{"id":13268,"date":"2007-10-17T14:12:24","date_gmt":"2007-10-17T18:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13268.html"},"modified":"2007-10-17T14:12:24","modified_gmt":"2007-10-17T18:12:24","slug":"bush-torn-on-al-qaeda-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-torn-on-al-qaeda-in-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush torn on al Qaeda in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

There were a few interesting exchanges at this morning’s White House press conference<\/a>, which the president apparently called to chastise Congress for not following his orders, but I was struck by a question about Iraq, which Bush didn’t quite know how to answer.<\/p>\n

A reporter noted that al Qaeda in Iraq is apparently losing strength, and she wondered how close we are to “declaring victory against” AQI. The president responded:<\/p>\n

“Al Qaeda is still dangerous. They’re dangerous in Iraq, they’re dangerous elsewhere. Al Qaeda is not going to go away anytime soon. That’s why it’s important for us to be finding out what their intentions are, and what are their plans, so we can respond to them. This is a — this war against al Qaeda requires actionable intelligence. That’s why this FISA bill is important. And they still want to do us harm, Elaine, and they’re still active. Yeah, we’ve hurt ’em bad in Iraq. We’ve hurt ’em bad elsewhere. If you’re the number three person in al Qaeda, you’ve had some rough goes — you’ve either been captured or killed. And we’re keeping the pressure on them, all the time.<\/p>\n

“And so, yes, we’re making progress. But, no, I fully understand those who say you can’t win this thing militarily. That’s exactly what the United States military says, that you can’t win this military [sic].”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are a few angles to this, some more troubling than others. First, note that Bush makes no distinction between al Qaeda and AQI. That’s obviously misleading, but it’s also key to trying to maintain some semblance of public support for staying the course.<\/p>\n

Second, the president immediately transitioned into pushing for more surveillance power. If there’s a question about terrorists, naturally Bush has to push for more power. At this point, it’s pure reflex.<\/p>\n

But the real significance is that Bush just didn’t know what to do with the question — he wants to boast that AQI is losing, but he can’t emphasize it too much, because if people believe AQI has been defeated, then there’s no reason to stay in the middle of a civil war.
\n
\nThis<\/a> was reported on the front page of the WaPo the other day:<\/p>\n

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq. […]<\/p>\n

But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And we saw this exact dynamic play out in one rambling answer. AQI is dangerous, but not too dangerous. We’re beating AQI, but not too much. We’ve had some decisive victories, but not too many.<\/p>\n

This is all quite foolish. The reality, as Drew Tilghman, an Iraq correspondent for Stars and Stripes, recently explained<\/a>, is that al Qaeda in Iraq, as of a few months ago, included about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2% to 5% of the Sunni insurgency. Tilghman quoted a 20-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq saying, “Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a microscopic terrorist organization.”<\/p>\n

Over the last several months, we’ve apparently made it even more microscopic. It’s too bad for the president that he can’t bring himself to admit it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There were a few interesting exchanges at this morning’s White House press conference, which the president apparently called to chastise Congress for not following his orders, but I was struck by a question about Iraq, which Bush didn’t quite know how to answer. A reporter noted that al Qaeda in Iraq is apparently losing strength, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}