RollingStone: Bush's Phony War

A magnificent article in the current issue - just posted at RollingStone.com, and mind-numbingly relevant after tonight's shameless speech.

The Phony War
President Bush not only created a fake "War on Terror" to scare voters into supporting his policies -- he is failing to address the real threat facing America

ROBERT DREYFUSS

In August, even before the official announcement that some two dozen would-be terrorists had been arrested in London, President Bush and his top advisers swung into action. Their goal was not to stop the terrorists, who were already safely behind bars, but to use the threat to justify the president's seemingly endless "War on Terror."

Vice President Dick Cheney, who had known in advance about the pending arrests, hinted darkly about the threat posed by "Al Qaeda types." The president, standing on an airport tarmac in Wisconsin the next morning, warned that the arrests were "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists." And that afternoon, Peter Wehner, the director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives, declared that America is engaged in nothing less than a "civilizational struggle" with enemies who seek "to establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."

Fortunately, Wehner added, the country has a leader who knows exactly how to combat terrorism: "George W. Bush understands, with extraordinary clarity, the great struggle of our time."

The problem is, almost everything that President Bush understands about his own war on terrorism is wrong.

According to nearly a dozen former high-ranking officials who have been on the front lines of the administration's counterterrorism effort, the president is not only fighting the wrong war -- he is fighting it in a way that has actually made the threat worse. The war on terrorism, they say, has been mismanaged and misdirected almost from the start, in no small part because the president simply does not understand the nature of the enemy he is fighting.

"I hate the term 'global war on terrorism,' " says John O. Brennan, a CIA veteran who served as the first director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the primary organization set up by Bush to analyze all intelligence about terrorism and coordinate strategic operational planning. "I hate the tough talk, you know, the 'we're gonna kill these guys' stuff."

Brennan is not alone. In a survey conducted this summer, more than 100 top foreign-policy experts -- including former secretaries of state, CIA directors and high-ranking Pentagon officials -- were asked if the president is "winning the War on Terror." Eighty-four percent said no.

Five years after the attacks of September 11th, the administration has failed to grasp the shifting realities of terrorism. If the United States is to have any chance at preventing another terrorist attack -- as the British government apparently did in London last month -- there are five essential lessons the president needs to learn:

1. AL QAEDA HAS BEEN VIRTUALLY ELIMINATED AS A THREAT
Although the administration continues to scare Americans with the specter of Al Qaeda, the organization that attacked the United States on 9/11 has been virtually wiped out. While Osama bin Laden and a number of Al Qaeda veterans are still at large, the force that assaulted New York and Washington has been effectively dismantled. "I personally don't believe Al Qaeda exists as a robust organization anymore," says Wayne White, a top intelligence official in the State Department who left the Bush administration last year.

The systematic elimination of Al Qaeda began within weeks of the 9/11 attacks. Going into Afghanistan in October 2001, the CIA had a fair understanding of Al Qaeda's strength, organization and location. "We had a pretty good idea of who was there," says a CIA veteran who asked not to be identified. "We weren't asleep. We had a list of Al Qaeda people going in, and it included a lot of people who'd passed through their training camps over the years."

CIA intelligence at the time suggested that Al Qaeda was about 5,000 strong in Afghanistan. According to U.S. intelligence officials, many -- perhaps most -- of the group's members were killed in the bombing raids unleashed by the U.S. military. "We had a lot of success with airstrikes," says a former CIA operations officer. "We came in with B-52s and F-16s, and at Tora Bora we dropped a 15,000-pound device on them. We blew them to bits. If you wanted to do a body count, you would have needed to pick up the pieces with Q-Tips."

According to Gary Berntsen, a longtime CIA operations officer and former CIA station chief, only a few hundred Al Qaeda members managed to get out of Afghanistan in 2001. "Before Tora Bora, some did slip out, a dozen here and a dozen there," says Berntsen, who led the CIA team in the field that was assigned the task of hunting down Al Qaeda. "In Tora Bora, we estimated there were about a thousand who fell back, and many of those were killed. They broke into two groups, finally. One group, of about 130, was captured in Pakistan. Another group, about 180 people, got away."

The few who managed to get out -- including bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri -- were barely able to scramble to safety. "It was a disorganized rout," says White, the former intelligence official.

In Afghanistan, the CIA reaped an intelligence bonanza, seizing Al Qaeda's computers, files and organizational records. "Once we got Al Qaeda's hard drives, our knowledge expanded exponentially," says a retired CIA station chief. That intelligence has enabled counterterrorism officers to target Al Qaeda operatives around the world, all but eviscerating the group's foreign presence. "We've killed or captured at least one or two terrorists a day for five years, all over the world," says an experienced CIA hand. "More than 4,000 in all." A relentless crackdown in 2003 by authorities in Saudi Arabia virtually eliminated Al Qaeda there, and a terrorist group in Algeria allegedly tied to bin Laden was smashed.

Today, despite sketchy reports that an Al Qaeda veteran may have been involved in the London plot to bomb U.S. airlines, counterterrorism officials no longer believe that bin Laden has the ability to command cells of followers -- let alone to plan, organize and manage large-scale terrorist actions. According to Brian Jenkins, who has spent more than thirty years studying terrorism at the RAND Corporation, Al Qaeda now totals fewer than 500 members, including its leaders and foot soldiers. At the top -- "that is, bin Laden and the boys" -- the organization is much smaller. "There is a core of only tens to scores of individuals involved in managing this thing," Jenkins says.

2. WHAT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT AL QAEDA CAN STILL HURT US
If the president had kept his focus on capturing bin Laden, top officials say, he might have been able to declare a swift victory. Instead, Bush shifted from going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to going after Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- a decision with fateful consequences for U.S. security. "Iraq broke our back in the War on Terror," says Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's Al Qaeda unit until 2004.

Bin Laden, thought to be hiding in Pakistan, may not retain much ability to coordinate terrorist acts, but by his very existence he provides a rallying point for other would-be terrorists. "He is not much more than a standard-bearer," says White. "He's like a regimental flag-carrier, holding up the flag and trying to inspire people." About forty times over the past five years, bin Laden and Zawahiri have delivered tapes for broadcast, usually to the Arabic-language television channel Al Jazeera. There is no indication that any of these messages relate directly to specific acts of terrorism, but their taunting bravado encourages wanna-be terrorists.

"They're inspired by the great fucking leader," says a former CIA station chief with wide experience in the Middle East. "And we need the great fucking leader's head on a pike."

Unfortunately, now that bin Laden and Zawahiri are in Pakistan, finding them is an exceedingly difficult assignment. "In the sense that Al Qaeda is decentralized, it's much harder to get your hands around," says John McLaughlin, the former acting CIA director who left the agency in 2004. Whatever is left of Al Qaeda's core leadership has gone off the grid, avoiding electronic communications, and the CIA suspects that they connect with one another only through couriers. "They're highly conscious of operational security, and they've got geography in their favor," says Paul Pillar, a retired CIA counterterrorism expert who served as chief Middle East analyst under Bush. "The area that they're thought to be in is pretty much alien territory."

As a result, the CIA knows almost nothing about how bin Laden contacts the copycat groups he inspires. "We don't know squat about their leadership, or how they communicate," says a longtime CIA official who recently retired. "We don't know where they are, so we don't know who they are. We don't even know how the fucking videotapes get to Al Jazeera."

3. THE THREAT HAS GONE VIRAL
By failing to "smoke out" bin Laden as promised, the president has given hope to a new generation of freelance terrorist cells, Islamist copycats and Al Qaeda wanna-be's. "We let them get away," says a retired CIA station chief. "We took a relatively centralized organization and turned it into a generalized virus. Before Afghanistan, we were facing somewhat of a unified threat. We now have the equivalent of a phantom that we're fighting."

It is that phantomlike, post-Al Qaeda form of terrorism that worries most U.S. experts, including former administration officials. "What is of greater concern is the development of local organizations," says White. Compared to the Al Qaeda of 2001, this new generation of terrorists is mostly amateurs, less likely and less capable of pulling off truly spectacular acts of violence. Though they can cause significant casualties from time to time, counterterrorism officials say, they are more like a low-grade viral infection -- life-threatening only if left unattended. "There is a relatively small number of people who are out there trying to hurt us," says James Steinberg, a deputy national-security adviser under President Clinton.

These new formations -- such as the cells that carried out deadly transit bombings in Madrid and London after 9/11, as well as the one accused in the recent London plot -- may be less organized than the old Al Qaeda, but they are harder to defend against. When a handful of angry Islamic radicals meets in secret, decides on violence to seek revenge for alleged wrongs, and then hatches a plot, there is no organizational record for police and intelligence officials to track. "It means that the people who are carrying out terrorism are not people we know about," says Vince Cannistraro, who served as chief of operations and analysis at the CIA's counterterrorist center. "They're not on any lists. And you are not going to find out about them, even if you capture Zawahiri."

Copycat cells are angry, embittered Islamic radicals who hear Bush talk about a "crusade" and see U.S. troops occupying Iraq -- and who want revenge. Because they arise spontaneously, without formal ties to Al Qaeda, the CIA can only guess at their location. "We don't have a very good map of where these cells might be," says Jenkins. "We only know where attacks have occurred." Based on those attacks, as well as other intelligence, analysts believe the cells are concentrated in a handful of cities in Europe, from London and Madrid to radical mosques in Germany and Switzerland. Some cells also appear to be connected to radical Muslim groups in Pakistan, including veteran terrorist groups involved in Kashmir, a divided region claimed by both Pakistan and India.

4. FIGHTING TERRORISM IS FOR COPS AND SPIES, NOT SOLDIERS
For President Bush, the way to stop terrorism is to wage a war. But isolated terrorists who conspire in the suburbs of London and coordinate their attacks on jihadist Web sites can't be defeated by armies -- they can only be stopped by a combination of patient, old-fashioned police work and good intelligence. Indeed, the success of the British police and Scotland Yard in halting the recent threat in London represents a textbook example of how terrorists can be thwarted.

But the president shows no sign that he learned the lesson of the London bust. "Some people say, 'Well, this may be a law-enforcement matter,' " Bush said after the London plot was revealed. "No -- these are people that are politically driven. . . . They have a backward view of the world." To combat that worldview, Bush has relied almost exclusively on the military. Since 2001, the administration has spent $430 billion on what he calls the "global war on terrorism" -- and nearly ninety cents of every dollar have gone to the Defense Department.

John Brennan, the former counterterrorism director, says that the military is singularly unsuitable to combat the new organizational model that is emerging to replace Al Qaeda. "It's not a Terrorist International that we're fighting," he says. "But the Department of Defense and others insist very strongly on calling it a war, because that allows the Pentagon to prosecute the military dimension of the conflict. It fits their global strategy."

Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Marine colonel who served as Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department, also ridicules the president's notion that the enemy is a global force made up of "Islamic fascists" who can be defeated as the Nazis were by military force. "I don't think there's a soul in the administration, except for Vice President Dick Cheney, who believes that crap about 'Islamofascism,' " he says.

To make matters worse, Wilkerson adds, the Pentagon often undertook its anti-terrorism ventures without even bothering to notify other agencies. Special Forces frequently turned up uninvited in countries around the world, and the State Department didn't even know they were there. "We'd have an ambassador call us and say, 'Why are these six-foot-six Americans walking down the streets here?' " Wilkerson recalls. "And Colin Powell would have to call Don Rumsfeld and say, 'Don, why the hell do you have the Delta Force in such-and-such place?'"

The emphasis on the military has come at the expense of intelligence gathering. In fact, the administration's recent steps to reorganize intelligence agencies have weakened the CIA and created an overlapping and contradictory web of bureaucracy that has complicated the ability of U.S. spies and analysts to prevent another attack. "We have a more confusing organization now," says Pillar. "It's really hard to answer the question 'Who's in charge?' "

Over the past two years, as the CIA has been forced to do the bidding of the Pentagon, scores of top agency officials have been fired or have quit in disgust. In addition, Rolling Stone has learned, the Defense Department has even blocked efforts by the agency to produce a National Intelligence Estimate -- a formal, top-secret analysis of the threat posed by Al Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups. Five years after the attacks of September 11th, the administration still lacks a unified, up-to-date analysis of who the enemy is and how best to fight him.

"When I left the CIA in November 2004, they had not done an NIE on Al Qaeda," says Scheuer, who headed the agency's Al Qaeda unit for nearly a decade. "In fact, there has never been an NIE on the subject since the 1990s." Today, the process remains bogged down in interagency disputes -- largely because of resistance by the Pentagon to any conclusions that would weaken its primary role in counterterrorism. As a result, the Bush administration remains uncertain about the true nature of the terrorist foes that America faces -- and unable to devise an effective strategy to combat those foes.

5. TERRORISM CAN'T BE DEFEATED -- EVER
Terrorism is not an enemy, but a method. As such, it can never be defeated -- only contained and reduced. Even if the United States were to wipe out every terrorist cell in the world today, terrorism would be back tomorrow, because new grievances and new cries for revenge will continue to create new terrorists. In addition, there will always be violence-prone, armed insurgent groups that use terrorist methods in conflicts around the world, from Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon to rebel and dissident groups in Kashmir, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Spain, Colombia, the Philippines and the Congo.

In the short term, the cops and spies can continue to do their best to watch for terrorist threats as they emerge, and occasionally, as in London, they will succeed. But they are the first to admit that stopping a plot before it can unfold involves, more than anything, plain dumb luck. In the end, the advantage is with the conspirators. "Stopping a terrorist plot before it happens is rare," says Pillar, the government's former chief Middle East analyst. "It's tremendously satisfying, but rare. It's a mistake to think we can improve our intelligence specifically to come up with that sort of prevention."

Rather than waging a global war, experts say, the United States needs to work closely with foreign intelligence services that know the lay of the land in their own countries to take down terrorists one by one. "Progress is measured one terrorist at a time, one cell at a time," says Pillar. "We will be attacked. But there's a chance that we will be attacked less often, and less lethally." As unsatisfying as it sounds, that approach suggests a definition of "victory" in battling terrorism: The best we can do is to reduce the threat of terrorism to that of an ugly nuisance.

In the longer term, with each passing day, the heavy-handed U.S. involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israel-Palestine conflict is producing new terrorists. By his very policies, President Bush is spreading the virus, not quarantining it. The war in Iraq has radicalized Muslims all over the world, and it has allowed them to portray the invasion of Iraq as an attack on Islam. "The president says Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, but Iraq has turned out to be the central front because we've made it so," says Wilkerson. "Osama bin Laden is probably chuckling in his cave. We gave it to him on a platter, with a knife and fork."

That, in the end, is the most important lesson of all to be learned from the campaign against terrorism. The hatred inflamed by the Bush administration cannot be fixed by cops, spies or soldiers. It can be fixed only by a more unified and coordinated stance toward the rest of the world -- one that creates allies rather than inspiring hatred.

"We need a healthier foreign policy," says Brennan, the former counterterrorism head. "It will take a diplomatic track to address this problem -- in ways other than killing people."

This article appears in the September 21, 2006 issue of "Rolling Stone."

Comments

[terri]

It's not that he's dumb, or incompetent, or wrong. BushCo is raking in money, hand over fist. Please, could some journalist or politician start getting to the bottom of this?

[oldgringo]

"Getting to the bottom of this" at this point is exactly what the idiots in power want us to waste our time and effort on.
NOVEMBER IS NOW ONLY 7 OR 8 WEEKS DISTANT!

All effort NOW must be directed to getting rid of the FASCISTI by throwing the bums out of THE HOUSE and THE Senate, BOTH! 08 is over TWO YEARS off!
The fact is, it is now time to get up off our "dead Intellectual Asses", get out in the streets, door knock, and what ever else we can do to get PROGRESSIVES into as many offices AT ALL LEVELS as we possibly can.
PLAYING INTELLECTUAL PATTY CAKE HERE ON THE NET IS NO MORE THAN SELFSERVING, EGO BUILDING PASTIME, AND HAS LITTLE OR NO IMPACT ON THE PRACTICAL REALITIES OF ELECTORAL POLITICS....SO....IF YA REALLY WANT TO HAVE AN EFFECT ON THE MIDTERMS, GET INVOLVED AND DAMN IT DO SOMETHING OTHER THAN WRING YOUR INTELLECTUAL HANDS!

[terri]

Um, I was asking journalists and politicians to poke the real story, reacting to the Rolling Stone article that still wants to talk about rights and wrongs, brains/no brains, ad nauseum.

You bet yer ass I support everyone DOING something besides writing words.

Just seems that someone could be getting more evidence of criminal wrong-doing instead of trying to analyze Bush's mind.

[Laura Linger]

Terri:

I concur. At this point, and for a long time now, actually, I could give a hot damn in a whorehouse what makes any Shrubsucker, including the Liar in Thief, tick.

If it's writing that they want to do, it needs to be the following, over and over and over, again and again, without wavering:

BUSH SUPPORTERS HATE AMERICAN FREEDOM

BUSH SUPPORTERS ENABLE TERRORISM

THE GOP IS A MISERABLE FAILURE IN THE WAR ON TERRAH

WHERE IS OSAMA BIN LADEN?

FIVE YEARS AFTER 9/11, WHERE IS A MEMORIAL?

THE GOP HATES WORKING AMERICANS

BUSH HAS MADE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HATED MUCH MORE THAN IT WAS ON 9/11

[bev]

Just because you've heard it before doesn't mean it's wrong - but why should I expect radical right wing extremists to think rationally?

It's a good article.

Attempts to demonize Muslims/Islam are no different than the demonizing of Jews by the Nazis. In an enlightened world...hey...in the United States! - under the CONSTITUTION - you are innocent until PROVEN guilty.

What is this America that the pseudo-religious radical right is talking about? It is no country that I learned about in school. No freedom and justice for all in the country of the radical right. I would say to these people - if you don't like freedom of speech, leave. Maybe the USSR under Stalin would have suited you better.

I believe that now I am the real conservative. I want to return to a time when the US was respected - not for its power, but for its ethics and its generosity.

[marblex]

uhm hello Dumbfuckistan (formerly known as America):

The ONLY thing keeping the paperless economy of the USA afloat is DEFENSE SPENDING.

Hence: ETERNAL WAR

Dissidents will soon be encamped in concentration camps bought and paid for with YOUR tax dollars and given away wholesale to Haliburton, one of the biggest defense contractors.

WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR

That's why it's a "war on terrorism" instead of good ole fashioned police work.

the USA will become a full=fledged police state by the end of next year.

[ukenuke]

Iraq: The greatest money-laundering scam ever perpetrated ($10+ BILLION every month).

1) Start a phony war
2) Scare the shit out of the people
3) Take your blank check -- courtesy of the American people by way of a complicit Republican Congress -- and then pay your crony pals for security, meals, equipment, fuel, construction, etc. (whether they deliver or not)
4) Collect your commission

[Jeff]

On September 12, 2001, George W. Bush held more power than any other man in the history of the planet, all because of a world shocked and sympathetic at a horrible terrorist attack on New York City, and a frightened US citizenry. In the most stunning voluntary surrender of power the world has ever seen, Bush squandered the world's goodwill, the devotion of US citizens, and his stature through a series of incredibly stupid decisions. Now he is just a desperate, sad little man. Despised by anyone with a brain. Sucks to be him these days.

[John, Birmingham, MI]

Bush is a professional lacky understudy created by his Father and his connections to be in 2000 the heir apparent (no pun intended) so they set out with a long range plan to soften up Clinton and his successor with Reinquist playing Impeachment judge and then the ultimate fuck you, taking the Bush v Gore case all the way. Face it folks you got fucked hard. How does it feel you yuppie pukes. The country is now totalitarian because of those events and the crowning glory of the right wing was the "attack" on Amurika, have a good one-party time dickweeds

Wow, John, Birmingham, MI leaves us all reeling - from something. Maybe he could tell us what he's talking about next time.

[texaslady]

Has anyone else considered the win/win situation our presence in Iraq is doing for the Bush Cartel? Our presence is stirring up anger, rightly so, with insurgents (would you like another country destroying America?)
Thus Iraq is NOT producing even the same amount of oil it did with Saddam. So now, Exxon is making a billion a week along with other producers with one LESS producer on the world market.
Plus the sheeple who support Bush think he is keeping them safe. WOW you got to give it to whoever thought this one up.
And as Tony Snow said, "the dead soldiers in Iraq, well that is only a number."

Hopefully there is a special hell for this bunch.

There's a basic factual and also semantic error in the article. This is that "terrorism" is the exclusive provence of non-State actors. It's not, rather it's a basic instrument of States, it's what they do, it's their invention - think about it in history...

When victims refuse to obey they are called (by States) "terrorists". Of course this process does attract criminals - but on both sides of a conflict. OBL and GWB are examples... And both opposing cadres do use terror, but the enterprising "victims" are simply replying, as they see it, in kind.

[Frank Furter]

I tend to agree that this "war" has been more about no-bid contract money rather than establishing democracy in the middle east.

It's hard to know why we're there really, is it nation building, spreading democracy, OBL, Saddam? - the reason constantly changes. Who is the enemy for F*cks sake?

"When faced with two or more possible explanations for a situation, choose the simpler one".

It's simple, it's greed. Bald Faced Greed explains it all.

I would like to suggest at this point that our 2 party political system is not what is once was or what it struggles to appear to be today.

Our party/representatives are not at all interested in actually representing the tax paying public, their interested only in getting control of our money.We taxpayers are nothing more than chirping paupers compared to their new true bosses, corporate america.

What American politicians are interested in is being able to present the appearance of doing something so that the taxpaying people still believe in the old model of democracy, in checks and balances, in integrity and leadership.

It's not like that anymore. It never will be again.
Greed reigns in Washington.

Let's face it, the rules have changed and we are wringing our hands and gnashing our teeth because nothing is working the way it is supposed to, the way it used to.

It's like using all of your years of accumulated knowledge to win at poker when you're actually playing football.While you bluff, they knock you down and run over you, then call you weak.

These representatives are no longer "our" politicians, but they desparately need us to believe they are in order to maintain their power.

So let's stop pissing on each others legs and just vote out ALL incumbents at every single election.

Especially your favorite local friendly pol. If we cut out every last bit of this political cancer and we might just survive.

If you are a dem, become a repub and completely change their party's demographics - change them from within. If you're a repub become a dem and completely change their party's demographics - change them from within.

Instead of getting runover and being called a whimp, we'll blitz their sorry special interest lovin' asses!

They won't know what hit 'em