‘I don’t know; I wasn’t at that briefing’

July 18, 2007

Homeland Security Advisor Frances Fragos Townsend was able to bamboozle reporters yesterday with bogus arguments, but today on NPR, Steve Inskeep challenged Townsend with reasonable questions — which she wasn’t able to answer.

INSKEEP: Well, you know that one of the intelligence officials that helped to draft this report has been briefing reporters, and has said that before the war in Iraq, al Qaeda had no capabilities in Iraq, and overwhelmingly now their resources are focused inside Iraq, not attacking the United States. Is that correct?

TOWNSEND: Al Qaeda’s resources are focused in Iraq because that’s where we are capturing and killing them every single day, so it drains their resources there. There’s no question that they’d like to try and extend their reach. And we see them trying to inspire like-minded affiliates, if you will, around the world in places like London and Glasgow. But they are very much tied down because we are keeping them tied down fighting them in Iraq.

INSKEEP: Is it correct that they had no capability in Iraq before the war?

TOWNSEND: I don’t know — I wasn’t at that briefing. I don’t know what the intelligence official said.

First, it’s hard not to marvel at the fact that a White House counterterrorism expert, and senior aide to the president for three years, has no idea whether al Qaeda was in Iraq before the war. (I think it’s far more likely that Townsend knows the truth, but prefers the embarrassment of ignorance to the embarrassment of reality.)

And second, what exactly did Townsend mean with the claim, “Al Qaeda’s resources are focused in Iraq because that’s where we are capturing and killing them every single day, so it drains their resources there”?

Didn’t the right give up on the “flypaper theory” a couple of years ago?

When you’re a Republican, I guess you just go with the BS you have, not the BS you’d like to have.

  • The store is down the street because that’s where I’m going to buy food. If I were going to the moon to buy food, the store would be on the moon.

    I guess Al Qaeda goes where we kill them. Why do we have to kill them in the middle of an unrelated civil war on top of the world’s second largest oil reserve? Why don’t we go kill them in the middle of the desert in Australia where fewer innocent people would get hurt? Al Qaeda will focus their resources wherever we decide to kill them! How about Afganistan?

    Brilliant!

  • The thing about capturing and killing all those Al Quaeda is that they have Al Quaeda eggs in their bellies.

    When you kill them, the eggs hatch into Al Quaeda fry and burrow out of the dead Al Quaeda guy by the guhzillions, which is why there are more and more of them in Iraq every day. That why, even though there was only one Al Quaeda operative in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was running the show — and that Al Quaeda guy was hiding out in a closet trembling at the thought of what Saddam would do to him — there are so many there today.

    But if we keep killing Al Quaedas there, they won’t hatch here. And meanwhile, maybe our science techs can come up with a spray for them.

    But seriously folks, didn’t I just hear, or read somewhere, that the AQ gang is re-surging (no pun intended) in Afghanistan? And didn’t I also just learn from our “gut feel” Director of Homeland Security that there are already cells of them here, warming up for a big something-or-other?

    So what’s going on? Is Iraq exporting them to Afghanistan? Or will we have to fight them here, while we’re fighting them there, while we’re fighting them in Afghanistan, while we’re cutting taxes? Or what?

    Only a cranky question.

    Crankily yours,

  • The funny thing-funny ironic, not funny ha ha-is that the idea that we’ve got Al Qaeda tied down in Iraq and thereby have neutralized their threat to our homeland is the mirror image of the actual situation. The insurgency in Iraq has us tied down there so that we can’t threaten the terrorists in their homeland.

    Also, the excuse, “I wasn’t at that meeting” is what you expect from a mid level manger at a Wal-Mart.

  • …Wait a minute…

    …If Al Qaeda is in Iraq because that’s where we’re killing them, then all we have to do is stop killing them, and they won’t be there any more!

    If we stop killing them everywhere, they won’t be anywhere. You can’t argue with logic.

    I should have thought of that sooner.

  • Being “a White House counterterrorism expert” doesn’t mean you’re an expert on actual terrorism, it means you go to meetings about terrorism sometimes and stay away from them at other times, so that at the end of the day the only thing you can say for sure is that nothing illegal was done by any administration officials.

    That you know of.

    It’s the Brownie defense: “I’m incompetent, so obviously I can’t be an evil shill for my corporate overlords.”

  • You know what I keep thinking as these bozo’s keep trying to play the Al Qaeda card over and over again?

    Q: What does every terrorist want more than anything?

    A: Attention. If a suicide bomber blows up in the forest and there’s no on there to take pictures of the carnage, it doesn’t really help their cause in any way. They have to make news to accomplish their objectives.

    So let’s say you’re the leader of some rag-tag band of bearded revolutionaries, call them AQM. Oh, you’re bad enough people alright but your dreams of jihad are a lot grander than your actual operational capabilities. The US military figures that at the outside, you account for some single-digit percentage of the violence in Iraq — a long way from the biggest fish they need to fry. Then one day out of the clear blue sky, no lesser personage than the President of the United States of American goes on TV and starts saying over and over that AQM is the biggest threat the USA faces. What’s your reaction?

    Well my guess it that after making sure he really just said what you think he just said, you start running around high-fiving everyone you can find, fire a few clips of ammo into the air in celebration, then you get right on the phone and start calling up all your backers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, et al:

    “Hello Ibrahim, this is Abu. No, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer. Al Qaeda Mesopotamia? Yes, that Abu… Alaikum Salaam, thank you. Tell me Ibi, have you been watching CNN? Yes! It is glorious! You see how the Great Satan fears us? See how your small contributions to our great jihad have borne fruit! I ask you, what other army of martyrs gives you such bang for your petro-dollar? Ha ha! I make a little joke. Allah be praised. Now, about that large shipment of Semtex and ball bearings we have been begging you for…”

  • How I wish this had happened on The Daily Show, since Jon Stewart would surely have come back with: “You don’t effing know?”

    Of course, we may still get to see that…

  • I wonder if she even realizes that it’s still a lie to say “I don’t know” when you do in fact actually know.

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