George Bush's Al Qaeda Lies Exposed

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President Bush makes fallacious connections between Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Al Qaeda who attacked the US on 9/11. "Some say that Iraq is not a part of the broader war on terror. They claim that the organization called al Qaeda in Iraq is an Iraqi phenomenon -- that it's independent of Osama bin Laden and it's not interested in attacking America. That would be news to Osama bin Laden. I presented intelligence that clearly establishes this connection. The facts are that al Qaeda terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they're fighting us in Iraq and across the world, and they're plotting to kill Americans here at home again." [CNN, 7/24/07 ]

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The nation's 16 intelligence agencies agree that Al Qaeda has regenerated its ability to strike at the United States through its bases on the Afghan-Pakistan Border. "We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership." [National Intelligence Estimate, 7/07 ]

 

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that Al-Qaeda "was only 10% of the problem in Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki, its prime minister, lacked the political will to establish an effective government." He went on to say that even even if the military surge has been a partial success in areas such as Anbar province, where Sunni tribes have turned on Al-Qaeda, it has not been accompanied by the vital political and economic "surge" and reconciliation process promised by the Iraqi government. [The London Sunday Times, 7/8/07 ]

Al Qaeda in Iraq is not the same as Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Some of the extremists in Iraq have chosen to call themselves "Al Qaeda in Iraq," and they are in fact inspired by Osama Bin Laden's extremist ideology. While there is some level of cooperation and exchange of information, these groups did not exist in Iraq prior to the invasion in 2003.

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President Bush argues that "Al Qaeda is public enemy number one in Iraq. Al Qaeda is public enemy number one for the Iraqi people. Al Qaeda is public -- public enemy number one for the American people." [President Bush, 7/24/07 ]

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Al Qaeda in Iraq accounts for 15% of the violence in Iraq. "Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International studies says, the U.S. military estimates that al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group thought to number several thousand, accounts for only about 15% of the attacks in Iraq." [Time, 7/30/07 ]

Foreign Jihadist fighters make up less than 10% of the insurgency. Most intelligence estimates still state that the vast majority of Sunni insurgents are Iraqi. They are not driven by a pan-Islamic ideology of destroying the West and creating a caliphate. Instead, they are fighting either against American forces or against other ethnic groups in Iraq. [Center for American Progress, 6/25/07 ]

 

The Al Qaeda Threat: Myth vs. Reality

The National Intelligence Estimate reaffirmed that the Bush Administration has made Americans less secure by taking its focus off the real danger in Afghanistan and Pakistan and instead invading Iraq. Almost six years since 9/11, Al Qaeda has established a new safe haven on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and has taken advantage of the operational space afforded by a poorly conceived truce between the Pakistani government and tribal leaders. Meanwhile the invasion of Iraq has fed the Al Qaeda narrative and created a new focal point for the recruitment, fundraising, training and indoctrination of Al Qaeda operatives. Unfortunately, the Administration's response to all of these problems is to continue to pour more troops and funds into Iraq, even as military strategists have concluded that sectarian violence and civil war - not Al Qaeda - are the greatest dangers in the war torn country.