Decline and Fall

It's odd that this hass to be a major story, but some people, particularly in the Bush Administration, still don't get it: Iraq was not working with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion. Period. But here's Dick Cheney, continuing the disinformation:

Remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, an Al-Qaeda affiliate. He ran a training camp in Afghanistan for Al-Qaeda, then migrated after we went into Afghanistan and shut 'em down there, he went to Baghdad. He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the Al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then of course led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shi'a and Sunni. This is Al-Qaeda operating in Iraq, and as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq. There's no way you can segment out and say, "Well, we'll fight the war on terror in Pakistan or Afghanistan but we can separate Iraq. That's not really, in any way, shape, or form related." It's just dead wrong. Bin Laden has said this is the central battle in the war on terror.

OK, let's just take this one bit at a time:

Remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, an Al-Qaeda affiliate. He ran a training camp in Afghanistan for Al-Qaeda, then migrated after we went into Afghanistan and shut 'em down there, he went to Baghdad.

Well, no, he went to Northern Iraq, the Kurdish-controlled area, the part of Iraq where U.S. Special Forces were training Kurds and Saddam had almost no say in what went on. Zarqawi was not welcome in Baghdad.

He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the Al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then of course led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June.

Yes, but his connection to al-Qaeda proper, i.e., bin Laden and Zawahiri, was shaky at best. Zarqawi was considered a rogue by UBL and the al-Qaeda leadership, among other reasons for Zarqawi's insistence on fighting the Shi'a first.

He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shi'a and Sunni.

But Cheney can't even get this part right: believe me when I tell you that the Shi'a and Sunni were slaughtering each other long before the Samarra mosque was destroyed in early 2006. But this is exactly in line with the Administration's insistence that prior to that event the Shi'a, with the exception of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, were all blissfully pro-American and pro-Iraqi unification. They weren't, and everyone on the ground in Iraq knew that. That civil war began as soon as America "liberated" Iraq and Iraq's sectarian and ethnic groups started coalescing and relocating outsiders in 2003. To make any other claim is to be indifferent to the plain truth.
This is Al-Qaeda operating in Iraq, and as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.

There's no way you can segment out and say, "Well, we'll fight the war on terror in Pakistan or Afghanistan but we can separate Iraq. That's not really, in any way, shape, or form related." It's just dead wrong. Bin Laden has said this is the central battle in the war on terror.

Al-Qaeda went from enemy of the state to one of the many paramilitary organizations in Iraq at precisely the mopment America invaded. Iraq was not only segmentable, it was one of the few nations we might have felt secure in ignoring back when we were actually concerned with fighting al-Qaeda. Saddam knew that the Islamist threat to his regime was palpable, so he kept them at arm's length, while not seeking to alienate them completely. Iraq is only the central battle because America has made it so; UBL is only taking advantage of the opportunity we've given him.

It is unbelievable to me that the Vice President can go on the radio and say what he knows, what everyone knows, to be a blatant lie. But he's talking to his crowd here; Rush Limbaugh's audience doesn't care about the truth, they care about showing support for their President, no matter how far down he wants to drag his country.

But this kind of thing can be instructive, too. It's one thing to record what the Administration says to the world at large, but it's another to take note of what they say to a supportive audience. This is an example of craven coalition politics at work: keep the troops happy by feeding them a bunch of processed lies and they'll continue to doubt what the rest of the world knows to be true: their man in Washington is an incompetent, lying charlatan.

Labels: Bush, GWOT, Iraq