Intelligence Agencies Blame Bush for Increased Terrorist Threat

My first reaction to the new intelligence agency reports on Al-Qaida was to wonder if the findings are politicized by the Bush administration. Now I'm wondering if maybe they are politicized against the Bush administration.

Everyone is familiar with the politicization of intelligence leading up to the Iraq war; some call it an "intelligence failure," as if the information was wrong. No. Thanks to Richard Dryfuss, Karen Kwiatikowski and others, we know that Dick Cheney created a lie factory in the Pentagon that gave false intelligence to the establishment media, Congress and the American people.

Many may also be familiar with the case against former CIA Director, and current Defense Secretary, Robert Gates. During past Senate confirmation hearings, numerous intelligence analysts, such as Jennifer Glaudemans and Ray McGovern, spoke out against Gates due to their concerns about his politicization of intelligence.

But we also know that Bush and Cheney set up the CIA to take the blame for the administration's abuse of intelligence, calling it "intelligence failures." So, we know that the intelligence community has an axe to grind against Bush/Cheney. We might be seeing that happening today.

The retribution comes through in the following message from the intelligence agencies: Bush's war in Iraq is undermining National security by creating a terrorist training ground. With that in mind, read the following:

National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar warned that the group's operatives in Iraq are getting portable, firsthand experience in covert communications, smuggling, improvised explosive devices, understanding U.S. military tactics and more.

Thomas Finger is still a new face, not even written up on Wikipedia as of the writing of this blog essay. Finger comes out of the US State Department intelligence department, one of the agencies that got it right before the Iraq war, but was shouted down. I'm guessing he's telling it straight.

Finger is not alone in broadcasting subtle public messages that point the blame towards Bush and Cheney:

Ted Gistaro, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, said al-Qaida in Iraq did not have any active cells when the U.S. invaded in March 2003. He said the watershed moment was when its now-deceased leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared his allegiance to bin Laden in an October 2004 Internet message.

The story of Zarqawi is interesting. Briefly, he was originally a small-time, locally-based operator. According to Zarqawi researcher, and economist, Loretta Napoleoni:

al-Zarqawi met Osama Bin Laden in 2000 in Kandahar, and it was a meeting in which he refused to join Al Qaeda because he could not share Osama Bin Laden's view of far-away enemy, i.e., the United States. He was very much focused on the existing Arab regimes, in particular Jordan.

Zarqawi ran a little training camp in Herat, but was forced to flee to Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurdish secret service informed the US that Zarqawi was "Al Qaeda," which was false, but the Bush needed some kind of evidence of Iraqi wrong doing. Zarqawi became their tumped up link of Al Quaeda to Iraq. Bush proclaimed Zarqawi to be "number 2" in Al Qaeda, and the corporate media fell in line with the story.

It was only after the Bush administration artificially pumped up Zarqawi's public image as a major terrorist that Zarqawi was able to attract support in the Muslim world.[1] That is, Bush created Zarqawi as a bogeyman image, which enabled Zarqawi to attract the resources needed to become a real threat. Bush literally helped create Zarqawi, even if unintentionally.

All of this points to more evidence of the Iraq Effect. This is the notion that the Iraq war correlates with a 600 percent increase in terrorist attacks since the US invasion of Iraq. This is according to research by Paul Cruickshank, Fellow at New York University Law School’s Center on Law and Security.

Although Bush might think this intelligence report serves his need to ratchet up the fear factor for his benefit, I suspect the intelligence community is conducting a secondary information campaign to undermine Bush's credibility. It's pay-back time.

Sources:

1. Democracy Nowm, June 8, 2006. Loretta Napoleoni, Italian economist and writer. She is the author of several books including "Insurgent Iraq: Al Zarqawi and the New Generation" and "Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks."