The president delivered the commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy — a speech the White House has apparently been playing up with reporters for a while — in which Bush, as the WaPo put it, “ratcheted up his campaign to link the violence in Iraq to actions by al-Qaeda.”
“I’ve often warned that if we fail in Iraq, the enemy will follow us home,” the president told the Coasties. “Many ask: How do you know? Today, I’d like to share some information with you that attests to al Qaeda’s intentions.” The Post noted, “Outside intelligence and terrorism experts described Bush’s speech as a self-serving release of old and known information.” I’d add “largely debunked” to the list of adjectives.
“The first [post-9/11 aviation plot], in 2002, was a plot by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad to repeat the destruction of 9/11 by sending operatives to hijack an airplane and fly into the tallest building on the West Coast. During a hearing at Guantanamo Bay just two months ago, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad stated that the intended target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles.”
This is wildly misleading. The “Library Tower plot” was one of many al Qaeda ideas that never got past the conceptual stage. Roger Cressey, the former staff director of counter-terrorism for the National Security Council, said the plot was considered a “what if” scenario by intelligence officials.
“British authorities broke up the most ambitious known al Qaeda threat to the homeland since the 9/11 attacks: a plot to blow up passenger airplanes flying to America. Our intelligence community believes that this plot was just two or three weeks away from execution. If it had been carried out, it could have rivaled 9/11 in death and destruction.”
“Two or three weeks away from execution”? I don’t doubt that Bush has better access to intelligence reports than anyone, but the truth is the suspects didn’t have the experience needed to carry out a plot, nor did they have materials or training. The Bush administration pushed the British to move before they wanted to; James Galbraith noted that no bombs, chemicals, equipment, or testing ground have been found; and Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said this story is far less than it appears to be. For that matter, we learned that many of the alleged terrorists wouldn’t even face serious criminal charges. Last August, we learned that reports of an imminent attack were wrong.
This was the big finale in the speech:
“I’ve often warned that if we fail in Iraq, the enemy will follow us home. Many ask: How do you know? Today, I’d like to share some information with you that attests to al Qaeda’s intentions. According to our intelligence community, in January 2005, Osama bin Laden tasked the terrorist Zarqawi — who was then al Qaeda’s top leader in Iraq — with forming a cell to conduct terrorist attacks outside of Iraq. Bin Laden emphasized that America should be Zarqawi’s number one priority in terms of foreign attacks. Zarqawi welcomed this direction; he claimed that he had already come up with some good proposals.
“To help Zarqawi in these efforts, our intelligence community reports that bin Laden then tasked one of his top terrorist operatives, Hamza Rabia, to send Zarqawi a briefing on al Qaeda’s external operations, including information about operations against the American homeland. Our intelligence community reports that a senior al Qaeda leader, Abu Faraj al-Libi, went further and suggested that bin Laden actually send Rabia, himself, to Iraq to help plan external operations. Abu Faraj later speculated that if this effort proved successful, al Qaeda might one day prepare the majority of its external operations from Iraq.”
I suppose the point is that Bush wants us to believe that bin Laden wants to use Iraq the way the Taliban used Afghanistan — but that doesn’t make any sense. Al Qaeda is a small part of the fighting in Iraq, and wouldn’t you know it, Iraqis would almost certainly drive the network out of the country just as soon as we get out of the way.
So, what was the point of the speech? To instill more fear during a fight with Congress over funding of the war in Iraq. The Bush gang played up the speech, enticed reporters, and even selectively declassified some information to help add a news peg. The results were a mixed bag — the NYT blew off the speech, the WaPo stuck coverage on page A24.
On the networks, ABC World News Tonight and the NBC Nightly News treated the speech as big news, but the CBS Evening News, to its credit, didn’t mention it at all.
Slowly but surely, some news outlets are learning that Bush’s “major speeches” on national security are little more than a familiar scam.