Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman, arguably Bush’s most enthusiastic war cheerleaders, teamed up today to write a wildly unpersuasive op-ed in (where else?) the Wall Street Journal.
Not surprisingly, there are quite a few errors of fact and logic in the piece. McCain and Lieberman attribute progress in Anbar to the surge. They cite dubious data that is contradicted by independent analyses. They cling to the notion that a bottom-up strategy may be more effective than the ongoing “surge” policy. But more than anything, McCain and Lieberman want to talk about al Qaeda. Indeed, the two mention the terrorist network nine times in a 14-paragraph piece. It culminates in this gem:
Whatever the shortcomings of our friends in Iraq, they are no excuse for us to retreat from our enemies like al Qaeda and Iran, who pose a mortal threat to our vital national interests. We must understand that today in Iraq we are fighting and defeating the same terrorist network that attacked on 9/11. As al Qaeda in Iraq continues to be hunted down and rooted out, and the Iraqi Army continues to improve, the U.S. footprint will no doubt adjust. But these adjustments should be left to the discretion of Gen. Petraeus, not forced on our troops by politicians in Washington with a 6,000-mile congressional screwdriver, and, perhaps, an eye on the 2008 election. (emphasis added)
Now, I suspect McCain and Lieberman realize they’re wrong, but don’t care. These two have surely heard all the briefings, and read all the reports, and know that al Qaeda in Iraq did not attack us on 9/11. al Qaeda in Iraq did not exist on 9/11. al Qaeda in Iraq grew out of Iraqi opposition to a U.S. occupation.
But even if we put aside what can only be described as the senators’ lies, McCain and Lieberman also need to take a few minutes to read “The Myth of AQI,” written by Drew Tilghman, an Iraq correspondent for Stars and Stripes, in the new Washington Monthly.
How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I’ve heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. “Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” according to Nance, “is a microscopic terrorist organization.”
Two percent might even be on the high end. Gen. James Jones last week agreed that probably “two percent or fewer of the adversaries that we’re facing in Iraq and that the Iraqis are facing in Iraq are foreign jihadis or AQI affiliates, [and] 98 percent or more are Iraqis fighting amongst Iraqis for the future of Iraq.”
With this in mind, McCain and Lieberman are pulling a scam, playing on people’s fears and 9/11-induced pain. If they’re still capable of feeling shame, now would be a good time for it. Their op-ed suggests a U.S. withdrawal would practically hand Iraq over to a “microscopic terrorist organization” that wasn’t responsible for 9/11 and couldn’t seize control of Iraq even if it wanted to.
The view that AQI is neither as big nor as lethal as commonly believed is widespread among working-level analysts and troops on the ground. A majority of those interviewed for this article believe that the military’s AQI estimates are overblown to varying degrees. If such misgivings are common, why haven’t doubts pricked the public debate? The reason is that alternate views are running up against an echo chamber of powerful players all with an interest in hyping AQI’s role.
Hmm. I wonder which two cynical, spectacularly-wrong hawks that might apply to?