Bush missed the memo about al Qaeda

December 7, 2006

Just 10 days ago, the president participated in a joint press conference with Estonia President Ilves. Asked about Iraq, the president blamed al Qaeda. “There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented, in my opinion, because of these attacks by, by al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal,” Bush said.

Except it was the wrong answer. As Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, explained to Congress shortly before the president’s remarks, “Attacks by terrorist groups like al Qaeda in Iraq account for only a fraction of the insurgent violence.” Maples described al Qaeda in Iraq as “extremely disorganized” and added, “I would question at this point how effective they are at all at the state level.” An NBC analysis showed that, in total, the terrorist group makes up only about 2 or 3 percent of the enemy forces in Iraq.

It became yet another point of embarrassment for the president — by blaming al Qaeda for Iraq’s civil war, Bush once again appeared confused about the problems plaguing the country. It prompted Frank Rich to write, “It’s not that he can’t handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn’t know what the truth is…. The bottom line: America has a commander in chief who can’t even identify some 97 percent to 98 percent of the combatants in a war that has gone on longer than our involvement in World War II.”

Given this very recent history, and the inability of the president’s aides to explain the confusion, I assumed the Bush gang would have prepped the president not to make the same mistake again. I assumed wrong. Take today’s Bush-Blair press conference, for example. In response to a question about whether he fully appreciates the extent of the disaster in Iraq, Bush said:

“Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die. I understand there’s sectarian violence. I also understand that we’re hunting down al Qaeda on a regular basis and we’re bringing them to justice.”

What does al Qaeda have to do with the sectarian violence?

Again, not much, but the president seems to believe that if he mentions the terrorist network, it might a) confuse the public; b) bolster support for the war; or c) both.

Later in the same press conference, in response to a question about whether he’s capable of changing course in Iraq, Bush said:

“We’ll continue after al Qaeda. Al Qaeda will not have safe haven in Iraq. And that’s important for the American people to know. We’ve got special operators, we’ve got better intelligence. And al Qaeda is effective at these spectacular bombings, and we’ll chase them down, and we are, along with the Iraqis.”

Every available source agrees that al Qaeda is not the main problem here. The Defense Intelligence Agency says it, National Security Advisor’s Stephen Hadley’s book says it, even the Iraqis say it. And yet, there’s the president, emphasizing the wrong enemy.

It brings us back to the question that’s been asked repeatedly for years: does the president know he’s wrong and not care, or is he simply unaware? Either way, it’s disconcerting.

“Families who die”?

  • I talk to families who die.

    OK, there it is again. This talking to dead people thing is starting to bother me. Either the ReThuglican party has been taken over by necromancers or conversation with BushBaby is fatal.

    “We’ll continue after al Qaeda. Al Qaeda will not have safe haven in Iraq….”

    I wonder if Bush simply equates any brown person who acts up with Al Qaeda. We know he doesn’t do nuance and has trouble with the whole Sunni/Shia thing. It wouldn’t surprise me if he sees a picture of an Iraqi with a grenade launcher and assumes he must be a terrorist, as opposed to a guy who is pissed off about those Sunni/Shia/foreign bastards or is going to sort out the neighbor who lets his dog bark all night.

  • Actually I’m a little surprised that he didn’t manage to work some reference to 9/11 into it.

  • Bush is too stupid to know he’s stupid. Yeah #1, Session talks to dead people and Bush talks to dead families. This is not a war, it’s a friggin seance.

  • Of course he is not concerned with all them secretaries fightin’. Wrasslin’ around in their skirts and hair-buns, not much of a threat to our military boys.

    It’s the Al-Qaeda, y’know the guys with brown skin and beards, that are causing the problems, not the secretaries.
    Who says this man is not informed?

  • Time to look into the rules for placing a president on psychological leave of absense and the veep on pathological leave of absense. Nancy, get out that red dress.Your country needs you.

  • Bush is just misemployed. He’d be outstanding in one of those self-deprecatory comedy shows where the host is intentionally dumb. Or maybe funny only in a well-defined genre and stupidly uncomfortable out of it, like Chevy Chase.

    There should be an instrument like a wince-o-meter, that measures the degree of discomfiture in his aides when he comes out with one of those talking-with-dead-families gaffes. I realize he meant, “families of those who die”, but how much trouble does it take to say it properly? How hard is it to think and talk at the same time?

    Too hard for him, evidently.

  • Bush will say this kind of crap until the day he dies.
    First, he’s a product of entitlement, and we are all just servants that he can talk down to.
    Next, I am sure that his Neo-Con buddies have helped him in this attitude, but I doubt that he’s ever heard of Leo Strauss.
    And the continued reference to Al Qaeda is supposed to conflate the Iraq clusterf*ck to 9/11.
    This man has lost the trust of a vast majority of our country and the world. I understand that the office of the president deserves respect, and it is polite to expect some truth. But this person has taken a huge, smelly dump on his office and our country.

  • Bush did miss the memo. (In Office Space supervisor’s voice, Bush says to troops, “Yeeeaaahh, I’m going to need you to work some overtime in Iraq.”

  • I suspect “Al Qaeda” is the only foreign word Bush knows, and he’s proud of having learnt it. I remember that, when my son learnt to say “by-bye” (at 11 months), he used to say it all the time too, till I thought I’d scream.

  • GHWB, like the portrait of Dorian Grey, displays the angst that should be the son’s. It’s a Greek tragi-comedy. Too bad the price of admission is so high.

  • Please, folks. He’s not that dumb. He knows that it’s his last card: identify the violence in Iraq with al-Qaeda. On that belief, staying in there means fighting the terrorists who attacked us, over there rather than back here, etc. On that belief, withdrawing is a unilateral retreat in the War on Terror. So he tries at every opportunity to inculcate that belief in the public. And sure, in repeating it so often he might even persuade himself.
    This means that if ever he decides to redepoly, we’ll hear a couple of weeks of Pentagon News bulletins about how AQ has now been virtually defeated in Iraq (i.e., they’ll start citing the actual data or maybe a smaller number on their degree of involvement). That will be his equivalent of declaring victory and going home. And if a horrible civil war rages on, well, you know those A-rabs.

  • does the president know he’s wrong and not care, or is he simply unaware?

    As I admitedly don’t have the intestinal fortitude to visit the wingnut blogs, can anyone tell me how they are spinning this latest truthiness?

  • Voluntary delusion seems to run in the family. Like father, like son…

    “I will never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don’t care what the facts are.”
    – Vice President George H. W. Bush, 27 August 1988, at a Chicago campaign stop one month after the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 people.

  • Does the president know he’s wrong and not care, or is he simply unaware?

    I think he knows he’s wrong, but it’s not that he doesn’t care — he’s willingly and knowingly lying. By doing so, he’s trying to get the “we’re fighting Al-Queda in Iraq” angle into the public discourse.

    Just like other key phrases and comments he’s made, he thinks that if he says it enough it’ll be seen as true. Unfortunately for him, he no longer has any credibility left with most of us, so I’m pretty sure no one except a few wingnuts will buy into it.

  • Jim M #15 might be onto something.

    Maybe Bush talks in pre-factual terms. Say it now, prove it later with lies (aka statistics). Maybe he’s a step ahead of us.

  • I talk to families who die.

    Why is it he makes more sense with his Bushisms than with anything else?

    I hate being embarassed by having this moron even seen in public, let alone seen in public in the position in which he is resident.

  • Bush is now serving up American soldiers while he desperately seeks a way of salvaging his place in history. He and Rumsfeld have committed international war crimes, both in the preemptive attack on Iraq, which has killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, many from our bombs, and in their authorization for the use of torture, in violation of our own laws and international accords. All has been done on our watch. Shame on us.

  • Well, if the Director of DIA says al-Qaeda isn’t the whole threat, then it must be true, right?

    Or maybe we should consider the G2 on the ground in Al-Anbar province who says that al-Qaeda is effectively the government of large swaths of that Sunni dominated region?

    Yes, al-Qaeda is not responsible for all the violence in Iraq. Nor are they in a position to control the whole country even if we leave. They are, however, significant more than the percentages suggest.

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