{"id":9276,"date":"2006-12-07T15:15:39","date_gmt":"2006-12-07T20:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9276.html"},"modified":"2006-12-07T15:15:39","modified_gmt":"2006-12-07T20:15:39","slug":"bush-missed-the-memo-about-al-qaeda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-missed-the-memo-about-al-qaeda\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush missed the memo about al Qaeda"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just 10 days ago, the president participated in a joint press conference with Estonia President Ilves. Asked about Iraq, the president blamed al Qaeda<\/a>. “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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, “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.”<\/p>\n

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<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What does al Qaeda have to do with the sectarian violence?
\n
\nAgain, 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.<\/p>\n

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

“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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9276","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=9276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}