Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

“Al Qaeda Dunnit!” ~ Think again.
National Review ^ | Nov. 24, 2003 | Laurie Mylroie

Posted on 11/24/2003 5:40:24 AM PST by Ragtime Cowgirl


“Al Qaeda Dunnit!”
Think again.

By Laurie Mylroie

“Al Qaeda is still everywhere and nowhere," or so opined a Columbia University professor after the double pair of car bombings in Istanbul. How can that be? For more than two years, the United States has led an international Coalition in a campaign that has succeeded in detaining or killing over half of al Qaeda's leadership, cut off a significant amount of its funding, and deprived it of its territorial base.

Bombing attacks south of the Turkish-Iraqi border are regularly attributed to one party, Baathist stalwarts, while bombs north of that border are said to be the work of a completely different party, al Qaeda, as if one had nothing to do with the other. Why?

A major intelligence failure that began on Bill Clinton's watch persists. American officials remain wedded to the conviction that Islamic militants operate independently of terrorist states. The U.S. error was compounded by an Israeli intelligence failure, closely linked to the ill-fated "peace process." Yitzhak Rabin divided the Middle East into the "partners for peace" and the "enemies of peace." The former included the likes of Yasser Arafat and Hafez al-Assad.

The enemies of peace were, as Rabin once asserted, "the organizations that belong to the ugly wave of...terrorist Islamic movements, a wave that covers today most of the Arab and Islamic countries. They are the enemies of peace and in their lead is Iran." Indeed, a central premise of the "peace process" was that because the United States was the world's only superpower, rational actors — Arafat, Assad, etc. — recognized they had no choice but to come to terms with Washington and its ally Israel. Only Islamic militants lacked the rationality to comprehend that.

Of course, these assumptions proved tragically wrong. The "secular" Arafat never made peace with Israel, and he proved quite capable of working with the "fundamentalist" Hamas. The same for "secular" Syria, which hosts the likes of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, while Hezbollah's activities in Lebanon, are possible only because Damascus allows them.

This division between "secular" and "fundamentalist" is not meaningful. Princeton's learned Bernard Lewis has cautioned that this is a Western distinction that does not exist in Islam. Nonetheless, many analysts persist in making it.

Moreover, such analysts habitually invert the relationship between states and groups, as the latter, particularly al Qaeda, is their focus. Yet states are the primary actors in international affairs. They control territory and have the power to tax and otherwise raise revenues. The nastiest of them have multiple intelligence services and major unconventional-weapons programs — biological, chemical, and nuclear. Indeed, senior administration officials have repeatedly warned that the threat is terrorist states working with and hiding behind terrorist groups to commit acts of unconventional terrorism.

Most probably, the Istanbul bombings were the work of Iraqi intelligence, in concert with Islamic militants. As I have written — at length, throughout the 1990s — Iraqi intelligence worked with and hid behind Islamic militants to attack the United States. Now it appears that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was, in fact, an Iraqi-intelligence agent. Most recently, The Weekly Standard has reported the extensive contacts between al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence, while author Ed Epstein has provided fascinating new details on the Czech claim that Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi-intelligence agent five months before the 9/11 attacks.

Al Qaeda on its own — if it still exists in any meaningful form — would not have had the capability to carry out the attacks in Istanbul. Moreover, one indication of a "false flag" operation is that the investigation is too easy. Authorities are immediately led down one track, away from the real culprits. Thus, the passport of one suicide bomber in the first set of attacks, on the synagogues, was found amid the wreckage. He was easily identified and the link to al Qaeda quickly established. Perhaps, Turkish authorities are aware of this trap. The prime minister has cautioned that they are "not 100-percent sure" al Qaeda was responsible.

One major reason for ousting Saddam was the strong suspicion that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 strikes, as well as the anthrax letters that followed. There was, however, enormous bureaucratic resistance to that notion. The concept is not difficult to comprehend, nor is evidence lacking, but as columnist Andrew Sullivan recently suggested, government bureaucrats simply do not want to acknowledge a serious error.

The White House should straighten this out. It is a bad idea to allow U.S. agencies to operate on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding. Intelligence failures should be corrected.

Moreover, the preoccupation with militants and groups, rather than major terrorist states, inhibits the achievement of critical U.S. goals, like blocking Iran's nuclear program. Senior Israeli officials have warned that Iran is on the verge of a nuclear breakthrough that will pose an existential threat to their country. But what is being done? If one believes that every Tom, Dick, and Harry of a militant poses a major threat, then the truly serious threats appear less so. There are no sensible priorities and too many dangers to deal with.

Finally, explaining Iraq's role in the terrorism against America may also prove necessary in fighting this war. Americans are now evenly divided on whether we should have toppled Saddam. Continued U.S. casualties will only increase those doubts. Yet no doubt would exist, if the public understood that Iraqi intelligence was intimately involved in the 9/11 attacks and that the military grade anthrax sent to Senators Leahy and Daschle almost certainly came from an Iraqi lab.

Unfortunately, there is a Catch-22. President Bush probably does not understand how easy it would be to demonstrate this, because the intelligence failures that left us vulnerable on 9/11 remain uncorrected.

Laurie Mylroie is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terrorism.



TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: alqaeda; alqaida; baathparty; hamas; hezbollah; istanbul; khalidmohammed; lauriemylroie; mylorie; ramadan2003; sheikhmohammed; turkeytrouble
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-27 next last

1 posted on 11/24/2003 5:40:25 AM PST by Ragtime Cowgirl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
Oh please. Even if the Weekly Standard stuff is true, Saudi Arabian money is the real funding source for terrorism.
2 posted on 11/24/2003 5:43:21 AM PST by armadale
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
look for the Wahhabi label on fine terrorism everywhere
3 posted on 11/24/2003 5:56:14 AM PST by joesnuffy (Moderate Islam Is For Dilettantes)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: armadale
Iran is as oil-rich as Saudi, and less shy about funding terrorism.

Rabin had it right. And so did Bush when he promised to smash states sponsoring terrorism or harboring terrorists.

Act II starts after the election. To open new fronts before then, just wouldn't be prudent. The Administration is confronting Saudi Arabia diplomatically and in the press. Iran will take a bit more persuading than that.

4 posted on 11/24/2003 5:59:33 AM PST by witnesstothefall
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
The author has an excellent point. Al Qaeda is still a politically convenient boogeyman, wheras naming the real players in the terror game, be it Syria, Iran, or the PLO, is felt to be 'counterproductive'.

Al Qaeda, aside from a concept, is all but dead. The links they formed and the groups that fell under their umbrella may have 'AQ links' but are often represented in the media as being AQ. This is the same as saying that Jemaah Islamiyaah and the Abu Sayyaf are guilty for the Istanbul bombings. Calling the hit 'AQ' is a nice way of saying that it was powerful Muslim extremists not tied to a certain state power, which since the fall of Afghanistan, is a rare beast indeed.

Most Muslim extremists are tied to a state. Period. Al Qaeda was, and the reason they are broken and bleeding to death is that Afghanistan was defeated and their sanctuaries were destroyed. By excluding links to nation states because it could be politically unpleasent does nothing but misrepresent the enemy we face and the nature of the fight ahead.

5 posted on 11/24/2003 6:00:59 AM PST by Steel Wolf (Too close for guns, switching to missiles!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: joesnuffy
Joe, you are partly right/partly wrong.The malicious mullahs (couldn't resist that one !) of Iran are hardly under Wahabbi control-AND-they are supporters of the 3 primary Islamic militant groups in Turkey-plus Hezbollah,some of Ansar el-Islam, some of the Kurdish militants,etc. - and just devious enough to sweep away their footprints before and after an attack.
6 posted on 11/24/2003 6:05:20 AM PST by genefromjersey (So little time - so many FLAMES to light !!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Steel Wolf
All I'm saying is that there's nothing heroic about the Weekly Standard's piece. If they really wanted to be heroic and patriotic and helpful, they could investigate the more obvious and more insidious links between Our Friend Saudi Arabia and all the terrorism since 9/11 (and before!)
7 posted on 11/24/2003 6:06:56 AM PST by armadale
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: MJY1288; Calpernia; Grampa Dave; anniegetyourgun; Ernest_at_the_Beach; BOBTHENAILER; ...
Indeed, a central premise of the "peace process" was that because the United States was the world's only superpower, rational actors — Arafat, Assad, etc. — recognized they had no choice but to come to terms with Washington and its ally Israel. Only Islamic militants lacked the rationality to comprehend that.

Of course, these assumptions proved tragically wrong. The "secular" Arafat never made peace with Israel, and he proved quite capable of working with the "fundamentalist" Hamas. The same for "secular" Syria, which hosts the likes of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, while Hezbollah's activities in Lebanon, are possible only because Damascus allows them.

This division between "secular" and "fundamentalist" is not meaningful.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Ping for your consideration. Ms. Mylroie, as SOD Rumsfeld might say, doesn't do tact.

8 posted on 11/24/2003 6:12:01 AM PST by Ragtime Cowgirl (If SH is behind the current activities it will be the 4th war that he's lost in 20 yrs.~Gen K *11/18)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: armadale
.. Saudi Arabian money is the real funding source for terrorism.

Hmmm ... wonder why the WOD TV ads only seem to be blaming drugs for funding terrorism?

Saudi money is our money, given to them by US.

9 posted on 11/24/2003 6:23:47 AM PST by templar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl

It a'int rocket science.

10 posted on 11/24/2003 6:25:18 AM PST by gridlock (OK, so I was wrong about Hillary! announcing for President. Sue me!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: armadale
If they really wanted to be heroic and patriotic and helpful, they could investigate the more obvious and more insidious links between Our Friend Saudi Arabia and all the terrorism since 9/11 (and before!)

It's already been investigated to death and SA's involvement in terrorism before and after 9-11 is well known and undeniable. We know it...we just refuse to do anything about it...so far. I hope that a day of reckoning is coming soon. It won't happen before the election, unless of course there's another large scale attack on our soil. In that case all bets are off.

11 posted on 11/24/2003 6:27:31 AM PST by pgkdan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: pgkdan
I completely agree! And every time I hear about one of our brave soldiers dying in Iraq I am sickened by our refusal to go after the REAL enemy: the Saudis.
12 posted on 11/24/2003 6:34:29 AM PST by armadale
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
Mylroie could not be more on-target. The perfect example for the claim that one should not be confused by the use of "secular" and "fundamentalist" is the activity that has occurred in Sudan since 1990. Khartoum has been used by so-called secularists like Arafat, Hamas, and Iraqi intelligence to meet with islamists leaders from Al Qaida, Islamic Jihad, and a plethora of like-minded groups. Together, and with the approval of the Sudan government they plotted activities in Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, and the Balkans.

Today the Hamas office is still operational in Khartoum, and it still serves as a meeting ground for so-called secularists and Islamist fundamentalists. It is one reason that the Sudan has not been taken off the State Department's list of nations who abet State-sponsored terrorism.
13 posted on 11/24/2003 6:37:42 AM PST by gaspar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl; BOBTHENAILER; Ernest_at_the_Beach; PhilDragoo
"Arafat, Assad, etc. — recognized they had no choice but to come to terms with Washington and its ally Israel. Only Islamic militants lacked the rationality to comprehend that.

Of course, these assumptions proved tragically wrong. The "secular" Arafat never made peace with Israel, and he proved quite capable of working with the "fundamentalist" Hamas. The same for "secular" Syria, which hosts the likes of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, while Hezbollah's activities in Lebanon, are possible only because Damascus allows them.

This division between "secular" and "fundamentalist" is not meaningful. Princeton's learned Bernard Lewis has cautioned that this is a Western distinction that does not exist in Islam. Nonetheless, many analysts persist in making it.

Moreover, such analysts habitually invert the relationship between states and groups, as the latter, particularly al Qaeda, is their focus. Yet states are the primary actors in international affairs. They control territory and have the power to tax and otherwise raise revenues. The nastiest of them have multiple intelligence services and major unconventional-weapons programs — biological, chemical, and nuclear. Indeed, senior administration officials have repeatedly warned that the threat is terrorist states working with and hiding behind terrorist groups to commit acts of unconventional terrorism.

Most probably, the Istanbul bombings were the work of Iraqi intelligence, in concert with Islamic militants. As I have written — at length, throughout the 1990s — Iraqi intelligence worked with and hid behind Islamic militants to attack the United States. Now it appears that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was, in fact, an Iraqi-intelligence agent. Most recently, The Weekly Standard has reported the extensive contacts between al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence, while author Ed Epstein has provided fascinating new details on the Czech claim that Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi-intelligence agent five months before the 9/11 attacks."

We see the intentional blindness that has permeated the State Department and much of the CIA since the Carter Days and was inforced during the Clintoon Days in the above.

The false belief that secular Islamofascists really don't cause problems and the complete inability of the Rats in state, CIA, our Senate and the liberal media to see the terrorist links between Iraq, Iran and Syria. They never want to blame the thugs in control of these Islamofascist countries.
14 posted on 11/24/2003 6:52:25 AM PST by Grampa Dave (Sore@US, the Evil Daddy Warbucks, has owned the DemonicRats for decades!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
In other words, self-deception is the most dangerous thing there is, or

"There is none so blind as he who will not see," or

"There is no substitute for strategic and moral clarity", or

If you refuse to face the truth, you'll arrive at the wrong diagnosis and administer the wrong treatment, or

You can't solve a problem by refusing to face it.

Some people find it very difficult to learn from experience.

15 posted on 11/24/2003 7:09:06 AM PST by Savage Beast (If Europeans cannot remember the price of appeasement, Americans are well qualified to remind them.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nuconvert
ping
16 posted on 11/24/2003 7:11:54 AM PST by Pan_Yans Wife ("Your joy is your sorrow unmasked." --- GIBRAN)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: witnesstothefall
"Act II starts after the election. To open new fronts before then, just wouldn't be prudent."

Very wise, Wit. The fate of the world hinges on the election. President Bush is a brilliant strategist, but he faces a formidable foe--enemies, both domestic and foreign, who by intent or foolishness, would destroy Western Civilization.

17 posted on 11/24/2003 7:16:38 AM PST by Savage Beast (If Europeans cannot remember the price of appeasement, Americans are well qualified to remind them.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: armadale
... they could investigate the more obvious and more insidious links between Our Friend Saudi Arabia and all the terrorism since 9/11 (and before!)

There are links between SA and AQ. They are mostly private. SA should not become the focus, they are down on the list and are already working to clean up their terrorist ties - out of self-preservation of the Saud family not any particularly friendly feelings for their "ally" the US. But there are much more significant ties and support coming from intelligence services in the Middle East and Africa that allows terrorist groups to be effective. SA religious leaders may incite, and private wealth may finance, but the intelligence, logistical and operational support is not based there.

18 posted on 11/24/2003 7:20:19 AM PST by optimistically_conservative (assonance and consonance have nothing on alliteration)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Steel Wolf
"Most Muslim extremists are tied to a state. Period. Al Qaeda was, and the reason they are broken and bleeding to death is that Afghanistan was defeated and their sanctuaries were destroyed.

By excluding links to nation states because it could be politically unpleasent does nothing but misrepresent the enemy we face and the nature of the fight ahead."

Very well and clearly said, Wolf.
19 posted on 11/24/2003 7:23:37 AM PST by Savage Beast (If Europeans cannot remember the price of appeasement, Americans are well qualified to remind them.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
These operations are almost certainly state-supported. The remnants of Iraqi intelligence are presumably at work. Iran has had a finger in most terrorist incidents. Syria is still actively making mischief. And Saudi Arabia has been providing major funding. Plus Egypt has always been a source of terrorist ideology and has regularly played a two-faced role.

Sudan and Yemen have been acting cautiously since 9/11, but they still need to be watched. And of course two of the major enablers are the Democrats and the liberal press in the U.S. and Europe. If 50% of Americans are unsure that deposing Saddam was a good idea, that is almost entirely the work of our press and the Democrat politicians with whom they work so closely.
20 posted on 11/24/2003 7:36:33 AM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-27 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson