Posted on 05/14/2003 9:24:43 AM PDT by Jimmyclyde
May 14, 2003 Osama's Offspring By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
We've had our regime change in the Middle East. Now Qaeda terrorists want theirs.
Even before Al Qaeda claimed credit for the explosions ripping through Riyadh on Monday night, the Saudi princes were frightened and seeking American help. They were scared that Al Qaeda, which they once used to deflect resentment away from their own corruption, had succeeded in infiltrating various levels of society, including the government.
The problem with Saudi Arabia is that it is such an opaque society, you can never be sure what's going on there from the outside — and apparently it's not spectacularly transparent from the inside, either.
U.S. intelligence analysts warned the Saudis that an attack on American interests in the kingdom was coming. The Saudis reacted the way they typically do, defensively. The anti-American chatter had become such a din in the last two weeks that the State Department had warned Americans not to travel there.
The Saudi princes reluctantly began an investigation into the possible Qaeda plot. But even in such a repressed and repressive state, Saudi security forces couldn't stop the terrorists. They tried to seize an Islamic militant cell with links to radical clerics last Tuesday. The authorities found 800 pounds of explosives, but all 19 cell members — 17 Saudis, one Iraqi and one Yemeni — escaped.
So, with a new Qaeda spokesman warning that "an attack against America is inevitable" and that "future missions have been entrusted" to a "new team . . . well protected against U.S. intelligence services," now we have to worry about 19 slippery Islamic terrorists coming at us from Saudi Arabia?
Talk about a sickening sense of déjà vu.
Busy chasing off Saddam, the president and vice president had told us that Al Qaeda was spent. "Al Qaeda is on the run," President Bush said last week. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. . . . They're not a problem anymore."
Members of the U.S. intelligence community bragged to reporters that the terrorist band was crippled, noting that it hadn't attacked during the assault on Iraq.
"This was the big game for them — you put up or shut up, and they have failed," Cofer Black, who heads the State Department's counterterrorism office, told The Washington Post last week.
Of course, the other way of looking at it is that Al Qaeda works at its own pace and knows how to conduct operations on the run.
Al Qaeda has been weakened by the arrest of leaders like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. But Osama, in recent taped messages, has exhorted his followers to launch suicide attacks against the invaders of Iraq. And as one ambassador from an Arab country noted, the pictures of American-made tanks in both Iraq and the West Bank of Israel certainly attracted new recruits to Osama.
The administration's lulling triumphalism about Al Qaeda exploded on Monday in Riyadh, when well-planned and coordinated suicide strikes with car bombs and small-arms fire killed dozens in three housing complexes favored by Westerners, including seven Americans.
The attack was timed to coincide with Colin Powell's visit to the kingdom, and clearly meant to hurt both America and Saudi Arabia. Even though Rummy announced two weeks ago in Riyadh that he was pulling the U.S. troops Osama hated so much from Saudi Arabia, Qaeda leaders still want to undermine the Saudi monarchy that has been so receptive to infidel U.S. presidents.
Buried in the rubble of Riyadh are some of the Bush administration's basic assumptions: that Al Qaeda was finished, that invading Iraq would bring regional stability and that a show of American superpower against Saddam would cow terrorists.
Bob Graham, the Florida senator running for president, said at the Capitol yesterday that Iraq had been a diversion: "We essentially ended the war on terror about a year ago. And since that time, Al Qaeda has been allowed to regenerate."
Doing a buddy routine with Rummy yesterday in Washington, as the defense secretary accepted an award, Vice President Dick Cheney was as implacable as ever. "The only way to deal with this threat ultimately is to destroy it," he said.
So destroy it.
Hey little darlin', Osama didn't mean for them to wait until AFTER Iraq had its A$$ KICKED by the "invaders of Iraq". The timing of that message implied that BEFORE or, maybe even DURING, Osamadude might consider this, as relates to Iraq, to be TOO FREAKING LATE!...thank you very much.
Congressman Billybob
If the Times applied any journalistic standards, it would print a correction on the Dowd column and suspend her for a time. But then, if they had any standards, Rianes and Dowd would have been fired long ago for incompetence.
Congressman Billybob
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