Slate's Fred Kaplan offered this two-paragraph summary of the Bush administration's deadly debacle of refusing to stop Abu Musab Zarqawi when they could have:
Then came news reports of a CIA analysis — ordered by Cheney — showing that Rumsfeld hadn't been misunderstood at all. The analysis concluded that there probably was no working relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Musab Zarqawi. This is significant in two ways. First, in the lead up to the war last year, the only physical evidence of a Saddam-al-Qaida tie was the presence of Zarqawi's training camp in northern Iraq. The camp was in Kurdish-controlled territory — an awkward caveat, but Bush officials at the time issued other, though looser, material suggesting a possible connection to Saddam himself.
Had the CIA's recent conclusion been reached two years ago, either within the administration or by Congress, the case for going to war would have been greatly weakened. In fact, as NBC News reported last March (and as almost nobody has picked up since),* the Bush administration had several opportunities to bomb Zarqawi's camp well before the war. On at least two occasions the U.S. military drew up plans for an attack. But the White House rejected the proposals — mainly because shutting down Zarqawi's operation would have removed a key rationale for invading Iraq. This was a jaw-dropping bit of cynicism: Bush sold, and continues to sell, the war in Iraq as a major campaign in the global war on terrorism, yet he repeatedly passed up the chance to neutralize or kill one of the most dangerous terrorists (Zarqawi has spent much of his time lately chopping off the heads of foreign contractors) for fear of weakening the case for war.
Kaplan calls the Bush team's preservation of Zarqawi a "jaw-dropping bit of cynicism." It was also a massive dereliction of duty.
James Fallows has written about the way that, "Step by step through 2002 America's war on terror became little more than its preparation for war in Iraq." About how this shift in focus undermined the war on terror in a thousand subtle ways.
But there was nothing subtle about this decision. In this case, the march to war in Iraq directly and drastically undermined the war on terror.
Jack Hensley is dead because the White House wanted another misleading talking point for Colin Powell's disgraceful U.N. speech. Sergio de Mello is dead. Many, many innocent people have died as a result of that morally bankrupt decision.
Abu Musab Zarqawi sat in an isolated terrorist camp for weeks. The United States had satellite photos, ground support in the area, and unchallenged access to the skies above the camp. But in order to score a dubious political point, he and his cohorts were allowed to escape.
And now, with Zarqawi hidden amongst the civilian population of a city of 200,000, the U.S. decides to go after him with airstrikes.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
* The NBC report came more than a year after this question was first raised by Sen. Joe Biden, Sen. Diane Feinstein, the L.A. Times' Greg Miller and, well, this blog. Aside from the NBC report, the question has been ignored for the past 20 months because the press and the public seem unwilling to accept — or even to consider — what the answer tells them about their leaders.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In