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Rep. Pete Hoekstra made a very insightful observation about al-Qaeda on ThisWeek. “They haven’t set as a criteria that they have to do something as big as 9/11,” he told Terry Moran. Instead, they’re “satisfied with the kind of successes that they saw at Fort Hood and what they anticipated would happen on Christmas day.”
Unfortunately, it fell to Michael Chertoff on Meet The Press to draw out the implications of Hoekstra’s insight. Asked if Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s ambitions to blow up a plane — and not, say, to use it as a missile — represent diminished al-Qaeda’s capabilities, Chertoff replied, “I think that’s exactly right.” He continued, “As troubling as this incident is, on occasion after occasion we’ve disrupted plots… [al-Qaeda is] actually being forced to work under a great deal of pressure and are handicapped at carrying out these types of plots.”
And they’re right! It’s OK to admit that al-Qaeda’s capabilities are eroding as ours are improving! Shout it from the heavens! There’s something twisted about the political convention that it represents weakness to say that they’ve been boxed in — it suggests that we should be fighting forever, and that counterterrorism success boils down to an invocation that we should just keep fighting. There are some people, secure in Washington, for whom counterterrorism and national security is a hopelessly meta issue, measured exclusively in preening, posturing and rhetoric.
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This guy nails it.
Why every President is fearful of the FBI and CIA.
I guess I want to agree with you and Chertoff, and it’s fine with me if the public starts to believe AQ is much less capable of pulling off spectacular attacks. Unfortunately however, nothing about the uncovering/transpiring of a few lower-grade efforts by operatives not tightly connected to core Al Qaeda (MAJ Hasan and Abdulmutallab as examples) demonstrates with any conclusiveness that the most motivated, U.S.-oriented, and historically-minded AQ criminals (read: UBL & AAZ, about whom the current SecDef says we have had no new intelligence in ‘years’) do not continue to plan acts of spectacular-symbolic mass murder, nor do they say much of significance about their ability to carry those out. The one thing that does speak to that lack of ability is that it hasn’t happened in eight years. But, just as was the case before we knew the names Hasan or Abdulmutallab, that could change this evening still (though likely won’t). In either case, while again because it has restorative effects for our body politic ti is fine with me if the public at large comes to accept the inference you draw from these low-potency, not-core-Al Qaeda-connected terror efforts, I don’t have the same desire for what I want our counterterrorism officials to conclude about these incidents (nor do i expect that they are doing so).
Don’t worry.
The CIA can gin up more threats.
And you’ll continue to blame Muslims.
Game. Set. Match.
In response to plunger @ 1:
You’re not suggesting that JFK was assassinated for refusing to let the Joint Chiefs stage hijackings and kill civilians in order to justify aggression are you?
Chertoff’s is really an admission against interest, considering his extensive consulting business to companies who make alleged terror-thwarting technology. Was his paycheck from the explosive-sniffer-manufacturer mentioned during this appearance? I was startled to hear the connection mentioned on the NBC Nightly News on Friday. Probably Chertoff’s client is a GE competitor in the field; that would explain the (very mild) rebuke to Mikey’s credibility by Brian Williams.
Next thing you know, the GOP will advocate sending Yemeni ‘terrorists’ to Saudi Arabia for art therapy rehabilitation!
Oh, wait, Bush & Cheney already sent them…
WHat I am loving is htat NOBODY seems to agree with scaredy cat Cheney, our national coward.
And the U.S. had to cause deaths of only a million civilians and displace several millions more to achieve this glorious accomplishment.
U!S!A! U!S!A!
Plunger… long time no see!
Al Qaeda is an intel creation and now a convenient patsy to pin false flags on any time they want to get the public freaked out cos they want some more war.
Intel is compartmented nicely so one group is hidden from another.. and of course they are not supposed to be doing operations… but they do… like assassinate… and stage hijackings.
The media hops right on, the pols jump on the band wagon and the dollars keep flowing over to the MIC and the national security state.
Doncha see it?
I believe the article leaves out the one all important speculation as to “Why” did AlQueda readily admit to such a dismal jihad failure. Vanity and arrogance guides Al Queda in everything they do! I was quite surprised they boasted of this failed attempt, even to knock down a single airplane.
Then as I watched all the talking heads, and read all the articles, their reason became quite obvious to me…They want to draw the U.S. into invading Yemen! And recent decisions by Obama on escalation in Afghanistan gave them hope they might succeed in this!
Just one old guy’s opinion.
johnnie
If AQ is an intel creation, why haven’t they done another spectacular attack, to really gin up the public fear? Why do these frittery jerky ops?
You could be right. Drone attacks are hotting up too, so it wouldn’t take much more to push the U.S. OTT.
No.
How many billions can we hand over to the Yemini government? (And how much of that will be filtered to AQAP?)
More billions than O is willing to spend on medical care for U.S. peasants.
Since they closed the embassy in Yemen I think we can expect drones just any day now.
I think it’s just to prove they “can.” Success isn’t measured by the number of lives but the disruption created. They play music, we dance.
Look at what’s happened in the last week for a clue.
If the bomber had brought the airplane down, it would have been spectacular. But even in his failure, the results have been turmoil, extra expense (in the billions I’ll bet before it’s all over) and more hatred toward Muslims (at least by a “certain” few who lump them all together).
I see this as a win for them — disruption of the US economy being a chief reason for them to shout “success”.
In addition, all our bombing and wars has not stopped them. This is so much like the war that Israel declared on Hezbollah, it isn’t even funny. All Hezbollah had to do was stay alive; Israel on the other hand was supposed to “win.” It’s the same here.
They don’t have to… WE, our presidents have been warning us that one is coming… Why even bother? They can get the same impact from these little nuisance cheapie jobs.
Don’t ya just love this cost ratio… With New Surge, One Thousand U.S. Soldiers and $300 Million for Every al-Qaeda Fighter…
What a deal, eh…? ;-)
Heck. The U.S. was using drones before its Yemeni embassy was closed. Seems like something more dramatic might be in store. But I’m only speculating in the darkest way (which hasn’t been an inaccurate way to speculate in the last decade).
It’s a win for the MIC and intel svs.
Al Qaeda does not exist so there is nothing for them to win!
Oh now the false flag hypothesis starts to fail Occum’s razor. Explanations get too complicated.
Sounds like weak tea to me.
How many bullets does it take the U.S. military to kill one (alleged) enemy? I think I lost track at around 250,000.
If you recall the big scare about the USSR threat… when that was over it was revealed that they CIA got that completely wrong… how convenient for the MIC…
WAIT! Did Hookster really assert that Fort Hood was an Al Quaeda operation?!? If he did, did anybody call him on it??
Stop buying into the BS about terrorism.
There are angry nut jobs and they are encouraged, recruited, handled and helped… and then badda bing either caught or not and the crime get blamed on the mythical AQ. Fake videos fake everything. They torture these guys and we have not had one proper AQ trial with a deal defense mounted. It’s all PR and show trials like Padilla… who had his mind removed by the CIA.
I did do A loose accounting on Afghanistan… M’dear…! *g*
When did the DOD not lie to the American people?
When did the CIA no dissemble?
LIES ALL LIES and all false flags
It is possible that the USSR existed and wasn’t really a nice organization
Obama’s Nobel speech, touching the Cliff notes on just war, really creeped me out. Nothing “proportional” about what the U.S. is doing.
Shouting doesn’t make it so.
Fake balls blown off too?
I for one, would like to thank the Rich White Representative from Michigan.
He sat back and applauded while all the jobs for his constituents went away. No big deal there, just the end of the middle class.
Underwear bombers?
Not on His watch!
Those Republicans? And they are different how from those Democrats?
If anything, the Democrats are forced to be even more blustery, else they be charged with aiding and abetting the terrorists themselves.
But this always goes back to the flocks of sheep both the Republicans and the Democrats have at their disposal. Tap your average citizen on the shoulder and probe how far down they go in grasping how they are molded and manipulated by a government hellbent on using “the terrorists” as they once used “the Communists” and “the Nazis” to sustain their national security war economy. Only, unlike the Communists and the fascists, the terrorists are a gnats in their struggle to [yuck, yuck] take over the world.
Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright come to mind.
The USSR was no paradise. Neither is the USA for that matter unless you are rich and white.
Do you know what a patsy is?
Have you read the history of the CIA?
Didn’t they assassinate Allende, depose Mosedeq… and try with Chavez..
The CIA … intel gathering to make you sleep well at night.
Google Kurt Haskell
This Rich White? (We heart links here.)
As Glenn reminded us in his update:
What’s your point?
I’ve read several, and the US and the CIA are neither what I would have them be and are nothing as bad as the USSR and KGB.
Woops. That was to reply to georgewalton.
All the fearmongering has been successful.
As long as it’s an complete a fair, open and honest investigation I don’t care who investigates it… they should all come to the same findings.
Really…
How many people did the USSR kill in wars since 1945? How many nuclear bombs did they drop?
As I said the USSR is nothing to write home about.. a dismal place… but tell that to the folks from NOLA after Katrina or the prisoners who were given syphilis.
This is perfect!
Read Philip Agee… or John Porter about the CIA… they are soooooo nice.
Good night sleep tight…
OK. Agree. (Number of different thoughts going on in thread, so wasn’t sure which you were tying into.)
However, despite those polls, and the as-usual-abysmal press coverage, I suspect there might be some crying-wolf awareness starting to occur. No evidence to base my suspicion on though.
No one’s denying the pattern. It’s just that if you are going to tie current events into existing patterns, I, for one, would like evidence.
OT (if there was a topic!)
If the president of Yemen tried to get on a commercial plane heading to the USA, he would be subjected to special screening under GOP-bedwetter rules: his name is Ali Abdullah.
The speech was a travesty. Any Nobel peace prize committee worth its salt would have stood up upon Obama’s completing it and revoked his medal right there on the spot. Justifying war while accepting a peace prize! You could actually hear MLK roll over in his grave, that an American president was receiving such a prize as he was awarded, and making such a speech.
U.S.A. Associates group, Public Relations
Representing Al Queda, Hamas, Al Fatah, Et Al
See the text of another Teddy’s Nobel lecture in 1906.
How many billions or trillions of dollars we spent, and they couldn’t catch a guy with a bomb in His shorts.
Then they have the guts to put people on the tube and tell us what a great job they are doing, and this wasn’t a real mistake on their part and they didn’t have enough to go on.
What really pissed me off when the guy incharge of all the national security agencies said that because they tried to kill the Saudi with the same type bomb, that didn’t give them a hint they might try it on airplanes.
Sounded to much like Condy when She tried to make us believe they never thought flying planes into buildings, after She had been warned of just such a thing.
Two U.S. Marines today infiltrated a Yemeni al Qaeda training camp, undetected.
No kidding.
The loon was listening to (and influenced by) a cleric from Yemen who was al Qaeda. I thought that linkage was pretty straight-forward. Is there some news on that issue which contradicts?
Let’s not buy in to the Security State description of what Al Qaeda is. It was never a centrally controlled hierarchical organization like Get Smart’s KAOS or even like the PLO. Instead, it has always been a loose organization based more on association than on military-style command, control, communications, and intelligence. It isn’t even a terrorist organization per se but, rather, a support and logistics organization for terrorists.
I’m not an Arabic speaker, but I have read that “Al Qaeda” means “the base”, as in “logistical base”. It was organized in the Reagan years as a loose, quasi-private, deniable network for channeling funding and recruits from the Muslim world–primarily the Saudi Arabian monarchy–and CIA-supplied weapons to the covert CIA/Saudi/Pakistani war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. You became a member of Al Qaeda by taking up the cause or by donating money, not by learning the secret handshake and getting your encoded orders from Mr. Big.
So the crotch bomber is as much an Al Qaeda affiliate as anyone. The question is, so what?
The idea that Al Qaeda is some sort of hybrid criminal/military organization has been used to subvert the long-established and well-founded distinction between peace and war, law enforcement and military action. The aim has been two-fold: to vastly increase executive power in ways that the traditional civil/military divide prohibit and to obscure the extent to which “friendly” states use groups like Al Qaeda as a proxy for committing aggression against us. “Friendly” in this context means states like Saudi Arabia that contribute to our politicians, invest in our businesses, and sell us oil and countries like Pakistan that give us bases for our spies and paramilitaqries and do our torturing for us. The Saudis can be our “friends”, get our weapons, and sell us oil at the highest possible prices. But at the same time they can commit acts of war like killing American, European, and Indian “infidels” without risking the usual diplomatic and/or military consequences. Our leadership, in turn, can avoid risking the loss of Saudi largesse or Pakistani pliability by going to war against third-party nations like Iraq. Or better yet, it can wage never-ending, unendable war against a shadow, a non-national group that lacks territory, capital cities, strategic assets, citizens, or real leadership. Our leadership thus gets to augment its powers in the dangerous ways that US governments always do in time of war, without having to worry about the outbreak of peace.
It is thus way past time to end the charade and stop pretending that Al Qaeda is something that it is not. Al Qaeda is a loose association of criminals who can be dealt with by the normal criminal-justice and mental-health systems. The state sponsors of Al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, can be handled via the usual diplomatic and, if desired, military methods that states use to settle disputes. We are not fighting a war “on terrorism”. Wars are fought with cohesive nation states, not gangs. In the case of the crotch bomber, we are dealing with crime (and maybe treating some mental health issues). In the case of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, we are dealing with military aggression. The traditional civil/military distinction thus meets the case nicely.
Which criminal-justice and mental-health systems have been dealing with this loose association of criminals?
None. That’s my point. The political machinations and power grabs that constitute the so-called “war-on-terror” are crowding outmore effective, criminal-justice approaches.
In 1993, before Bush, Homeland Security, and “the War on Terror,” Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s nephew, Ramzi Yusuf, masterminded an attempt to destroy the World Trade Center with a truck bomb. The FBI investigated. In 1995 Ramzi Yusuf was arrested, extradited to the US, and tried and convicted in Federal Court in the Southern District of New York, along with six others. Today he is serving life in prison in the Super Max penitentiary in Florence, CO. He has been pretty much forgotten.
The investigation turned up evidence that Ramzi Yusuf’s gang was planning to use hijacked airliners as missiles. But the Bush Administration was focused on invading Iraq and unwilling to do anything to disturb its financial benefactors in Saudi Arabia. Law enforcement was neither expedient nor interesting. So it was discounted or actively discouraged. The FBI agent most involved in investigating Al Qaeda after the WTC bombing, John O’Neill, was driven out of of government service for continuing to tell the inconvenient truths about Saudi Arabia. He died in the WTC on 9/11.
Compare the outcome of the WTC bombing case with any/all of the terrorism cases pursued under the war on terror: the latter has resulted in almost no substantive convictions, has not touched most of the masterminds, and has proived a propaganda bonanza for the criminals. The former caught and convicted almost everyone connected with the plot while denying the criminals any useful publicity. It showed them for what they were and then sent them into obscurity.
I’m not sure that I have a full understanding of your point.
My understanding of the criminal-justice system is that it’s designed to react to crimes after their commission.
I can see that a criminal-justice approach as valuable, but it’s hardly a comprehensive approach or of practical value when the persons targeted are resident in areas where it’s practically impossible to effect their arrest.
Perhaps you can explain how we might go into Pakistan and serve arrest warrants upon people being trained in Al Qaeda encampments.