Posted on 06/29/2004 9:27:12 AM PDT by jmstein7
The Sept. 11 Commission has found that the Bush administration's war on terror has severely impaired al Qaida's ability to organize another spectacular attack against the U.S. homeland by capturing or killing the deadly terror group's key leaders, drying up their financial resources and "severely limiting their ability to strategize, plan attacks, and dispatch operatives worldwide."
The bombshell finding, buried at the end of the Commission's Staff Statement No. 15, should have been hailed in the press as evidence that we've at least turned the corner in the war on terror - and may indeed have the enemy on the run. Instead, reporters have ignored this particular Commission finding since its release on June 16.
Here's the part of Staff Statement 15 that the press decided Americans didn't need to hear about, as reported by the Commission under the heading "Al Qaeda* Today." "Since the September 11 attacks and the defeat of the Taliban, as Qaeda's funding has decreased significantly. The arrests or deaths of several important financial facilitators have decreased the amount of money al Qaeda has raised and increased the costs and difficulty of raising and moving that money.
"Some entirely corrupt charities are now out of business, with many of their principals killed or captured, although some charities may still be providing support to al Qaeda.
"Moreover, it appears that the al Qaeda attacks within Saudi Arabia in May and November 2003 have reduced - perhaps drastically - at Qaeda's ability to raise funds from Saudi sources. Both an increase in Saudi enforcement and a more negative perception of al Qaeda by potential donors have cut its income." [END OF EXCERPT]
And the good news for America - not to mention the Bush administration - doesn't end there. In the same section, Staff Statement 15 notes:
"Prior to 9/11, al Qaeda was a centralized organization which used Afghanistan as a war room to strategize, plan attacks, and dispatch operatives worldwide." But now, says the Commission, "Bin Ladin's* seclusion [has] forced operational commanders and cell leaders to assume greater authority; they are now making the command decisions previously made by him." [END OF EXCERPT]
In other words, whether dead or alive, the prime mover behind the Sept. 11 attacks has been taken out of commission, with operational authority handed over to allies of convenience like Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
And while Zarqawi has mounted dozens of operations throughout the Middle East in recent months, including a deadly chem-bomb plot foiled by Jordanian authorities in April, his focus these days seems to be pretty much on Iraq - not America.
And even there, Zarqawi seems to be feeling the heat lately. According to the recent communique he sent to bin Laden, published on Islamic web sites earlier this month, he complained about being "squeezed" by U.S. forces.
"The space of movement is starting to get smaller," he told the 9/11 chief. "The [U.S.] grip is starting to be tightened on the holy warriors' necks and, with the spread of soldiers and police, the future [for our side] is becoming frightening."
To be sure, the 9/11 Commission did not attribute any success in the terror war to the president by name, though as its leader and chief strategist, that conclusion is inescapable.
And neither does Staff Statement 15 say that al Qaeda has been completely vanquished, warning instead that the bin Laden network is still able to execute smaller operations and is "striving to attack the U.S. and inflict mass casualties" - using nuclear weapons if possible.
Still, when the 9/11 Commission reports: "Al Qaeda today is more a loose collection of regional networks with a greatly weakened central organization," it's hard not to conclude President Bush's war on terror is making significant progress. Unless you're a journalist.
Do you really think that the editors will listen to the people and not follow their orders from the DNC?
I've had a few published in distinctly liberal newspapers.
The American main-stream media was relatively positive...compared with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. They made my blood boil. There was one gentleman from Iraq being interviewed who said that he now had hope...he was smiling. I wondered how that didn't get edited out. I had to turn it off....disgusting. I am ashamed of them. This is why I no longer listen to Canadian news.
Bump!
LOL LOL
You get a double on that one :)
Not exactly true. There is the 9/11 Commssion itself, which offers their staff statement in PDF files that even reporters - if they so choose - are allowed to read:
http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing12/staff_statement_15.pdf
I can't help it that nobody else in the press picked up on what's there for all the world to see.
Bump for NewsMax
ANY reaction putting the US military on the OFFENSIVE in the ENEMY's turf will result in a defeat for terrorists. They were simply taking advantage of lack of American commitment to fighting terrorism since 1979. Now the US Army's boot is on Irak's neck, the war is in their territory where it belongs and they are losing.
If there was anything left to Al Queda in America, they would be chopping off heads in Kansas City instead of Iraq.
Oh, it's possible, alright. This morning I caught a bit of one of these "interviews" where the reporterette in the studio is talking to the reporter in the field. In this case, the field reporter was Michael Ware from Time magazine. He was genuinely wild-eyed and crazed-looking, with a scruffy beard and unkempt clothing. (He has a British or Australian accent.)
He was breathelessly going on and on about how he had gone to an Iraqi safe house. (Of course, he apparently never thought that he might save some American and coalition lives if he told the authorities where this safe house was, but why quibble when there's a story to get.)
He said the U.S. has made more terrorists, not less. That the Iraqis he was meeting were becoming jihadists and wanted an Islamic government, whereas even just a year ago, they were secularists who would never have dreamed of actively working to install an Islamist government.
Here's a link to the online article he was discussing with the MSNBC reporterette. Reading the article in the privacy of your own home or office will not convey Ware's near hysteria, which was clear, to me at least, during this morning's interview. Perhaps he had some valid points, perhaps not. But I had trouble taking him seriously because of his wild-eyed demeanor.
Brokaw basically stopped just short of declaring Iraq to be in a total state of civil war.
Seclusion, another word for killed 2 1/2 years ago.
It's kind of like all the stuff available to them in the basement office of that congressional building pertaining to Bubba that none of the press would touch.. and the elected officials for the most part, avoided as well.
Good Job! Available since the 15th or 16th .. wow!
Viva a FRee Republic!
Just an extended vacation in Tora-Bora.
Here's another piece from the Commission Staff Report 10 that Big Media has ignored and which put the lie to Michael Moore's "shlockumentery". The Saudi Flights
National air space was closed on September 11. Fearing reprisals against Saudi nationals, the Saudi government asked for help in getting some of its citizens out of the country. We have not yet identified who they contacted for help. But we have found that the request came to the attention of Richard Clarke and that each of the flights we have studied was investigated by the FBI and dealt with in a professional manner prior to its departure.
No commercial planes, including chartered flights, were permitted to fly into, out of, or within the United States until September 13, 2001. After the airspace reopened, six chartered flights with 142 people, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called Bin Ladin flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Usama Bin Ladin. We have found no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace.
The Saudi flights were screened by law enforcement officials, primarily the FBI, to ensure that people on these flights did not pose a threat to national security, and that nobody of interest to the FBI with regard to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country.
Thirty of the 142 people on these flights were interviewed by the FBI, including 22 of the 26 people (23 passengers and 3 private security guards) on the Bin Ladin flight. Many were asked detailed questions. None of the passengers stated that they had any recent contact with Usama Bin Ladin or knew anything about terrorist activity. The FBI checked a variety of databases for information on the Bin Ladin flight passengers and searched the aircraft. It is unclear whether the TIPOFF terrorist watchlist was checked. At our request, the Terrorist Screening Center has rechecked the names of individuals on the flight manifests of these six Saudi flights against the current TIPOFF watchlist. There are no matches.
The FBI has concluded that nobody was allowed to depart on these six flights who the FBI wanted to interview in connection with the 9/11 attacks, or who the FBI later concluded had any involvement in those attacks. To date, we have uncovered no evidence to contradict this onclusion.
I'm glad a lot of the American media was positive.
As for our great Canadian Broadcasting Corp. .....
.... I remember the 1st weekend of the federal election and for some reason unknown to mankind I began watching the 10:00pm election special on CBC.
And then about a half hour into the news cast .... there he was ... good old Neil MacDonald, reporting from Washington about how bad it was going in Iraq. The bozo does an interview with Blix and then has the audacity to tell CBC viewers that no WMDs have been found in Iraq .... even though just a few days earlier the AP was reporting the confirmation of the 155mm binary sarin gas shell and the mustard gas shell.
It is getting to the point where I just can't take it any more when I watch any of the Canadian TV news on Iraq issues in Canada - Hell you never would know we participated in the war listening to our own media.
If it wasn't for this web site I just don't know where I would turn.
hawk (who lives in a country whose CRTC has banned Foxnews)
Chills, I get chills when I see her!
A "take that Ricky Holbrooke" ping.
bttt
Not "hailed in the press," they say?
They should have used the words "panties," "abuse," and "scandal" somewhere in the text.
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