al-Qaetch-22
David Weigel | October 22, 2008, 11:48am
I just got off a McCain campaign conference call in which senior foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann and former CIA Director Jim Woolsey
addressed this Washington Post story.
"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.
Schneuemann and Woolsey attacked the paper for selectiveness and unfairness, listing supportive things said by American enemies like Ghadaffi about Obama that the Post never covered. Plus, according to Woolsey, there's no way a serious Al-Qaeda blogger could support McCain.
This individual knows that an endorsement by him is a kiss of death, figuratively. He is not trying to help John McCain.
The first question: If this was a bad faith comment meant to hurt McCain, how do we know comments from Ahmedinijad about Obama aren't meant to hurt the Democrat? Woolsey:
Any major organization, itself, will not take the risk to depart from the party line.
Woolsey explained that if someone like Zawahiri said something like what that blogger did, you could assume if was part of a new sarcasm initiative. "But if you take an individual blogger... if you take this literally it's hard to conclude he supports John McCain." He chuckled into the receiver. It was just too self-evident that terrorists want the man who opposed the surge to beat the man who pushed for it.
tarran | October 22, 2008, 1:14pm | #
Goerge Bush has been the greatest recruting sergeant Al Queda could have wished for.
Prior to 9/11 Al Queda was cash rich and people poor. They bought of the Taliban so they'd have a place to stay. They had to make do with pretty crappy foot soldiers who were minimally competent.
9/11 did not bring in the flood of recruits. Rather it was the U.S. reaction to 9/11, particularly the attack on Iraq, covered with gory thoroughness by arabian journalists.
Without the Iraq invasion, without the subordination of military policy in Afghanistan to the War on Some Drugs, Al queda would be in very bad shape.
Every society has crazies. We have the guy who founded the Aryan Nations, planning oon overthrowing the Zionist Occupied government. The guy had a terrible time attracting recruits becasue to the average man ont he street, his rantings seemed like that of a nutcase.
Osama bin Laden would be in the same boat if it weren't for the fact that U.S. military policy appears to
conform to his paranoid rantings.
Al Queda's strategy is to entice the U.S. government into carrying out expensive and unpopular military actions. McCain would, of course, be the president who enables them to execute this strategy. Obama less so, although he would face incredible pressure from other politicians to show that he is tough.
The notion that Al Queda fears a McCain presidency is laughable. Sun Tzu had Mccain's type pegged when he
wrote:
12. There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general: (1) Recklessness, which leads to destruction; (2) cowardice, which leads to capture; (3) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults; (4) a delicacy of honor which is sensitive to shame; (5) over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him to worry and trouble.
McCain is reckless, prone to fits of anger, and holds grudges. He would make a crappy wartime leader (actually he'd make a crapppy leader period).
joe | October 22, 2008, 1:27pm | #
Silicon Valley, March 11: Al-Qaeda is stronger than it was earlier thanks to President Pervez Musharraf's decision in 2006 to cut a ceasefire deal with Islamic militants in the region bordering Afghanistan, US intelligence agencies said.
With the Pakistani security forces staying out of the region, al-Qaida militants were able to resettle and even re-establish some training camps in the area, says Michael Leiter, acting director of the National Counter terrorism Center.
"I think that safe haven has made al-Qaida stronger today than it was two years ago," Leiter told the National Public Radio in an interview on Monday. "That has allowed it to recruit, train, and deploy individuals in plots against Western Europe and potentially the homeland or, the United States," he said.
The US National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell shares the assessment and agrees that having survived the global war on terror, al-Qaida is again a centrally directed network with military capabilities.
"They have the leadership that they had before, they've rebuilt the middle management, the trainers," McConnell told the CNN recently, adding "And they're recruiting very vigorously." Before 2006, al-Qaida was arguably on the run, under attack, its mid-level leadership decimated. Osama bin Laden and his associates were still able to inspire Islamic militant groups in Africa and the Middle East - but they could not direct them.
The assessment is in complete contrast with the opinion of the US President George W Bush, who last month told a conservative conference "The Taliban, al-Qaida and their allies are on the run." Army Maj Reid Sawyer, of West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, agrees with the intelligence agencies and says al-Qaida's central leadership, securely based in Pakistan, is once again taking charge.
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