I’m glad Paul Krugman pays more attention to USA Today than I do. He noted in his column today:
The truth is that among experts, what Mr. Clarke says about Mr. Bush’s terrorism policy isn’t controversial. The facts that terrorism was placed on the back burner before 9/11 and that Mr. Bush blamed Iraq despite the lack of evidence are confirmed by many sources — including “Bush at War,” by Bob Woodward.
And new evidence keeps emerging for Mr. Clarke’s main charge, that the Iraq obsession undermined the pursuit of Al Qaeda. From yesterday’s USA Today: “In 2002, troops from the Fifth Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures.”
So I went back and took a look at yesterday’s USA Today and found the article. Not surprisingly, it’s just as discouraging as Krugman explained.
In fact, USA Today’s report explains how the Bush administration shifted resources away from its effort against al Queda in Afghanistan in order to go after Saddam Hussein. The article doesn’t mention why Bush did this, but it’s fairly obvious the White House cared more about invading a country that was not a threat to the United States than it did attacking the country responsible for 9/11.
Indeed, when our intelligence gathering efforts were already strained in Afghanistan, the Bush administration chose to make it even more difficult.
The CIA…was stretched badly in its capacity to collect, translate and analyze information coming from Afghanistan. When the White House raised a new priority, it took specialists away from the Afghanistan effort to ensure Iraq was covered.
There are a variety of indications that suggest the administration is returning focus to Afghanistan, now that it’s allowed al Queda to regroup and watched Karzai’s government grow increasingly unstable. USAT noted, for example, that Predator drones are arriving, following up on multiple CNN reports on the Pentagon’s recent decisions to utilize more resources in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
But that, of course, doesn’t answer the question about why Bush abandoned the war on terrorism in the first place and stretched military resources so dramatically to launch an invasion of Iraq.
Bob Andrews, former head of a Pentagon office that oversaw special operations, says that removing Saddam Hussein was a good idea but ”a distraction.” The war in Iraq, Andrews notes, entailed the largest deployment of special operations forces — about 10,000 — since the Vietnam War. That’s about 25% of all U.S. commandos.
It also siphoned spy aircraft and light infantry soldiers. Iraq proved such a drain, one former Pentagon official notes, that there were no AWACS radar jets to track drug-trafficking aircraft in South America.
W. Patrick Lang, a former Army intelligence officer and authority on the Middle East, says Saddam was not an immediate threat. ”This has been a real diversion from the longer struggle against jihadists,” especially in the intelligence field, he says.