ABC Reporter Suggests Bush To Blame For Bombing

ABC News' Raddatz reporting, "Last month, President Bush said the United States had the security situation under control, and enough forces to fight.

"'There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there,' the president said on July 2. 'My answer is "Bring 'em on." We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.' But officials may now have to look at adding troops to the nearly 150,000 already there." (ABC News, Raddatz, 8/18/03)

New Fears U.N. Bombing Raises Concern in Iraq: Are Separate Factions Joining Forces?

Aug. 19— The devastating bombing at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad comes less than two weeks after a deadly attack on the Jordanian Embassy in Iraq. Investigators are working to determine who may be responsible for this violence, and what U.S. forces can do to stop them.

Today's truck bombing was the kind of attack that U.S. intelligence officials feared was coming — bigger, bolder, aiming for mass casualties. The list of suspects is long.

"It's a complex mix of loyalists to Saddam; of Islamists who are Iraqi; of foreign volunteers; of Islamists with ties to al Qaeda," said ABCNEWS analyst Tony Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Al Qaeda sympathizers are suspected in the Aug. 7 bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad, which left 11 people dead. Militant Syrians, Saudis and Iranians are also thought to be infiltrating the country, seeking to destabilize Iraq and drive out the Americans.

"I am certain that there are lots of different players and they are not necessarily totally united," said retired Maj. Gen. Bill Nash, former commander of the Army's 1st Armored Division and now a consultant to ABCNEWS. "But they are united in their opposition to the United States."

The administration is hoping today's bombing will rally international support. But those who carried out the attack are certainly betting that it will scare the international community away.

"We need to understand the pattern here," said Cordesman. "It has been building up, but it has been a mixture of violent acts of terrorism, of economic sabotage, a focused looting on critical facilities, oil export facilities, attacks on U.S. soldiers and the soldiers of other countries, attacks on friendly Iraqis, intimidation and threats. All of these measures have been brought together; it's not just one pattern."

The United States has aggressively gone after the opposition, as illustrated by today's arrest of former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, No. 20 in the deck of cards depicting the 55 most-wanted members of the former regime.

But many fear that even if Saddam Hussein is captured, the violence will not end.

"We also know that even though we talk about this decks of cards, [55] top people, there are literally tens and thousands of people in this structure," said Cordesman.

Last month, President Bush said the United States had the security situation under control, and enough forces to fight.

"There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there," the president said on July 2. "My answer is 'Bring 'em on.' We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." But officials may now have to look at adding troops to the nearly 150,000 already there.

"We need to seriously consider the additional forces coming from the United States initially, but I think we also need to make the point that today's attack was an attack on the international community," said Nash.

"This was the headquarters of the United Nations, the very agency that is intended to make a better life for the Iraqi people, unquestioned by all", he said. "Therefore, I think we need to make the case to our allies and the international community at large that they are in the fight now, too."

Thus far, the United States has had little success in getting any significant number of troops from countries besides Britain to join the fight. The administration is hoping today's bombing will rally international support. But those who carried out the attack are certainly betting that it will scare the international community away.

According to the Washington Times, the UN is blaming the US for at least some of it:

Excerpt:

"'We are entirely in their hands,' [UN spokesman] Mr. Eckhard said. 'The security of everyone in Iraq — Iraqis, the nongovernmental humanitarian workers, the U.N. relief workers — everyone is dependent on the coalition for their security in Iraq.'"

Snip

"Mr. Eckhard yesterday said the United Nations was not blaming the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority for failing to provide adequate protection for the Canal Hotel, nor would he answer reporters' questions about whether there are sufficient troops on the ground to ensure order in Iraq.

"But the labor union representing U.N. staff members yesterday demanded that the organization withdraw from Iraq until minimal safety standards can be put into place." (Washington Times, 8/20/03)

End of excerpt, full article follows.

http://dynamic.washtimes.com/print_story.cfm?StoryID=20030819-113754-2567r

U.N., U.S. shift the blame for security lapse at hotel
By Betsy Pisik
Published August 20, 2003

NEW YORK — U.N. and U.S. officials traded charges yesterday over who was responsible for providing security around the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, where senior U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and at least 19 others were killed in a truck-bomb blast.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard, who was clearly emotional while briefing reporters in New York, laid the blame for the security breakdown squarely on the United States and its allies in the coalition force occupying Iraq.
"We are entirely in their hands," Mr. Eckhard said. "The security of everyone in Iraq — Iraqis, the nongovernmental humanitarian workers, the U.N. relief workers — everyone is dependent on the coalition for their security in Iraq."
But a Defense Department official in Washington said in an interview that U.S. forces "were not providing security for that building" and that "it was the U.N.'s decision not to have forces there providing protection for that building."
"We did have regular patrols in the area. That was not one of our missions to guard that building," said the official, who spoke on the condition he not be identified.
Reporters at the scene said the building normally was heavily guarded with security provided mainly by private security forces hired by the United Nations and by a small number of U.S. soldiers stationed nearby.
The U.N. guards routinely checked identification papers, searched bags and patted down visitors. However, the compound is in the middle of a desolate area along a highway, and there are many approaches to the site.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher acknowledged that at least some U.S. troops had been on guard at the three-story former hotel. But he said that the United Nations bore at least some responsibility for its own security.
"I don't know the exact arrangements at this site, but in addition to all the other security efforts that are made in Baghdad by us, by Iraqis and coalition forces, I think the U.N. does have security people of its own out there," Mr. Boucher told reporters yesterday.
He said it was too early to know who was responsible for the attack, or what security measures would be taken to prevent future strikes.
Mr. Eckhard yesterday said the United Nations was not blaming the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority for failing to provide adequate protection for the Canal Hotel, nor would he answer reporters' questions about whether there are sufficient troops on the ground to ensure order in Iraq.
But the labor union representing U.N. staff members yesterday demanded that the organization withdraw from Iraq until minimal safety standards can be put into place.
"The committee demands a full investigation to determine why adequate security was not in place to prevent such a horrifying act," said the Staff Union in a statement, and called on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to suspend all operations in Iraq and withdraw the more than 640 U.N. employees in the country until security measures are improved.
Baghdad has not been a family posting for U.N. staffers for more than a decade, and the overall threat level was "high 4" on a scale of 1 to 5, according to U.N. officials. But despite repeated warnings about instability in Iraq as a whole, many in New York and Baghdad said yesterday that no one had expected the United Nations operations center itself to be a target.
"We didn't expect to have to worry so much," U.N. spokesman Salim Lone told BBC Radio from Baghdad yesterday morning. "We are humanitarians."
The attack was denounced as a war crime by human rights groups, who say that civilian buildings, such as the U.N. compound, are not legitimate targets even in a guerrilla war. That is one reason why U.N. officials may have wanted to minimize a visible U.S. military presence on the site.
"The people in the U.N. building are civilians; they do not belong to armed forces or any parties to the conflict," said Wilder Tayler, the legal adviser to Human Rights Watch. "Under the terms of international humanitarian law, there is a basic rule, the principle of distinction ... between civilians and combatants. When you target directly civilians, intentionally, that is a war crime."
Like every other major attack against U.S. and foreign targets in Iraq, no group took responsibility for the Canal Hotel blast. But the attacks on American and international targets have grown increasingly sophisticated, leading some to speculate that outside forces — possibly even the global terrorist network al Qaeda — could be behind the intensified campaign.
Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on radical Islam at Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told the Associated Press in London yesterday that the attack fits "the ideology of al Qaeda. They consider the U.N. one of the international actors who helped the Americans to occupy Palestine and, later, Iraq."
U.N. officials said they would conduct their own investigation into the attack, independent of U.S. inquiries.
A tall concrete wall had been under construction around the perimeter, but it had not yet reached the corner of the building closest to the nearby highway, where Mr. Vieira de Mello's office was located.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell condemned the bombing as "a heinous crime against the international community and against the Iraqi people."

Someone needs to clue this media dolt that this is part of the strategery...Here's what Mark Steyn said about "Bring it on!" a couple of weeks ago --

The rhetoric may be macho, but it isn’t necessarily phoney. Indeed, its authenticity is what strikes a chord with the American people. In these pages in November 2001, I noted various California commuters’ reactions to the governor’s announcement that terrorists were planning to blow up the state’s major bridges. The TV cameras positioned themselves at the Golden Gate Bridge to measure the downturn in traffic, only to be confronted by drivers yelling, ‘Come and get me, Osama!’ More to the point, Bush’s bring-’em-on is not just macho swagger, but the core of the strategy. My distinguished former colleague, the dean of Canadian columnists David Warren, brilliantly characterised what’s going on in Iraq as ‘carefully hung flypaper’. In other words, the US occupation of Iraq is bringing Saudis and other Islamonutters out of the surrounding swamps — and that’s a good thing. If they’re really so eager to strike at the Great Satan, better they attack its soldiers in Iraq than its commuters on the Golden Gate Bridge.

And, whaddayaknow, they’re falling for it. On al-Arabiya TV in Dubai, an al-Qa’eda affiliate insisted they, and not Saddam, were behind the attacks in Iraq. ‘I swear by God no one from his followers carried out any jihad operations like he claims,’ chuntered the spokesterrorist. ‘They are a result of our brothers in jihad.’ Plenty of room for both on that flypaper, boys.

If Democrats are still so consumed by chad fever that they don’t get the basic soundness and success of this strategy, they’re heading for a bad fall in the election — and not just at the presidential level....

But tarring Bush as a liar won’t make him a loser. Step back and look at the two years since 11 September. In 2001, the Islamists killed thousands of Westerners in New York and Washington. In 2002, they killed hundreds of Westerners, but not in the West itself, only in jurisdictions like Bali. In 2003, they killed dozens — not Westerners, but their co-religionists in Morocco and Saudi Arabia. The Bush cordon sanitaire has been drawn tighter and tighter. Meanwhile, the allegedly explosive Arab street has been quieter than Acacia Gardens in Pinner on a Wednesday afternoon, and I wouldn’t bet that blowing up fellow Muslims and destroying the Moroccan tourist industry and Saudi investment will do anything for the recruitment drive. All of this could be set back by a massive terrorist attack on the US mainland, and if John Kerry is banking on disaster, that at least has a certain sick logic about it. But if he genuinely believes that Bush’s war is as disastrous as he says, he’s flipped, and the Dems will wind up as helplessly stuck to that flypaper as al-Qa’eda. Bush is doing what the lefties wanted: he’s addressing the ‘root causes’ — by returning the cause to its roots, and fixing it at source.

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