Is Anyone Buying It Anymore?
This harkens back to the Cold War, when The U.S. government knew something and the Russians knew it… but it was classified by our government, apparently just to keep it secret from our own people. This was the excuse used when something massively embarrassing to the politicians was covered up under the pretense of “national security.”
Well, it’s happening again, just like old times. The Bush administration is now claiming that between two-thirds and three-fourths of the al Qaeda leadership has been captured or killed, therefore rendering the terrorist organization “smashed.” But how did they get that number?
White House and U.S. intelligence officials declined to provide any back-up data for how they developed the new number—or even to explain the methodology that was used, which they said was classified. The absence of any explanation, as well as the timing, prompted some counterterrorism experts to deride the figure as “meaningless” and predict the revision could fuel allegations that the administration is massaging terrorism data for political purposes.
Unless the administration is suggesting that al Qaeda does not know how many of its own people have been captured and/or killed, then there is no reason not to release a list of the names of said leaders, along with the outline of al Qaeda that would show that they represent 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the known operation. After all, they have let it be known what percent of the “known” leadership has been taken out, so al Qaeda now knows what we know about the size of their leadership, so obviously that’s not a concern, either. So keeping the specifics secret is foolish–the U.S. government knows, al Qaeda knows… the only ones who don’t know are the people.
Unless, of course, the numbers are a complete fraud, and the only reason to keep them “secret” is because there are no “facts” to reveal. In which case al Qaeda is certainly not fooled, just the American people. And that’s really the idea, isn’t it?
And let’s face it, their organization is hydra-esque in that if you kill a leader, another fills his place just as easily. If we’ve killed “two thirds” of the “known” leadership, most of that is probably repeats. How many times have we captured or killed off Osama bin Laden’s “number three” man, for example? There was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, Abu Hamza Rabia, Abu Zubaydah, Abdul Hadi Al-Iraqi, Mohammad Atef, and Saif al-Adel (still at large). And that’s just the list I found after a few minutes’ searching old news reports on Google.
There are two conclusions to be reached here: first, al Qaeda’s leadership is replaceable, and so they are not “smashed” or destroyed or in their “last throes” or anything of the sort; on the contrary, Bush’s war in Iraq has sent throngs of new recruits into al Qaeda’s ranks, and their fundraising is not hurting, either. The second conclusion: the Bush administration has been responsible for keeping al Qaeda alive and thriving, failing to do any serious damage to the organization while repeatedly deciding to follow policies that benefit al Qaeda.
And then the Bush administration turns around and flings this clump of fecal matter at us, that they’ve been so successful in “smashing” al Qaeda. I’m surprised, frankly, that even one news organization in the “liberal” media has deigned to question the legitimacy of that claim.