PrairiePundit

Scrappleface parody: The morning after Fox News aired reporter Chris Wallace’s interview with a feisty Bill Clinton, the former president today said, “Right-wing, neocon conspiracy theorists are out to get me .” Mr. Clinton dismissed allegations that he appeared paranoid on TV, saying, “people who call me paranoid are the exact same right-wingers, who worked behind the scenes with Chris Wallace to engineer my emotional outburst. It’s what they call a ‘wag the finger’ strategy to distract attention from the Bush administration’s foreign policy failures.” The remark follows Mr. Clinton’s vigorous defense of his administration’s virtual assassination of al Qaeda leader Usama Bin Laden. Indeed, a spokesman for Mr. Bin Laden confirmed that during the Clinton administration, the al Qaeda leader felt “nearly threatened.” ... There is more parody from the mind of Scott Ott. Check out his commentary on how fighting terrorist creates terrorist .

From the White House transcript of news conference with President Bush: ... PRESIDENT KARZAI: Ma'am, before I go to remarks by my brother, President Musharraf, terrorism was hurting us way before Iraq or September 11th. The President mentioned some examples of it. These extremist forces were killing people in Afghanistan and around for years, closing schools, burning mosques, killing children, uprooting vineyards, with vine trees, grapes hanging on them, forcing populations to poverty and misery. They came to America on September 11th, but they were attacking you before September 11th in other parts of the world. We are a witness in Afghanistan to what they are and how they can hurt. You are a witness in New York. Do you forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor when the planes hit them? Can you imagine what it will be for a man or a woman to jump off that high? Who did that? And where are they now? And how do we fight them, how do we get rid of them, oth...

Fox News: A newly declassified and controversial intelligence report says that the Iraq conflict has become a " cause celebre" for Islamic extremists, but if their efforts fail it could hinder recruiting of more would-be terrorists. The key findings of the National Intelligence Estimate state that the number of "jihadists" is growing in size and geographic dispersion, and if the trend continues it could lead to more terror attacks worldwide and more threats to U.S. interests at home and abroad. Rather than point the finger solely at U.S. involvement in Iraq, the NIE instead concludes that counterterrorism efforts in general have caused a rise in global terror, and "greater pluralism and more responsive political systems in Muslim majority nations would alleviate some of the grievances jihadists exploit." Click here to read the declassified findings from the NIE . The report, completed last April and ...

In From the Cold: ... In one of its early paragraphs, the estimate notes progress in the struggle against terrorism, stating the U.S.-led efforts have " seriously damaged Al Qaida leadership and disrupted its operations ." Didn't see that in the NYT article. Or how about this statement, which--in part--reflects the impact of increased pressure on the terrorists: "A large body of reporting indicates that people identifying themselves as jihadists is increasing...however, they are largely decentralized, lack a coherent strategy and are becoming more diffuse." Hmm...doesn't sound much like Al Qaida's pre-9-11 game plan . The report also notes the importance of the War in Iraq as a make or break point for the terrorists: "Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves to have failed, we judge that fewer will carry on the fight." It's called a ripple effect . More support for the defeating the enemy on his home turf: "Threats to the U....

Adventures of Chester: ... It seems Thailand has made two strategic errors in the past 15 years, the first of which was the dismantling of intelligence assets in the south. A 2004 article from The Straits Times notes that the upsurge in violence is also proving difficult to understand and control because it comes after Bangkok effectively dismantled its intelligence apparatus in the area and scaled down its military presence, thinking it had all but crushed the separatist movement in the late 1990s. The simple, stark fact, as admitted to me by a retired Thai general last week, is that neither the military nor the police now have a clue what is going on in the south. Dr. Abuza made the same point in the piece above, noting, “There has been a complete failure of intelligence. No one knows who the insurgents are. They don’t have a face.” In the absence of this lack of knowledge, it seems that ousted PM Thaksin made his second error: he responded to the insurgency with heavy-handed t...

Andrew Klaven: THERE'S NO LIMIT to what a man can do," President Reagan used to say, " … if he doesn't care who gets the credit." Former President Clinton's motto seems to be a little different: "There's no limit to how much credit a man can get, if he doesn't care what he's actually done." Reagan came to office after the Jimmy Carter catastrophe. He pulled the American economy out of a graveyard spin, restored the country's military and its confidence and helped bring one of the most oppressive empires on Earth to the brink of collapse. But in those days, my children, there was no Internet, no Fox News, no Rush Limbaugh — the media was almost all Colmes and precious little Hannity — and if you got your news from the New York Times, say, or CBS, you would've thought the country was being run by a miserly, warmongering idiot instead of the greatest president of the century's second half. And yet even after his two terms were ...

Reuters: ... The Arabic channel said its Pakistan bureau had received a call from the unnamed Taliban official a few days after a leaked French secret document said Saudi intelligence believed bin Laden died last month in Pakistan. "The official said bin Laden was alive and that reports that he is ill are not true," said Bakr Atyani, Al Arabiya's Islamabad correspondent. "The Taliban checked with members who are close to al Qaeda that these reports are baseless." ... While these reports are obviously hearsay, so were the reports of his death. Osama could clear all this up if he would just call a press briefing and answer questions directly. Since many on the left think he is winning, they should have to explain why he is too frightened to meet with the media. The way many of them are following his script he would be among friends.

Robert Kagan: It's too bad we won't get to see the full National Intelligence Estimate on "Trends in Global Terrorism" selectively leaked to The Post and the New York Times last week. The Times headline read "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat." But there were no quotations from the NIE itself, so all we have are journalists' characterizations of anonymous comments by government officials, whose motives and reliability we can't judge, about intelligence assessments whose logic and argument, as well as factual basis, we have no way of knowing or gauging. Based on the press coverage alone, the NIE's judgment seems both impressionistic and imprecise. On such an important topic, it would be nice to have answers to a few questions. For instance, what specifically does it mean to say that the Iraq war has worsened the "terrorism threat"? Presumably, the NIE's authors would admit that this is speculation rather than a state...

Bill Gertz: Iran is close to an agreement that would include a suspension of uranium enrichment but wants the deal to include a provision that the temporary halt be kept secret, according to Bush administration officials. Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, has been working with Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani on the enrichment-suspension deal that could be completed this week. Disclosure of talks on the secret element of the arrangement comes as Mr. Solana and Mr. Larijani are set to meet today or tomorrow in Europe when the deal could be completed, said officials opposed to the deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. According to the officials, the suspension of uranium enrichment by Iran would be for 90 days, so additional talks could be held with several European nations. Many U.S. officials are opposing the agreement as a further concession to Iran, which continues to defy a United Nations' call for a complete halt to ur...

NY Times: Kismayo, one of the largest cities in Somalia , fell to Islamic forces without a shot on Monday — but then the trouble started. After the city’s warlords fled and hundreds of Islamist fighters poured in, demonstrators took to the streets and hurled stones at the Islamists. Islamist troops responded with machine guns, opening fire on the demonstrators and killing at least one teenage boy, witnesses said. “We don’t want the Islamic courts!” the demonstrators yelled, referring to the Council of Islamic Somali Courts, the official name of the Islamic forces. It was the latest episode of turmoil in a country notorious for it. The Islamist forces took over Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, in June and have been expanding their reach ever since. The people of Mogadishu have by and large supported them, thankful for the stability they brought after 15 years of anarchy. But apparently many in Kismayo did not feel the same way. Kismayo is a major port city on the southern Somali coa...

Daily Mail: A Somalian bus driver took up to 200 driving tests on behalf of fellow immigrants and charged them up to £500 a time. Deeg Mohammed, 27, impersonated hundreds of would-be candidates at a series of exam centres in a nationwide scam netting more than £100,000. Mohammed assumed the identities of his paying customers before passing the compulsory theory test with flying colours. The father-of-one was only caught when suspicious officials noticed that a number of bookings were being made using the same credit cards. After reviewing hours of CCTV footage they eventually found Mohammed sitting fifteen tests in six different counties. ... There is more. The report for some reason does not discuss whether there could have been a terrorism link to the scam. It focuses on the Somalis' problem with comprehending english. Don't they perceive that as a problem too?

Times: British troops shot dead one of al-Qaeda’s most elusive fugitives yesterday after his extraordinary flight from a US prison in Afghanistan to a luxury villa in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Omar al-Farouk, 35, was handpicked by Osama bin Laden to run al-Qaeda’s terror network in South-East Asia and was captured in June 2002, only weeks before he allegedly planned to bomb eight US embassies across the region. Kuwaiti born, he was groomed at an Afghan camp, and sent to Indonesia where he was arrested, hiding in a mosque. The CIA claimed that his capture had dealt a devastating blow to al-Qaeda. From there he was flown to one of America’s most secure detention centres at Bagram airbase on the outskirts of Kabul. But Farouk and three fellow al-Qaeda suspects managed to pick the locks and escape across a minefield in July last year. He later appeared on an Arab television channel taunting his US captors and vowing to carry out terror attacks in America. Intelligence chiefs w...

Clinton's tantrum on Fox News Sunday is a reminder of when he tried to respond to the African embassy bombings. Too much of the commentary focuses on the impact of the Lewinski affair an ignores a significant red flag on our WMD intelligence. Iraq is not the first place we did not find WMD after an attack. The hit on the aspirin factory in Sudan was supposed to be because we had intelligence that indicated that WMD was being produced there and there was also a possible connection between bin Laden and Saddam tied to the plant. The Clinton administration ignored this serious intelligence failure and passed on the bad intelligence on WMD's to the Bush administration which acted on it when it invaded Iraq. I don't recall this red flag being studied when the post war assesments of intelligence were done. It would make an interesting inquiry.

Washington Post: Panicky rumors of a coup swept through Pakistan on Sunday after a power outage interrupted national television broadcasts and later plunged much of the country into darkness. With the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, away on an extended trip to the United States and Canada at a time of regional tensions and growing insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan, many Pakistanis speculated that he had been overthrown in absentia. The chairman of the national power administration, Tariq Hamid, said at a 10 p.m. news conference in Lahore that the outage was caused by technical problems and that no sabotage had been involved. ... That is life in the third world some times. We used to have that problem a lot in Washington County but the power company has a recorded message now with no need to tell people it is not related to a coup.

Amir Taheri: HAVING failed to stop war in Iraq, French President Jacques Chirac is determined to prevent a similar fate befalling Iran. "There will be no war against Iran," Chirac is reported to have told a special emissary of the Islamic Republic who visited him in Paris last week. "Anything other than negotiations would be resolutely opposed by France." History may not be repeating itself, but it is hard not to remember similar pledges Chirac gave to Saddam Hussein up to March 2003, just weeks before the U.S.-led Coalition invaded Iraq. It is now clear that Chirac's assurances played a crucial role in persuading Saddam not to offer the concessions that might have prevented war and regime change. From his prison cell, former Iraqi Vice President Tariq Aziz told U.S. and Iraqi interrogators that Saddam was convinced that the French and, to a lesser extent, the Russians would save his regime at the last minute. Just hours before he flew to New York to attend t...

Antonio Castaneda: The plan was simple: Iraqi troops would block escape routes while U.S. soldiers searched for weapons house by house. But the Iraqi troops didn't show up on time. When they finally did appear, the Iraqis ignored U.S. orders and let dozens of cars -- including an ambulance full of armed militiamen -- pass through checkpoints in eastern Baghdad, American soldiers said in recent interviews. It wasn't an isolated incident, they added. U.S. commanders have hailed the performance of Iraqi troops in the crackdown on militias and insurgents in Baghdad. But some U.S. soldiers say the Iraqis serving alongside them are among the worst they've ever seen -- seeming more loyal to militias than the government. Last week, for example, Sgt. 1st Class Eric Sheehan discovered that barriers and concertina wire that were supposed to bolster defensive positions had been dragged away -- again -- under the noses of nearby Iraqi soldiers. I "suggest we fir...

Rowan Scarborough: The Army is studying whether to add more combat units to the rotation plan for Iraq and is considering accelerating the deployments for some brigades to meet a top commander's decision to keep more than 140,000 troops in the country through at least the spring of 2007, Pentagon officials say. Rather than planning for a big drawdown of 30,000 Army soldiers and Marines this year to a level of 100,000, as field commanders had expected, the two services are now trying to figure out how to keep the equivalent of two extra divisions, or 40,000 troops, in Iraq. Army Gen. John Abizaid, the top commander in the region, said last week he needed to maintain the higher-than-expected level because of increased sectarian violence in greater Baghdad between warring Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. The Army has met Gen. Abizaid's immediate need for more forces by delaying the departure of a Stryker armored vehicle brigade to Alaska and by calling in a fast-reaction...

Times: ... With intercepts of Taliban communications showing that they were trying to surround the troops, Loden began putting together two more sections using engineers and two military policemen who had been investigating the accidental death of another soldier. “The company sergeant-major made another trip out and back on the quad bike to collect the third casualty, this time coming under fire himself but continuing nonetheless,” he said. “I began assembling more forces to push out to bolster the position on the ground. I sent forward a section of engineers with the second platoon commander to effectively control the rear. “The second platoon commander tried to push round the flank towards Budd but was engaged by enemy across the river and pinned down. I now created two more sections, one led by a corporal from the sniper section with an engineer staff sergeant as the second-in-command and including the Royal Military Police sergeant and corporal.” At this point there were 80 troops...

Times: THE Royal Thai Army will adopt new tactics against a militant Islamic uprising, following the coup that sent Thaksin Shinawatra, the ousted prime minister, into exile in London last week. According to sources briefed by the army high command, Thaksin’s bungled response to the insurgency in southern Thailand, which has claimed 1,700 lives in two years, was a critical factor in the generals’ decision to get rid of him. Military intelligence officers intend to negotiate with separatists and to use psychological warfare to isolate the most violent extremists, in contrast to Thaksin’s heavy-handed methods and harsh rhetoric. The coup leader, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, is a Muslim who has sworn loyalty to Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the symbol of nationhood in this majority Buddhist country of 65m people. ... A final spur for the coup came when bomb explosions tore through the south’s commercial and tourist centre of Hat Yai last Saturday night, killing a Canadian visitor a...

Guardian: An informal chat between two diplomats at a social gathering in Pakistan appears to have been the trigger for a worldwide flurry of speculation over the weekend about the possible death of Osama bin Laden. The regional French newspaper l'Est Republicain quoted a leaked document from France's intelligence service DGSE on Saturday saying that Saudi secret services were convinced the al-Qaida leader had died. The document, dated Thursday, had been sent to the French president, Jacques Chirac, and other top French officials, the newspaper said. But according to Alexis Debat, a former French intelligence official, the report was based solely on a conversation between a French diplomat and a low-level Saudi diplomat at a social function in Islamabad. The French diplomat had felt obliged to pass on the details to headquarters in Paris. "There is no hard information the report is true," Mr Debat told ABC News. ... The leak apparently gave the report more credibility...