Bush and Cheney would have to face up to how their grand schemes for remaking the Middle East and their alarmist rhetoric about al-Qaeda creating a global empire from Spain to Indonesia no more match up with reality than did their earlier assertions about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program and his supposed stockpiles of WMD.
Instead, Bush and Cheney continue to justify the Iraq War by citing provocative public comments from Osama bin Laden about how he would relish an American defeat in Iraq. But Bush and Cheney keep ignoring intercepted communiqués from al-Qaeda leaders that indicate they actually want the United States to remain bogged down in Iraq.
For instance, a letter attributed to al-Qaeda leader Zayman al-Zawahiri worried that a rapid U.S. military withdrawal could precipitate a collapse of al-Qaeda’s position in Iraq, fretting that “the mujahaddin must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal.”
Another intercepted letter, written by a senior al-Qaeda operative known as “Atiyah,” cited the need for more time so the terrorist network could sink down roots in Iraq. “Prolonging the war is in our interest,” Atiyah wrote.
Yet, the political battle in Washington is taking place in a kind of parallel universe from the military conflict in Iraq. So, Bush may yet achieve his triumph of the will over the Democrats but that likely will do nothing to alter the unfolding disaster in Iraq.
[For more on how Bush and al-Qaeda’s goals mesh, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Bush-bin Laden Symbiosis.”]
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