Bush administration releases report on terror threat A new pretext for
American militarism and domestic repression

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/nie-j19.shtml
By Bill Van Auken
19 July 2007

A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a report that synthesizes the
findings of Washington's 16 separate spy agencies, warns that the US faces a
"heightened threat environment" for terrorist attacks. The Bush
administration's release of the report strongly suggests that the US
government is seeking to justify new military interventions in both Pakistan
and Iran, as well as stepped up domestic surveillance and other forms of
state repression at home.

The unclassified summary of the report—formally titled ""The Terrorist
Threat to the Homeland"—was released on Tuesday and consisted of little more
than a page and a half of "key judgments."

While the NIE's publication was accompanied by a predictable media campaign
to whip up a new terrorism scare, there was little new in terms of either
information or analysis in the document, which repeated the well-worn theme
that "the most serious threat" to the US—referred to ad nauseam in the NIE
as "the Homeland"—is posed by "Islamic terrorist groups and cells,
especially al-Qa'ida."

Among the most significant sections of the document concerned the situation
in Pakistan. It states that Al Qaeda has "protected or regenerated key
elements of its Homeland attack capability, including a safehaven in the
Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)."

This single line was the subject of extensive coverage in both the *New York
Times* and *Wall Street Journal* Wednesday, both of which cited US officials
suggesting that Washington is considering direct military intervention in
Pakistan.

"US policy makers, under pressure to eradicate this haven with or without
the cooperation of Islamabad, describe a vexing dilemma," the
*Journal*reported. "Any major unilateral effort by the Pentagon inside
Pakistan, say
US officials, could spark a local backlash strong enough to topple President
Pervez Musharraf, a leader President Bush has called Washington's strongest
ally in the fight against al Qaeda."

The *Times*, meanwhile, reported: "In weighing how to deal with the Qaeda
threat in Pakistan, American officials have been meeting in recent weeks to
discuss what some said was emerging as an aggressive new strategy, one that
would include both public and covert elements. They said there was growing
concern that pinprick attacks on Qaeda targets were not enough, but also
said some new American measures might have to remain secret to avoid
embarrassing General Musharraf."

The document also cites Lebanon's Shi'a-based political and paramilitary
movement Hezbollah—whose electoral bloc won more than 80 percent of the vote
in south Lebanon last year—as a potential terrorist threat to "the
Homeland," in the event that "it perceives the United States as posing a
direct threat to the group or Iran."

This suggests, under the Bush doctrine of preventive war against any and all
such potential adversaries, that the US military-intelligence apparatus is
preparing to intervene in Lebanon, either directly or using Israel once
again as its proxy force.

In what the media has portrayed as a veiled criticism of the White House by
the CIA and other intelligence agencies, the NIE points to the centrality of
the Iraq war in generating a heightened threat of terrorist attack. The
suggestion, which undermines the official claim that the war in Iraq has
dealt a blow against terrorism, appears in only indirect and somewhat
convoluted language.

The document states that "al-Qa'ida will probably seek to leverage the
contacts and capabilities of al-Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and
capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to
attack the Homeland. In addition, we assess that its association with AQI
helps al-Qa'ida to energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise
resources and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland
attack."

This language is considerably more diplomatic than that used in an April
2006 NIE, sections of which were leaked to the media in September of last
year. That document stated more directly, "The Iraq conflict has become a
cause célèbre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in
the Muslim world, and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist
movement," while apparently also referring to the revelations concerning
torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

The toned-down presentation and tortuous syntax no doubt reflect pressure
from the White House, which has a well-documented history of manipulating
intelligence reports for political purposes.

Bush took the release of the report as the occasion to repeat his imbecilic
claims that the US military in Iraq is fighting the "same people who
attacked us on September 11."

In remarks to reporters in the Oval Office, Bush argued once again that the
war in Iraq is essentially a battle against Al Qaeda. "These people have
sworn allegiance to the very same man who ordered the attack on September
the 11th, 2001: Osama bin Laden," he 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."

In what appeared to be a remarkably fortuitous coincidence, the US command
in Baghdad announced the day after the NIE's release that it had captured Al
Qaeda in Iraq's highest-ranking Iraqi leader, claiming that he had provided
information indicating that the Al Qaeda organization of Osama bin Laden
exercises considerable influence over the Iraqi group.

In point of fact, the announcement of the capture may have been something
less than a coincidence, given that the supposed AQI leader was in fact
captured two weeks earlier.

The conspicuous flaw in the argument of the Bush White House is the fact
that there was no Al Qaeda presence in Iraq before the US invasion in 2003.
Moreover, the incessant claims by the administration that US troops are
battling members of this terrorist organization is used to mask the broad
support that exists within the Iraqi population for attacks on the American
occupation forces and the involvement in these attacks of a wide spectrum of
groups and individuals who have nothing to do with Al Qaeda.

For their part, the Democrats predictably seized upon the report to charge
the Bush White House with mismanaging the "global war on terror" and to
promote their case for a scaled-down US occupation in Iraq, combined with an
intensified US intervention in Afghanistan and perhaps elsewhere.

Typical was the response of Illinois Democratic Senator and presidential
candidate Barack Obama. "After almost six years, awesome sacrifices by our
brave men and women in uniform, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent,
we are no safer than we were on 9/11," he said. "This is a consequence of
waging a misguided war in Iraq that should never have been authorized, and
failing to seize the opportunity to do lasting harm to the extremist
networks that pose a direct threat to our homeland."

Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic congressman who co-chaired the 9/11
Commission as well as the Iraq Study Group made the same essential case in
somewhat more sober language.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, he asserted that Washington, "lost an
opportunity" to destroy Al Qaeda in Afghanistan when it shifted its military
resources to the invasion of Iraq. "We were distracted when we went into
Iraq," he said.

He also took issue with the Bush administration's attempt to portray the war
in Iraq as merely a struggle against Al Qaeda. "I think the enemy is
evolving, constantly changing, and multi-faceted," he said. "It is very
difficult to define the enemy in Iraq."

ABC News quoted the US National Security Council's former chief
counter-terrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, as saying that the unclassified
version of the NIE amounted to "pure pablum."

Clarke went on to argue that more interesting than what the document said
was what it left out. He noted that the 2006 NIE and earlier documents had
stressed that US counter-terrorism efforts had "seriously damaged the
leadership of al-Qaeda and disrupted its operations."

"That is no longer the case in 2007, and you have to read between the lines
to understand how we have lost ground," Clarke continued. He added, "Given
that there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq until we invaded there, it's hard not to
draw the conclusion that going to Iraq has created a further threat to the
United States."

Bush's homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, offered a curious
rebuttal to these arguments, asserting that critics of the administration's
policy were viewing the "war on terror" as "a zero-sum game."

"The fact is that we are harassing them in Afghanistan, we're harassing them
in Iraq, we're harassing them in other ways, non-militarily, around the
world," she said. "And the answer is, every time you poke the hornet's nest,
they are bound to come back and push back on you."

"Harassing" is an odd term to describe these operations—it is generally
associated with attacks by smaller, irregular forces against a more powerful
regular army. As for the analogy of poking a hornet's nest, the reality is
that the US war in Iraq, along with its use of torture, "extraordinary
renditions" and other criminal methods have created intense hostility among
millions upon millions of Muslims—as well as others—all over the world, in
some cases giving rise to terrorist acts by people who have no connection to
Al Qaeda.

This is suggested in the NIE itself, which declares that "the growing number
of radical, self-generating cells in Western countries indicate that the
radical and violent segment of the West's Muslim population is expanding,
including in the United States."

This judgment will become the basis for even more intensive surveillance and
repression, not only of immigrants in the United States from Arab and
Muslim-populated countries, but also of all those who oppose such attacks on
democratic rights and the ongoing US aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The release of the latest National Intelligence Estimate has only
underscored that Washington is intent on continuing to use terrorism as a
weapon of political intimidation within the US itself. At the same time, the
reaction of both Democrats and Republicans to the document makes it clear
that, the bitter debate over strategy and tactics in Iraq notwithstanding,
new acts of American militarism are being prepared, with the backing of both
major parties.

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