Killing of Terror Chief in Iraq Must Shock Hagel

Yesterday I wrote about Senator Chuck Hagel’s (R-NE) “expert” opinion published in the Washington Post that al-Qaeda and terrorists are not the core problem in Iraq. On Monday, the “not a core problem” al Qaeda groups killed nine 82nd Airborne soldiers in a massive attack, but that was not likely sufficient to change Hagel’s mind about his assessment of the situation in Iraq. Today, U.S. command announced that in its recently expanded operations in Baghdad’s suburbs, Muhammad Abdullah Abbas al-Issawi was killed during an extended encounter with coalition forces. This will come as a great shock to Senator Hagel, since al-Issawi was al Qaeda’s chief tactician in the Anbar Province and was reportedly the mastermind behind al Qaeda’s recruiting of twelve year-old Iraqi boys to serve as suicide car bombers in Baghdad.

If al Qaeda and terrorists are not the core problem in Iraq, perhaps Hagel can explain al-Issawi’s stature and “accomplishments” there. It seems that no sooner had Hagel returned from his latest trip to Iraq and ran to the Post to dismiss al Qaeda’s presence and role in Iraq, al Qaeda demonstrated that it is in fact responsible for much of the so-called insurgency. Hagel insisted that Iraq is mired in a civil war, but how can that be true when the vast majority of VBIEDs, IEDs, and suicide bombings are planned, funded, and executed at the behest of al Qaeda and other non-Iraqi terrorist groups? Would Iraqi boys line up to serve as suicide bombers without the influence of terrorist groups?

The purpose of the Petraeus surge strategy is to provide Baghdad with sufficient security for the parliament to carry out its functions and build a united Iraq. Hagel sees bombings and casualties and in a knee-jerk reaction assumes that Iraqis, without the insidious influence of outside elements, are at war with each other and thus the cause is hopeless. That view, while politically opportunistic, is not corroborated by reports from the Armed Forces. Hagel should read a few military blogs before sharing his “expertise” with the media.

Hagel wants to wash his hands of this war by inaccurately portraying it as a civil war, thus placing blame on Iraqis for the socio-political disaster that will occur if America withdraws from Iraq before the Iraqi government is capable of sustaining and defending itself from overt and covert interference from its neighbors. Like Macbeth, however, Hagel will find that the blood never quite washes clean from guilty hands. America made a commitment to the Iraqis, but Pelosi, Reid, Hagel, and others want to place restrictions on our patience and declare our commitment not to be open ended. Under political pressure, even President Bush has been forced to promise that troops will not be in Iraq indefinitely. As Americans, our commitment to freedom and democracy must be open ended and unquestioned by our allies and enemies alike. If Hagel wonders why Americans never seriously considered him as presidential timbre, he need look no further than his willingness to turn his back on a newly freed nation under siege by terrorists.

82nd Airborne Casualties Prove Hagel Wrong

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a war critic and collaborator with Democrats on every effort to undermine President Bush’s executive war powers, returned this weekend from his fifth trip to Iraq. What wisdom has Senator Hagel gleaned from these trips? The following is from his opinion column in Sunday’s Washington Post:

We must start by understanding what's really happening in Iraq. According to the National Intelligence Estimate released in February, the conflict has become a "self-sustaining inter-sectarian struggle between Shia and Sunnis" and also includes "extensive Shia-on-Shia violence." This means that Iraq is being consumed by sectarian warfare, much of it driven by Shiite or Sunni militias -- not al-Qaeda terrorists. Yes, there are admirers of Osama bin Laden in the country, including a full-blown al-Qaeda branch. But terrorists are not the core problem; Sunni-Shiite violence is.... American occupation cannot stop a civil war in Iraq. Our military, superb as it is, can only do so much.

Senator Hagel’s assessment that Iraq is a “civil war” not driven by al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups is identical to the Democratic talking points endlessly spouted by Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, despite assurances from several generals on the ground in Iraq who insist that Iraq is not in a state of civil war. For a Senator with access to intelligence estimates to argue that terrorists are not the core problem in Iraq is utterly disingenuous. Al-Qaeda itself would soon demonstrate the fallacy of Senator Hagel’s opinion.

Today’s headline AP article “Al Qaeda-Linked Sunnis Claim Bombing” opened with this sentence:

An al Qaeda-linked group posted a Web statement today claiming responsibility for a suicide truck bombing that killed nine U.S. paratroopers and wounded 20 in the worst attack on American ground forces in Iraq in more than a year.

The fallen U.S. soldiers, all members of the Army 82nd Airborne Division, would certainly take issue with Hagel’s ill-informed dismissal of al Qaeda as a minor annoyance in Iraq, if they had not been killed by al Qaeda. This bombing illustrated a couple of important truths: first, Congressional “fact finding” trips never produce any facts, as they are carefully scripted and Congressmen take them to increase their own political stature rather than seeking any real understanding of core issues; second, like Iran’s constant destabilizing war on America via Iraq, al Qaeda is part of a massive effort by outside forces to foment turmoil and the spectre of Iraqi civil war. This is an organized propaganda campaign that Congressmen, with shallow understanding of the intelligence they are supposed to review, swallow hook, line, and sinker.

It is unfathomable that Hagel, a Vietnam veteran, could have come away from five trips to Iraq with the opinion that neighboring nations and terrorist networks are not the core problem in Iraq. Hagel fails to grasp the concept that Iran and al Qaeda, like China in Vietnam, are directly impacting the course of the war and America’s resolve to endure setbacks and casualties. Removing the weaponry, funding, and manpower injected into Iraq like a virus by Iran, Syria, and al Qaeda would afford Iraqis an opportunity to resolve cultural issues between Sunni and Shia in an environment without car bombs, IEDs, and snipers. It is the terrorists and outside interlopers that desperately want to prevent Iraqis from living together under an elected government. Stem the flow of destabilizing elements into Iraq, and the Iraqis will justify our faith in their commitment to freedom.

From War to Warming: Senators Seek to Divert Attention

One of the left’s sharpest criticisms of President Bush’s handling of the War on Terror has been the argument that after routing the Taliban in Afghanistan, he turned his focus away from Bin Laden and al Qaeda in that region in favor of waging war on Saddam Hussein. The needless war in Iraq, liberals and Richard Clarke claim, shifted resources and priorities away from pursuing Bin Laden and the Taliban further, and this stretched our military too thin to effectively achieve its missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, the 9/11 Commission determined that our intelligence agencies possessed thousands of seized terrorism related Arabic documents yet to be translated and analyzed due to inadequate budgets and staffing. The burdens of a War on Terror, the President’s critics claim, are too heavy for our military and intelligence agencies to bear.

Now global warming hysteria has moved members of Congress to propose a bill that would tie a millstone to the neck of our military and intelligence agencies by diverting their attention further from the War on Terror and sink them in a quagmire of studies, strategic planning, and war games to prepare for, drum roll please: global warming. That’s right, a normal cyclical global weather pattern is in line for being awarded status as a “national defense issue,” if a bill cosponsored by Sen. Chuck (Cut and Run) Hagel, R-NE, and Sen. Dick (our troops in Guantanamo act like Nazis) Durbin, D-IL, passes in Congress. The Boston Globe reported that the bill would order the National Intelligence Director to conduct a “National Intelligence Estimate” on global warming, and would likewise order the Pentagon to engage in war games exploring possible national security scenarios that could allegedly result from extreme weather.

Apparently some members of Congress, with the urging of the National Academy of Sciences, have become so spooked by wildly exaggerated films such as “The Day After Tomorrow” and “An Inconvenient Truth,” that they determined global warming poses a danger to national security so grave that it warrants their recommending that the military divert its attention away from the War on Terror to focus on hurricanes and climate change. I find it ironic that the President’s critics feel that diverting military and intelligence attention from the War on Terror is acceptable for global warming, but it was not acceptable in the case of deposing a dictator who had used chemical weapons on his own people and failed to comply with 14 UN resolutions demanding WMD inspections.

When I go to sleep at night, I am far more worried about a rogue nation in possession of WMDs than I am of a cyclical and temporary melting of polar ice fields. Severe weather was such a threat to national defense in 2006 that we had 0 (none, zero) hurricanes make landfall in the U.S.

The motive behind the bill is more insidious. The White House has apparently not embraced the questionable science behind the global warming frenzy, and this has frustrated those who have staked their professional reputations on the issue. Consider this excerpt from the Boston Globe’s coverage of the proposed bill:

"If you get the intelligence community to apply some of its analytic capabilities to this issue, it could be compelling to whoever is sitting in the White House," said Anne Harrington , director of the committee on international security at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. "If the White House does not absorb the independent scientific expertise, then maybe something from the intelligence community might have more weight."

Will this be the new trend, to declare every pet issue a “national defense” issue because the White House is more likely to read and take action on military and intelligence reports than climate change “science?” Like the boy who cried wolf’s exaggerated warnings, the more causes that are given national defense status, the more difficult it will become to properly assign highest priority to those that pose the greatest immediate threat. Worse, diverting resources from military and intelligence operations to alleged global warming while we are fighting a real War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom, is a shoddy approach to national defense that reeks of political opportunism.

Senators Hagel and Durbin should cut out some of that shameful pork attached to the armed service appropriation bill drafts and divert it to hire more translators and intelligence staff to sift through the mountain of documents seized in Afghanistan and Iraq instead of demanding national intelligence estimates on global warming. We need better intelligence on Iran more than we need intelligence estimates on severe weather. We can assert far more control over one than the other.