05.23.2007

Washington, DC

National Security Network experts today issued statements regarding newly declassified intelligence that Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to hit targets inside the United States.

"One day Bush tells us we are fighting in Iraq so that terrorists won't come here, then he releases intelligence that says terrorists trained in Iraq are coming here. Which is it?"

--Richard Clarke, Good Harbor Consulting

"The release of such a non-story at this point serves mostly to buttress the administration's claim that Iraq's problems are the work of outsiders and not a result of the administration's mismanagement of the occupation and internal Iraqi factionalism. Bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri have been urging sympathizers to attack the US and its allies for several years. Zarqawi was attempting to build an international network at the time of his death. There's no question bin Laden would have been pleased by this. But it does not appear that Bin Laden personally ordered Zarqawi to carry out specific attacks, or that Zarqawi's international efforts were made only upon an order from bin Laden. Indeed, the record points in the opposite direction.  If it is true, however, then one has to ask why bin Laden is still at large if he is the key to ongoing operations and why the administration would release sensitive intelligence about its penetration of Al Qaeda's tactical communications."

--Steven Simon, Council on Foreign Relations

"The president's speech today shows why it is important to abandon the delusions at the heart of his Iraq policy and begin a responsible redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq. As global terror threats remain very real, President Bush is sinking more money and sending more troops to referee Iraq's civil war, when those precious resources would be better spent in finishing the mission left unaccomplished in Afghanistan and rooting out the terror networks that attacked us on September 11th." 

--Brian Katulis, Center for American Progress

Yet again, the selective release of intelligence to buttress the notion that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism undermines the intelligence community and fails to make the case. According to a number of sources, the most recent attacks or planned attacks against the U.S. and its allies all originated from Pakistan not Iraq, and they were initiated in the time frame that bin Laden was ordering Zarkawi to open a cell.   Bin Laden is using Iraq to kill and demonize the United States while remaining secure and planning further operations in Pakistan.  When is this Administration going to prosecute the real war  against bin Laden?  

--Rand Beers, National Security Network