When it rains it pours for the White House. And the latest intelligence report came in the form of storm clouds:
The White House faced fresh political peril yesterday in the form of a new intelligence assessment that raised sharp questions about the success of its counterterrorism strategy and judgment in making Iraq the focus of that effort.
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has been able to deflect criticism of his counterterrorism policy by repeatedly noting the absence of any new domestic attacks and by citing the continuing threat that terrorists in Iraq pose to U.S. interests.
But this line of defense seemed to unravel a bit yesterday with the release of a new National Intelligence Estimate that concludes that al-Qaeda “has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability” by reestablishing a haven in Pakistan and reconstituting its top leadership. The report also notes that al-Qaeda has been able “to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks,” by associating itself with an Iraqi subsidiary.
As the Washington Post piece notes, this created new problems for the White House:
These disclosures triggered a new round of criticism from Democrats and others who say that the administration took its eye off the ball by invading Iraq without first destroying Osama bin Laden’s organization in Afghanistan.
Confronted with a political brush fire, the president and his aides retreated to familiar ground, highlighting the parts of the report that they saw as supportive of their policies, particularly the need to confront Islamic radicals on the ground in Iraq.
In talking with reporters in the Oval Office yesterday, Bush concentrated on a single paragraph in the assessment that placed the enemy in Iraq in a larger context of international terrorism. The estimate said bin Laden’s organization will “probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qa’ida in Iraq, its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland.”
Although only a portion of the instability in Iraq is attributed to al-Qaeda and the group had no substantial power base there before the U.S. invasion, Bush again cast the war as a battle against its members, whom his aides have described as key provocateurs there.
“These people have sworn allegiance to the very same man who ordered the attack on September the 11th, 2001: Osama bin Laden,” the president said. “And they want us to leave parts of the world, like Iraq, so they can establish a safe haven from which to spread their poisonous ideology. And we are steadfast in our determination to not only protect the American people, but to protect these young democracies.”
Bush’s top advisers also pushed back at the proposition from many Democrats that the White House allowed the pursuit of al-Qaeda to be diverted by going after Saddam Hussein. Briefing reporters yesterday, Frances Fragos Townsend, Bush’s homeland security adviser, took issue with the suggestion that the president had ignored warnings from the intelligence community that attacking Iraq would stimulate al-Qaeda’s drive for recruits and influence.
But there were others who said the report DOWNPLAYED the gravity of the terror outlook. ABC’s The Blotter:
Intelligence analysts and the former White House counterterror official describe as “pure pablum” the unclassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate released today on terror threats to the United States.
“Nothing in here is going to surprise anybody who’s been following this,” said one senior U.S. intelligence official.
“It’s more about what it doesn’t say than what it does say,” says Richard Clarke, the former White House official who is now an ABC News consultant.
“What is left out of the version released publicly is the explicit statement that al Qaeda is back and has operations underway,” Clarke says.
The 2006 version of the National Intelligence Estimate claimed U.S. efforts had “seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qa’ida and disrupted its operations.”
“That’s no longer the case in 2007, and you have to read between the lines to understand how we have lost ground,” Clarke says.
The administration’s reaction is perhaps one of the reasons why it now faces a credibility gap as big as the Grand Canyon. In many cases, heading back to the lead-up to the war, it turns out that Bush administration members cherry picked information which would then picked up by its most loyal partisan supporters, talk show hosts and members in Congress.
That’s what has happened now. The Politico:
The Republican establishment is rallying to the defense of President Bush and his controversial war strategy, with some GOP members of Congress cherry-picking intelligence about a resurgent Al Qaeda to buy at least two more months for Bush’s Iraq strategy.
Republican leaders on Tuesday pounced on a newly released National Intelligence Estimate to argue that the increasingly powerful and ominous Al Qaeda presence justifies current troop levels in Iraq at least until September. Democrats said the NIE proved nothing more than that the Iraq war has helped make Al Qaeda more dangerous.
With Democrats pressing for a straight up-or-down vote on a plan to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq by next spring, Republicans are increasingly playing the “Al Qaeda card” to delay, at least for two more months, any major Senate vote on changing war policy.
This strategy was on full display Tuesday. Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the newly declassified National Intelligence Estimate showed that Al Qaeda is “present in Iraq,” and the United States must “fight them in Iraq.”
If the Democrats have taken a deep breath and slated a required Congressional slumber party to make a point about a vote they won’t win, then the Republicans have now cast their lot as party in support of Bush. The Politico again:
At least for the moment, the public relations and lobbying blitz by the White House has apparently succeeded, as even GOP supporters of the Levin-Reed amendment admit that there are not likely to be any more Republicans signing onto that proposal at this time, despite growing unhappiness within GOP ranks over the course of the war.
So once again in terms of getting its way in Congress the Power of the Presidency and the Power of the Bully Pulpit plus the Power of Media Message seem to have worked for the White House.
But, according to the New York Times, the White House is admitting some significant failure:
President Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged Tuesday that the strategy for fighting Osama bin Laden’s leadership of Al Qaeda in Pakistan had failed, as the White House released a grim new intelligence assessment that has forced the administration to consider more aggressive measures inside Pakistan.
The intelligence report, the most formal assessment since the Sept. 11 attacks about the terrorist threat facing the United States, concludes that the United States is losing ground on a number of fronts in the fight against Al Qaeda, and describes the terrorist organization as having significantly strengthened over the past two years.
In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence, intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an effort to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.
“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,†said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.â€
While Bush administration officials had reluctantly endorsed the cease-fire as part of their effort to prop up the Pakistani leader, they expressed relief on Tuesday that General Musharraf may have to abandon that approach, because the accord seems to have unraveled.
Taken altogether, these reports suggest an administration whose performance has not matched its rhetoric, yet it’s rhetoric still works in hammering its politically vulnerable party members in line. In doing so the White House has roped in its own nervous party, forcing it more than ever to tie its fate and future electoral chances to the White House.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.