lobbyists was Randy Scheunemann, now a top McCain campaign adviser on foreign policy.

... Registration documents filed by Scheunemann's company, Orion Strategies, list the terror-gap bill as one of its specific lobbying objectives, and the registrations listed Scheunemann as a lobbyist until he took a leave. McCain's campaign refused to answer questions about whether the senator supports or opposes the White House plan to close the loophole, and it also declined to say if Scheunemann had ever lobbied McCain on gun-control bills. "Randy Scheunemann is a foreign-policy adviser to Senator McCain, and he is on leave from Orion Strategies. We have no further comment," says Jill Hazelbaker, a campaign spokeswoman.

Yes, we know neocon Randy got McCain in over the old guy's head on Georgia. But does McCain really want to keep dancing around issues for the paid man who seems to do all his thinking for him?

The NSSF rightly says that the current bill removes "due process" from gun owners because "anyone can be put on the list". But what about due process for all those non-flyers first? (Or maybe for those held at Gitmo after being handed in for a bounty and tortured to ellicit confessions? What about their due process?) What was that? Randy doesn't get paid to whisper in John's ear about them? Oh, that makes everything clearer.

P.S. And just to add icing on the cake, Scheunemann was himself arrested by Capitol Hill police for a gun violation back in 1997 - possession of an unregistered gun and ammunition - when he was Trent Lott's top advisor. Talk about a conflict of interests.

Gareth Porter today examines the deeply flawed relationship between Musharraf of Pakistan and the Bush administration - one that sacrificed US national security for the mere appearance of alliance.

The problem faced by the Bush administration when it came into office was that the Pakistani military, over which Musharraf presided, was the real terrorist nexus with the Taliban and al Qaeda. As Bruce Riedel, National Security Council (NSC) senior director for South Asia in the Bill Clinton administration, who stayed on the NSC staff under the Bush administration, observed in an interview with this writer last September, al Qaeda "was a creation of the jihadist culture of the Pakistani army".

If there was a state sponsor of al Qaeda, Riedel said, it was the Pakistani military, acting through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate.

... For the next few years, Musharraf played a complicated game. The CIA was allowed to operate in Pakistan's border provinces to pursue al Qaeda operatives, but only as long as they had ISI units accompanying them. That restricted their ability to gather intelligence in the northwest frontier. At the same time, ISI was allowing Taliban and al Qaeda leaders to operate freely in the tribal areas and even in Karachi.

The Bush administration also gave Musharraf and the military regime a free ride on the A. Q. Khan network's selling of nuclear technology to Libya and Iran, even though there was plenty of evidence that the generals had been fully aware of and supported Khan's activities.

Journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins wrote in their book "The Nuclear Jihadist" that one retired general who had worked with Khan told them there was no question that Khan had acted with the full knowledge of the military leadership. "Of course the military knew," the general said. "They helped him."

But the Bush administration chose to help Musharraf cover up that inconvenient fact.

I hope all the Bush-cheerleaders who backed Musharraf simply because Bush called the ex-dictator a bulwark against terrorism are thoroughly ashamed of their support for such an amazingly dangerous lie. The motive for that cover up seems to have been providing an appearance of progress in the War on Terror rather than an actuality. Style over substance. But Musharraf's Pakistan gave nuclear know-how to Iran, North Korea and Libya as well as providing safe haven to myriad of Islamic extremist terrorist groups.

Still, I really don't expect the situation under Zardari, a man who is legendary for his corruption in a land of incredibly corrupt politicians, to improve any. Which mounts a serious challenge to the foreign policy plans of both the presidential candidates. Does either have the courage to call a spade a spade and to call Pakistan a major sponsor of terrorism?

Just sayin'...

Nicholas Kristof in NY Times (reg. req'd.):

Iraq and Afghanistan are the messes getting attention today, but they are only symptoms of a much broader cancer in American foreign policy.

A few glimpses of this larger affliction:

¶The United States has more musicians in its military bands than it has diplomats.

¶This year alone, the United States Army will add about 7,000 soldiers to its total; that's more people than in the entire American Foreign Service.

¶More than 1,000 American diplomatic positions are vacant because the Foreign Service is so short-staffed, but a myopic Congress is refusing to finance even modest new hiring. Some 1,100 could be hired for the cost of a single C-17 military cargo plane.

In short, the United States is hugely overinvesting in military tools and underinvesting in diplomatic tools. The result is a lopsided foreign policy that antagonizes the rest of the world and is ineffective in tackling many modern problems.[..]

Dennis Ross, the longtime Middle East peace negotiator, says he has been frustrated "beyond belief" to see resources showered on the military while diplomacy has to fight for scraps. Mr. Ross argues that an investment of just $1 billion - financing job creation and other grass-roots programs in the West Bank - could significantly increase the prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace. But that money isn't forthcoming.

Our intuitive approach to fighting terrorists and insurgents is to blow things up. But one of the most cost-effective counterterrorism methods in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan may be to build things up, like schooling and microfinance. Girls' education sometimes gets more bang for the buck than a missile.

A new study from the RAND Corporation examined how 648 terror groups around the world ended between 1968 and 2006. It found that by far the most common way for them to disappear was to be absorbed by the political process. The second most common way was to be defeated by police work. In contrast, in only 7 percent of cases did military force destroy the terrorist group.

"There is no battlefield solution to terrorism," the report declares. "Military force usually has the opposite effect from what is intended."

The next president should absorb that lesson and revalidate diplomacy as the primary tool of foreign policy - even if that means talking to ogres.

This was the approach that Rove, et al. sneered at.  Remind me again, how well did their approach work?  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result.  Maybe it's time to stop the insanity.

Today is the anniversary of the day Harriet Miers handed George Bush an intelligence memo entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.". Ultimately, Bin Laden's determination was more successful than George Bush's intelligence. As of this writing, Bin Laden remains at large. [Never Forget logo by Tengrain.]

And let us not forget how seriously then National Security Director (now Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice took that report: 

Interesting that the Hamdan conviction falls on this anniversary.

  Osama bin Laden's alleged driver, Salim Hamdan, has just been convicted on five counts of supporting a terror organization. Considering that the Pentagon planned on holding him indefinitely regardless of the verdict, does it really matter all that much?

Download | play   Download | play  

CNN:

A U.S. military jury found Osama Bin Laden's former driver guilty of five counts of material support to a terror organization in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

In a split verdict, jurors found Salim Hamdan not guilty of conspiracy to aid a terror organization, in this case al Qaeda.

The trial is being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility where he is being held.

Prosecutors allege that Hamdan, who was picked up in November 2001 in Afghanistan, overheard conversations about 9/11 and had other information that showed he was part of Osama bin Laden's inner circle and aided and abetted the attacks.

Hamdan faces life in prison and his lawyers are already planning to appeal.

The National Security Network weighs in:

HAMDAN VERIDCT: We Waited Seven Years For This?

"Today’s verdict does little if anything to advance American security. The entire process raises fundamental questions about the administration’s disregard for our constitutional values and may well do America more harm than good in the court of world opinion. It took seven years for the Bush administration’s military commissions system to get its first conviction for a crime that is regularly prosecuted in federal court. And when it did, it was a driver who even the administration acknowledges did not participate in the planning or execution of any terrorist attacks. Surely there is a better way to protect America and bring terrorists to justice while adhering to the constitutional values that have kept us safe and strong for 200 years."

The president spoke briefly this morning from the White House, heralding the “success of the surge” for creating “sustained progress” in Iraq. Soon after, Joe Lieberman announced that he and Lindsey Graham are “introducing a resolution recognizing the strategic success that the surge has achieved in a central front — the central front of the war on terror against the enemies who attacked America on 9/11/01, and expressing our thanks to our troops who’ve made that success possible.”

Ben at TP did a nice job knocking this down, emphasizing "the obvious fact that the terrorists who carried out the September 11, 2001 terror attacks operated out of Afghanistan, not Iraq," and that the policy that Lieberman supports has "prevented the U.S. from sending more troops where they are needed, in Afghanistan."

Quite right. I’d add that Lieberman’s insistence that the surge defeated “the enemies who attacked America on 9/11/01″ also suggests he thinks al Qaeda is (or at least, has been) the principal cause of violence in Iraq. That’s completely wrong, too.

Continue reading »

John McCain appeared via satellite with CNN’s Larry King last night, and the two covered a fair amount of ground in a short amount of time. There were a handful of important exchanges, but this was arguably the most striking.

King asked McCain what he’d do, as president, if he learned that bin Laden was in Pakistan, and he had a choice to send in U.S. forces after him. McCain replied, “Larry, I’m not going to go there and here’s why, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation.... But I want to assure you I will get Osama bin Laden as president of the United States and I will bring him to justice no matter what it takes.”

Unless, “what it takes” includes going into Pakistan.

I have to admit, I’ve heard McCain staking out a similar position for months, and I have no idea why he’s sticking to this. Barack Obama has said he’d pursue high-value terrorist targets into areas of Pakistan where the Musharraf government has little or no control, launching limited attacks based on actionable intelligence. McCain believes we shouldn’t pursue these terrorist targets, because he’s concerned about Pakistani “sovereignty.”

But this is crazy. Existing U.S. policy, under the Bush administration, is to go after terrorists in Pakistan. Obama wants to keep this policy in place. In fact, we’ve already executed this policy on more than one occasion, and have killed al Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistani mountains. McCain thinks this is a mistake? McCain disagrees with existing U.S. policy? He wants to do “what it takes,” but Pakistani “sovereignty” is so important, McCain would scale back counter-terrorism efforts in the region?

If there’s any coherent rationale behind McCain’s approach, it’s hiding well.

Back in 2004, Bush told a Florida audience, “[John] Kerry said, and I quote, ‘The war on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering law enforcement operation.’ (Audience boos.) I disagree…. After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. With those attacks, the terrorists and supporters declared war on the United States of America — and war is what they got. (Audience applauds.)”

Bush, pleased with himself and the reaction, repeated the attack again and again and again. The point was obvious — paint an image in which Bush battles terrorists with the most powerful military in the world, while Kerry fights al Qaeda with cops and lawyers.

Four years later, McCain is picking up where Bush left off. As it turns out, Bush and McCain are clearly wrong.

The United States can defeat al-Qaida if it relies less on force and more on policing and intelligence to root out the terror group’s leaders, a new study contends.

“Keep in mind that terrorist groups are not eradicated overnight,” said the study by the federally funded Rand research center, an organization that counsels the Pentagon.

Its report said that the use of military force by the United States or other countries should be reserved for quelling large, well-armed and well-organized insurgencies, and that American officials should stop using the term “war on terror” and replace it with “counterterrorism.”

Seth Jones, the lead author of the study and a Rand political scientist, told Reuters, “Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests there is no battlefield solution to terrorism. The United States has the necessary instruments to defeat al-Qaida, it just needs to shift its strategy.”

Ya don’t say.

Continue reading »

   MSNBC:

President Bush praised Pakistan Monday as a strong ally in the fight against terrorists and as committed to securing its border with Afghanistan.[..]

In words meant to bolster the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, Bush said (Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza) Gilani has made a "very strong commitment" to securing the dangerous border region.

Gilani said he wants the people of the United States to know that vast majority of Pakistanis want peace, and want to cooperate with the U.S.

Gilani's White House visit comes amid increased calls by senior U.S. officials for Pakistan to stop militants from staging cross-border attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Officials and state media said that missiles hit a religious school in a village just inside Pakistan's border with Afghanistan on Monday, killing six people. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the incident followed a series of strikes apparently by U.S. aircraft in recent months against militant leaders holed up in Pakistan's tribal belt.

Um, hello?  Reality to BushWorld...

As developments on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to undermine his campaign, Republican John McCain tried to play the Bin Laden card on Friday. Repeating his claim "I know how to win wars," McCain told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "I know how" to capture Osama Bin Laden. Apparently, the McCain strategy, as he never tires of telling voters, is to follow Bin Laden to "the gates of hell."

Appearing on the Situation Room, John McCain suggested that his record on Iraq and expertise on the geography of the Iraq-Pakistan border region would allow him to succeed where George W. Bush failed in capturing the Al Qaeda chieftain:

"I'm not going to telegraph a lot of the things that I'm going to do because then it might compromise our ability to do so. But, look, I know the area, I have been there, I know wars, I know how to win wars, and I know how to improve our capabilities so that we will capture Osama bin Laden -- or put it this way, bring him to justice…We will do it, I know how to do it."

  Download | play   Download | play

No doubt, McCain hasn't been shy when it comes to explaining how he'll bag Bin Laden.

Continue reading »

In late 2007, Bush administration officials drafted a secret plan, giving the Defense Department's Special Operations forces greater ease to go into the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the goal of targeting al-Qaida's top leaders.

The plan sounded very encouraging on paper -- it would sidestep turf wars between Washington and Islamabad, and target high-value targets where we know they are. So what happened? More than six months later, the plan has not yet been executed, and the Special Operations forces are still standing by, waiting for orders. Bureaucratic disputes within the administration have slowed the whole initiative down to a stop.

The New York Times reports that it's all part of a broader problem with Bush's counterterrorism strategy.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a "war on terrorism" and made the destruction of Mr. bin Laden's network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan's tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world ...

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Publicly, senior American and Pakistani officials have said that the creation of a Qaeda haven in the tribal areas was in many ways inevitable -- that the lawless badlands where ethnic Pashtun tribes have resisted government control for centuries were a natural place for a dispirited terrorism network to find refuge. The American and Pakistani officials also blame a disastrous cease-fire brokered between the Pakistani government and militants in 2006.

But more than four dozen interviews in Washington and Pakistan tell another story. American intelligence officials say that the Qaeda hunt in Pakistan, code-named Operation Cannonball by the C.I.A. in 2006, was often undermined by bitter disagreements within the Bush administration and within the C.I.A., including about whether American commandos should launch ground raids inside the tribal areas.

Inside the C.I.A., the fights included clashes between the agency's outposts in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Islamabad. There were also battles between field officers and the Counterterrorist Center at C.I.A. headquarters, whose preference for carrying out raids remotely, via Predator missile strikes, was derided by officers in the Islamabad station as the work of "boys with toys."

The article went on to explain that many of the top, experienced intelligence officers who would have been assigned to the al Qaeda hunt weren't available. As one official put it, "Those people all went to Iraq. We were all hurting because of Iraq."

So the war in Iraq created an opportunity for al Qaeda to recruit more terrorists and, at the same time, made it harder to go after al Qaeda terrorists.