Fighting Terrorism in Trans Sahara Africa

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...
In 2004, the US Government realized that it needed to do something about the spread of terrorism in Trans-Saharan Africa:

U.S. Gen. Charles Wald, deputy commander of the European Central Command, has been warning Congress and the Pentagon for months that al Qaeda-affiliated groups are active in Mauritania, Mali, Chad and Niger. The trade in diamonds used by terrorist groups, begun under the protection of former Liberian strongman Charles Taylor, continues despite international efforts to curb it. "The terrorist activity in this area is not going to go away," Wald warned recently. "This could affect your kids and your grandchildren in a huge way. If we don't do something about it, we are going to have a real problem on our hands."

Unfortunately, the efforts since then have mostly failed, due to a lack of cooperation between the State Department and the Department of Defense.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report that shows that the US State Department, the Department of Defense, and the USAID Agency are having key issues with regards to stopping the spread of terrorism throughout Trans-Sahara Africa. The Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP)was set up to coordinate efforts to stop the spread of terrorism into the region.

First, the agencies lack a comprehensive, integrated strategy for their TSCTP activities, and the documents used in planning the activities do not prioritize proposed activities or identify milestones needed to measure progress or make improvements.

Second, disagreements about whether State should have authority over DOD personnel temporarily assigned to conduct TSCTP activities in partner countries have led to DOD's suspending some activities, for example, in Niger.

Third, fluctuation in State's and USAID's distribution of funds for TSCTP resulted in suspension of a peace-building program in Mali.

Fourth, although the agencies measure activities' outputs, such as the number of foreign military personnel trained, they do not measure their activities' outcomes in combating terrorism--for instance, any decrease in extremism in the targeted countries.

This region is familiar to anyone who understands that the spread of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the Trans-Sahara region is of great concern to our European allies.



Simply implementing programs and activities that would help these countries better fight the spread of terrorism has run into the usual challenges--State and DoD can't collaborate on anything, and this goes back to the way Don Rumsfeld operated, which, in most cases, was often in contradiction to the efforts of the State Department:

Several factors have hampered the key agencies’ ability to collaboratively implement TSCTP activities, in some cases limiting their ability to achieve or assess progress in combating terrorism and inhibiting the spread of extremist ideology.

First, no comprehensive, integrated strategy has been developed to guide the agencies’ activities, and documents used in planning program activities have not included some elements that we have identified as needed in an interagency counterterrorism program’s strategic plan.

Second, despite some collaboration at the headquarters level, disagreement between State and DOD about whether State should have authority over DOD personnel temporarily assigned to conduct TSCTP activities in the partner countries has contributed to the suspension of some of these activities.

Third, fluctuation in the distribution of obligations for TSCTP in Mali resulted in the suspension of some program activities.

Fourth, although the agencies have indicators to measure activities’ direct results, the agencies have not yet developed the capability to measure and report on overall progress toward program goals.

Take a close look at this distribution of funds:



These are relatively small amounts of assistance and aid, but of note should be the assistance given to Mauritania, which just underwent another coup that saw the President and the Prime Minister arrested. Instability in countries like Mauritania are one reason why terrorists might locate there and take advantage of the political situation.

Most of our assistance is going to Niger, in hopes of slowing the spread of terrorism there. Overall, though, it doesn't matter who gets what because the GAO has uncovered a decidedly common lack of focus on the part of the US State Department:

To enhance U.S. agencies’ ability to collaborate in strengthening country and regional counterterrorism capabilities and inhibiting the spread of extremist ideology in northwest Africa, we recommend that the Secretary of State work through the Director of Foreign Assistance, who serves concurrently as USAID Administrator, to develop a comprehensive strategy for the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership in conjunction with the Secretaries of Defense and the Treasury, the U.S. Attorney General, and the heads of any other partner agencies. The strategy should include clear goals, objectives, and milestones, including output and outcome indicators, and identify resources needed to achieve the program’s goals.

We also recommend that the Secretaries of State and Defense develop and issue joint guidance with regard to DOD personnel temporarily assigned to conduct TSCTP activities in the partner countries.

No one could reasonably expect Secretary Rice to be fired before the end of the Bush Administration, but this is one more issue that will land in the lap of the next Secretary of State, thanks to the neglect and the lack of interest in fighting the actual spread of terrorism in the world. The US military now has a command dedicated to Africa--AFRICOM--but will it focus on stopping terrorism or on keeping the flow of oil moving out of Nigeria?

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How Republicans Have Failed to Protect The American People

Everyone will probably be talking about this, so why shouldn't we? It's not a shock to anyone that al Qaeda is using Pakistan to reconstitute itself. So why is it a shock to anyone when people criticize the relationship between the man who runs Pakistan and the Bush Administration?

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terror camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Publicly, senior American and Pakistani officials have said that the creation of a Qaeda haven in the tribal areas was in many ways inevitable — that the lawless badlands where ethnic Pashtun tribes have resisted government control for centuries were a natural place for a dispirited terror network to find refuge. The American and Pakistani officials also blame a disastrous cease-fire brokered between the Pakistani government and militants in 2006.

But more than four dozen interviews in Washington and Pakistan tell another story. American intelligence officials say that the Qaeda hunt in Pakistan, code-named Operation Cannonball by the C.I.A. in 2006, was often undermined by bitter disagreements within the Bush administration and within the intelligence agency, including about whether American commandos should launch ground raids inside the tribal areas.

Inside the C.I.A., the fights included clashes between the agency’s outposts in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Islamabad. There were also battles between field officers and the counterterrorism center at C.I.A. headquarters, whose preference for carrying out raids remotely, via Predator missile strikes, was derided by officers in the Islamabad station as the work of “boys with toys.”

An early arrangement that allowed American commandos to join Pakistani units on raids inside the tribal areas was halted in 2003 after protests in Pakistan. Another combat mission that came within hours of being launched in 2005 was scuttled because some C.I.A. officials in Pakistan questioned the accuracy of the intelligence, and because aides to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld believed that the mission force had become too large.

Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.

Some former officials say Mr. Bush should have done more to confront Mr. Musharraf, by aggressively demanding that he acknowledge the scale of the militant threat.

Western military officials say Mr. Musharraf was instead often distracted by his own political problems, and effectively allowed militants to regroup by brokering peace agreements with them.

There, in a nutshell, is how the Republicans have led this government in the fight against terrorism: they demonstrate that they have no idea what they're doing, and they bully everyone into believing the opposite is true. They suck at the game so they work the refs. They can't do details or substance so they dissolve into bitter infighting, ineffective taunts and indifferent policies that achieve nothing. Their track record is abysmal and a future with them running things--unthinkable.

And the American people are to believe that John "stop the bullshit" McCain is going to be a better diplomat, be more "detail oriented " and pay better attention to the problem? Focus on the needs of agencies he has long derided and devote the necessary resources to it? Will he undertake these efforts before or after the 100 year war in Iraq is up? During a 40 hour workweek or on weekends, because McCain doesn't do weekends, you know. Before or after McCain snarls at everyone when he doesn't get what he wants?

You can't make this stuff up--and it gets scarier every day.

--WS

Holy Joe Would Love to See the US Attacked, Wouldn't He?

The most blatantly partisan Senator in America thinks that terrorists will attack us in 2009:

In describing the reasons he believes the Republicans' presumptive nominee for president would be better prepared than the Democrats' to lead the nation next January, Sen. Joe Lieberman said that history shows the United States would likely face a terrorist attack in 2009.

"Our enemies will test the new president early," Lieberman, I-Conn., told Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer. "Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration."

Lieberman nonetheless distanced himself from remarks by McCain chief strategist Charlie Black, who came under criticism for suggesting in an interview that McCain's election chances would be improved if a terrorist attack occurred before November.

"Sometimes even the best of them say things that are not what they intended to say," Lieberman said. "Certainly the implications there I know were not what Charlie intended. And he apologized for it. Senator McCain said he didn't agree. And, of course, I feel the same way.

"But here's the point. We're in a war against Islamist extremists who attacked us on 9/11. They've been trying to attack us in many, many ways since then."

I personally like that analogy that Lieberman used--when terrorists attacked America in 1993, the Clinton administration caught them, tried them, and punished them. No one lost their fucking minds. We used the rule of law. And Americans didn't have their civil liberties and habeas corpus flushed down the toilet.

When terrorists attacked during the Bush Administration, they ignored the warnings, flipped the fuck out and took all of our civil liberties away, formed the Department of Homeland Security, and have systematically fucked up every single solitary government agency and left us hollowed out militarily by launching the wrong war against the wrong adversary.

So, in a sense--Joe's right. They have been trying to "attack us in many, many ways since then." Only not the ways Joe thinks.

--WS

"The King of the Prison"

Another excellent piece from McClatchy on the al Qaeda detainees. Some of these stories are so basic in their explanations--as in, we got the wrong guys and if you don't torture them right, they'll die. Today's installment is about a senior Taliban member who defied the US. Do you think this story might explain why we're going to have a hell of a time convincing people that we know what we're doing?

Pakistani intelligence officers dragged him [Abdul Salam Zaeef] out of his house in Islamabad in late December 2001 or January 2002 and took him to Peshawar. "Your Excellency, you are no longer Your Excellency," he recalled one of them saying.

The Pakistanis handed him over to U.S. troops, who he said threw a sack over his head and pushed him into a helicopter. The Americans flew him to a warship, where he was held for about a week in a small cell that reminded him of a dog kennel, he said.

"I was afraid about what would happen to me," Zaeef said in an interview in Kabul, wearing slightly crooked gold-rimmed glasses and speaking in a near-whisper. "I didn't know if it was a dream or not. I never imagined this would happen to me."

Yet from mid-2002 till September 2005 at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Zaeef became a leader again. He helped orchestrate hunger strikes and exploit the missteps of a U.S. detention system that often captured the wrong men, mistreated them, then incarcerated them indefinitely without legal recourse.

The insurgency he helped launch in Guantanamo capitalized on the Americans' ignorance of Islamic customs and a pattern of interrupting prayers, shaving off prisoners' beards and searching their copies of the Quran.

I don't have any sympathy for this notion that we needed to be one hundred percent perfect in our handling of these men. While some were innocent, many more were actual terrorists who had either killed Americans or had been caught in the act of trying to kill Americans. What Democrats need to emphasize is that we are every bit as capable of fighting and defeating these elements as anyone else. We need to emphasize that we are not going to go into this fight without respecting the rule of law--to do so means we'll allow the enemy a huge propaganda victory.



Zaeef behaved somewhat like Frank Sinatra in Von Ryan's Express:

When he arrived at Guantanamo in the spring or summer of 2002, Zaeef was exhausted from the harsh treatment he'd received at Kandahar and Bagram.

He slept as often as he could and was just another detainee, Internment Serial Number 306. He got up when the guards came, and shuffled off in his orange prison clothes and flip-flops to answer questions about the Taliban leadership.

"He was very weak, physically, when I saw him at Guantanamo," said Mohammed Saduq, an Afghan who'd commanded Zaeef during the fight against the Soviets. "It is very difficult to know the inside of a man, and it's hard to say how it affected him — going from an ambassador to being in a cage — but he told me in Guantanamo that he was suffering badly."

The rules at Guantanamo, Zaeef said, reminded him of Bagram. The men weren't supposed to talk in their cells. They were supposed to say "please" and "sir" when they addressed the guards. In Guantanamo, however, the guards weren't beating the men, he said, and prisoners could speak up.

"After a month, we decided we could not accept these extremist measures. We must react," Zaeef said. "So we began shouting to each other. The soldiers came and asked if we were talking to each other. We said, 'Yes, we are not dogs.' We began throwing water at them, spitting at them; we said, 'If you want to kill us, fine.' "

A high-ranking officer came and spoke to the detainees, Zaeef said. The rules were rescinded. It was a victory in a game of inches.

Zaeef used his position as a leader of the detainees to push for Geneva Convention rights. What was our official response to this man? We let him go.

In June 2005, detainees at Guantanamo staged their biggest hunger strike yet: As many as 100 men refused to eat.

Prison authorities gathered detainee leaders and discussed their demands. Zaeef represented Afghans and Pakistanis, joining detainee representatives from several other nations.

After consulting with detainees in the cellblocks, Zaeef and the other leaders produced a list of demands that included Geneva Convention rights, court trials, less time in isolation cells, better treatment from the guards and so on.

However, the meetings among the detainees broke down before negotiations with U.S. authorities could proceed, Zaeef said, because the detainees worried that the Americans were eavesdropping to find out who their cellblock leaders were.

Zaeef was released that September.

Was this man dangerous? was he a threat to the United States? The problem I have with what's being done in our name is that we seem to be letting a lot of these people go. Should they have been detained in the first place?

McClatchy: We Got The Wrong Guys

We don't express, often enough, the enormous debt that we owe organizations like McClatchy--they do the heavy lifting of the actual reporting, we do the blogging, and they do excellent work. THIS series is Pulitzer worthy already--it details what we need to know about the detainees at Guantanamo Bay in a way that shows that the US is not fighting the war on terror in a way that would make us proud:

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that [Mohammed] Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.

This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.

Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo.

Why did this happen? Well, for starters--poor leaders. Weak, ineffective leaders who did not know, chose not to respect, or ignored the rule of law meant we had people in the field doing things that reflect badly on them and on all of us. To date, many have been put on trial, but, really, that's just scapegoating. Like the old adage--if a ship runs aground, the Captain of the ship is relieved--then the policy should be that if troops under a general officer's command abuse detainees or prisoners, they should be relieved. If you make THAT the rule, every commander will sit up and pay attention--and respect the rules of war.

McClatchy's expanded coverage adds this to the mix:

The Defense Department has said that detainee abuse in places such as Bagram was the work of a handful of wayward soldiers. Even after Habibullah and Dilawar were beaten to death, U.S. military officials continued to say that such violence was isolated.

Cammack and other soldiers say the abuse was the outcome of sending troops, often reservists with no background in detainee operations, to installations where the rules were unclear and they received little support.

"It tore us down mentally really bad," said Cammack, who pleaded guilty to hitting Habibullah and received three months in prison and a bad-conduct discharge. "You had no support whatsoever ... everybody hit their boiling point."

Cammack was a specialist in the 377th Military Police Company, a reserve unit based in Cincinnati. Many of his buddies were small-town police officers or, like him, blue-collar laborers. He was one of four soldiers from the unit who agreed to interviews with McClatchy.

No one at Bagram, Cammack said, had any idea what he was doing. Senior officers who came through the Bagram Collection Point paid no attention to the privates and sergeants, who, Cammack said, were slowly losing control of themselves in the face of the war in Afghanistan.

I'm not going to fault Cammack for his perception--he was there, I was not. But I suspect that there are two issues here. One, if he, as a member of a Military Police unit, didn't know how to handle people in his custody, then he hasn't been trained properly. Military Police units should all be required to know how to handle detainees and prisoners in any and all events. If he and the members of his unit are predominantly police officers, then they know that there are rules for treating people in their custody. Those rules should have been defined and explained to them in Afghanistan--as in, hell yes, you can shoot someone if they're a threat to you, but no, you can't just beat the hell out of people because you don't like how fast they're eating. Second, it wasn't a "wayward soldier" issue. It was a leadership issue, and clearly, Cammack was made a scapegoat for failed leadership.

What the McClatchy series does is peel away the covers on how we handled these issues--the capturing, the detaining, and the processing of people suspected of being terrorists. If you want a clear cut example of what this process looked like in, for example, 2004, please see THIS .pdf file and note that a very clear-cut legal basis for capturing, holding, and putting these detainees on trial was attempted by the Bush Administration.

I say, "attempted" for obvious reasons--the legal basis for what they were doing was shaky, at best, and many of the sources were unreliable.

Mozzam Begg is in the McClatchy database of detainees, and his case is one found in that .pdf. You can see the government going back and forth--is he or isn't he?

McClatchy details his story here:

From childhood, Moazzam Begg relished tales of heroes, those who protect the very weak from the very strong. In his Jewish school, he heard them from his teachers. In his Muslim home, he heard them from his father. Later, on weekends, he heard them from an English lady-friend of his father.

The stories were about vastly different peoples: from ancient Jews to Arabian legends to more modern Britons. But to Begg the stories had several things in common: All were about people who stood up for what was right, no matter how strong the opponent. And all inspired him.

He never dreamed, however, that an arrest and three years of what he calls "torture light" in a superpower's prison would put him in a position to carry on their fight. Today, as he travels around the United Kingdom, speaking to university gatherings, politicians and civic groups, exposing what he describes as the inhuman nature of the U.S. Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison, he thinks that it has.

Begg was arrested on Jan. 31, 2002, at his home in Islamabad, Pakistan, while his wife and children slept nearby. During the next three years, U.S. authorities would accuse him of operating, funding and supporting al Qaida camps and operations. He maintains that while he'd supported Islamic causes in the past, including Kashmiri groups favoring secession from India in the mid-1990s, he'd never been involved in al Qaida or any movement that promoted violence against the West. In the 1990s, he'd traveled to Bosnia during its war and he'd attempted to travel to Chechnya during the conflict in that breakaway Muslim republic of Russia.

He says that what the U.S. claimed was an al Qaida camp he'd funded and was directing in Afghanistan was a girls school. The school in Kabul was an experiment under Taliban rule, which didn't allow co-education, to prove that girls could be well educated within a Muslim country. He says that he and his wife raised money for two years before heading to Afghanistan in 2001, and both taught there. His daughter even attended the school, he said.

He said they fled Afghanistan for Pakistan when the U.S. began bombing to oust the Taliban regime, and hoped to return to Afghanistan to reopen the school. He'd been in Islamabad for about three months when he was arrested.

Begg said that from the first moment of his arrest, he was convinced that the Americans had no idea whom they were seizing.

"When they put me in the vehicle, an American guard, who was trying very badly to look Pakistani, showed me a pair of handcuffs and told me, 'These were given to me by the wife of one of the September 11 victims. I promised her I'd use them to handcuff one of the men responsible.' He then put the handcuffs on me. All I could think was, 'Won't he feel stupid when he realizes I'm the wrong guy.' In the end, I don't think he cared. I was dark-skinned, that's all that mattered," Begg said.

And I go back to this issue--who the hell was that soldier and why didn't he have someone in his chain of command tell him to knock it off? He may very well have been given handcuffs and told to go get someone who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Well, did it ever occur to the guy to get the right person? Instead of just any person?

My position is this--we are going to make mistakes in a time of war. But if we maintain a solid foundation in the rule of law and make damned sure we have good leaders doing what they are supposed to be doing, we'll be able to do what we need to do--and that is kill the terrorists and protect this country--while still having a framework that allows us to criticize our conduct, evaluate what we do, and compensate anyone who is not treated fairly.

I am all for fighting the war on individuals who use "terrorism" as their chief tactic of achieving their goals. I am against being a dumbass about it. The smart way to fight terrorism is to spend a little bit of time and effort to find the Mohammed Akhtiars and the Moazzam Beggs and whoever else and ask them, pay them, and recruit them to fight on OUR side where possible. I'm funny that way--I see the world in a way that must make the neoconservatives giggle and fall down. I see the world as being many, many shades of gray, and if we are intelligent and surgical in the way we counter the ideology of the people against us by convincing the fence sitters and the somewhat apolitical people in their society to join us and help us if we promise not to abandon them (our track record there isn't so hot, I admit) then maybe--just maybe--we can counter the rise of the individuals who use radical Islam as their foundation for recruiting followers.

I would submit that we are in the position that we're in because the leadership at the top didn't pay attention to the important things. They paid attention to consolidating their power and demonizing their political enemies back home.

And we're suffering because of those choices.

For the record, no. I don't hate America. But thanks for asking. It makes me feel special.

Fighting Terrorism, Appeasement Style

For all of their bluster about appeasement, the only appeasing being done these days is by the Bush administration, and the regime they are appeasing is the Saudi royal family.

Is Wael Julaidan, founder of al Qaeda and one of only two Saudis ever designated as terrorist financiers by the Saudi regime and supposedly out of circulation, back in the public spotlight? It would seem so.

According to the English language Saudi paper, the the Arab News Julaidan was a featured speaker at a recent conference hosted by the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). The article was first noted and commented on by the Global MB Report (registration required).

There are no other known leaders of Julaidan’s stature that my most knowledgeable sources say share that name, or would be noted with such prominence, so the likelihood that it is the same Julaidan that is designated by the UN, the US and Saudi Arabia, is very high.

This would mean, in essence, that one of the very few actions the Saudis claimed to have taken against the financiers and sympathizers of al Qaeda, was a bogus as almost every other step the Kingdom has claimed to have taken.

Appeasement is, more accurately explained, letting a country you're not at war with yet have concession after concession in the hopes that they won't attack you. We have been "appeasing" the Saudis for as long as anyone can remember, and the lion's share of the blame for the entirety of why we have a war on terror right now can be laid at the feet of the Saudi officials who obviously don't respect or fear the United States. Who can blame them? They own the Bush Administration and they can do whatever they want without fear of being held accountable. For other examples of this, see Colombia, Pakistan and Mexico.

--WS

An Inescapable Truth

Here's where the Bush Administration paints itself into a corner:

WASHINGTON - The situation in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan where al-Qaida has established a safe haven presents a "clear and present danger" to the West, CIA Director Michael Hayden said Sunday NBC's "Meet the Press."

Hayden cited the belief by intelligence agencies that Osama bin Laden is hiding there in arguing that the U.S. has an interest in targeting the border region. If there were another terrorist attack against Americans, Hayden said, it would most certainly originate from that region.

"It's very clear to us that al-Qaida has been able for the past 18 months or so to establish a safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border area that they have not enjoyed before, and that they're bringing in operatives into the region for training," he said.

Hayden added that those operatives "wouldn't attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles (airport, outside Washington) with you when you're coming back to the United States — who look Western."

What do we learn from the public pronouncements of General Hayden?

1. The war in Iraq is NOT the central front in the war on terror.

2. The US is NOT threatened by al Qaeda in Iraq in any way, shape or form.

3. Pakistan is where we need to pursue terrorists who want to attack the West.

4. The Bush Administration has broken our military and we don't have the troops available to choke off al Qaeda in the region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

5. Every day we leave troops in Iraq is a day spent fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong place with troops we desperately need to refit, retrain and rest.

They should really be careful not to let people like General Hayden speak publicly. Instead of rallying the American people, this administration's failure to coordinate its message and get everyone rowing in the same direction only further humiliates our country in the eyes of the world.

This is their guy? Seriously?

John McCain stepped in big pile of it in Jordan - the man is clueless about that clusterfuck in Iraq that he has unabashedly bolstered for five years. He pushes a warmongering neocon agenda, and doesn't even know who the players are. The question is, will the M$M seize on this like they would if he was a Democrat?

AMMAN, Jordan -- Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran.

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate."

I don't think I have to explain just how wrong that is, on every level, to the people who read this blog.

Standing behind him, Lieberman had to say something. He stepped forward and whispered in McCain's ear, and McCain tried to correct himself and switched from "al Qaeda" to "extremists" - but dude...You can't make mistakes like that if you want to be president. What this underscores is a staggering ignorance on the part of a jingoistic, warmongering, old fool, making an ass out of himself in a part of the world where we don't have any standing to spare.

So I expect that any minute now all the idiots in the Village will be screaming about this...

Oh wait...Mad Jack is a Republican, so move along, nothing to see here.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

This was not a gaffe--this was McCain's ACTUAL understanding of the situation in Iraq. Here he is on Hugh Hewitt's show, basically saying the same thing:

[Huge Hewitt]: Now Senator, yesterday in Iran, President Ahmadinejad’s parliamentary party won. His hand is strengthened.

[John McCain]: Yeah.

HH: What’s the concern you have about Iran, and about, in particular, Ahmadinejad? Some people want to meet with him. He’s not on your agenda this trip.

JM: (laughing) The day I meet with the president of Iran will be the day after he announces his country no longer is dedicated to the extinction of the state of Israel, the day after they stop exporting these most lethal explosives into Iraq. Just yesterday, up in the Mosul area, they uncovered a cache of weapons, and a lot of it was these Iranian copper, high…most lethal explosives. As you know, there are al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they’re moving back into Iraq. I think Americans should be very angry when we know that Iran is exporting weapons into Iraq that kill Americans. And so all I can say is that I think they continue to be a threat. I think one of the big mistakes that’s made recently was this NIE, which sort of relieved pressure, certainly as far as the Europeans were concerned, on Iran as far as sanctions are concerned. And so I think that Iran maintains its ambitions in the region. I think that if we leave Iraq, the Iranians will then extend that influence, along with many other terrible consequences that would take place. And I worry very much, I worry very much about the Iranian influence in the region, which I don’t see has been diminished very much recently. In fact, I think in some ways, they are more adventuresome.

[h/t to Think Progress, who has audio here]

You know, if a Democrat had made such a remarkable gaffe twice, it'd be EVERYWHERE. Instead, we get Obama talking about a preacher he isn't associated with anymore.

UPDATE II - PALE RIDER

I just watched the video--it's McCain between Lieberman and Graham. McCain also makes the now-debunked claim that al Qaeda has been using mentally ill women to serve as suicide bombers:

Government’s Account of Al Qaeda Using Two Down Syndrome Women as Bombers Debunked
Published 1, February 26, 2008

Remember the horrific accounts of how Al Qaeda used two women with Down Syndrome to carry out attacks killing roughly 100 people in Baghdad in February? It turns out that there is no evidence that they had any physical or mental ailments and may not have any connection to Al Qaeda. It turns out the the account of the Down syndrome bombers was traced to Iraqi officials who reportedly based their view on the appearance of the women’ heads - which had been severed in the blasts.

The U.S. military joined in the account of the use of disabled individuals shortly after the blast to show how low Al Qaeda would go. Maj. Gen. Jeffery W. Hammond indicated that the women were mentally disabled and did not know what they were doing. The military now admits that there is no evidence that the women were unwitting participants.

The irony is that you really do not have to make Al Qaeda look worse. Even without the use of disabled individuals, the organization is subhuman and needs no improvement on the villainy scale. Indeed, many of Al Qaeda’s supporter like Zacarias Moussaoui has proven to be barking lunatics. However, the story shows how hard military information specialists work to frame the conflict. A problem that we saw in the Tillman scandal in Afghanistan and other stories.

Now, it may be a game of semantics--but this was one instance where the US tried to make hay out of something that wasn't true. Good thing McCain was there to pick up on it and run with it a month later and try to keep repeating the same basic lies.

What part of "stop repeating the lies and the bullshit, Senator" does McCain not understand?

Nice Try, Dumbass

Everyone's favorite pervy wingnut moves the goalposts and tries to justify that which escapes him:

I had meant to post on this earlier. I am tired of the Clintonian claims about "no direct operational connection," which sounds an awful lot like "no sexual relations." Well, what does "sexual relations" mean? And what does "direct, operational link" mean? The very language itself screams there was in fact a link by denying only a specific, and quite unifying link and, by implication, allowing for links short of the "direct, operational" variety.

Okay, that kind of link didn't exist -- Al Qaeda and Saddam maintained separate command and control and did not in fact unify their separate terrorist organizations. Did they help each other achieve their joint goals, on the other hand?

The answer appears to be "yes," as it has always appeared.

And yet the media continues blaring "no direct operational link" without pausing to note that gee, there sure are some indirect, non-"operational" links.

"Appears to be? Well, if you can't read and you don't have the ability to perform basic analysis, sure. You could read it that way. You'd be wrong, however. Here's the part that sorta blows your lameass shit out of the water and directly contradicts what you just read.

The documents cited in the report do reveal that Hussein supported a number of terrorists and terrorist activities inside and outside Iraq.

"The Iraqi regime was involved in regional and international terrorist operations prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom. The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq," according to the report.

Most of the terrorism was aimed at keeping Hussein and his Baath party in power, according to Pentagon officials.

Supporting al Qaeda would mean that Saddam would be supporting an organization that was diametrically opposed to his interests--as in, Saddam represented secularism, al Qaeda was a sworn enemy of secular governments in the Arab world.

See, that's how that works. Stick with ogling the boobies, Ace. Leave the analysis to the professionals. I don't know what's more fun--debunking bullshit or using "paint" to fuck up his logo. I'm getting better at it. Some of the ones I've done are only mildly debased and amateurish.

At least they are consistent about getting it wrong

While the resident grows ever more shrill, while Hadley makes the rounds to all the bobble-head Sunday morning venues; while the administration beats the drum, the hangers-on and true believers chant over and over again “al Qaeda, al Qaeda, al Qaeda”

If we cut our losses in Iraq, it will be a victory for al Qaeda. If we don’t fight them there, al Qaeda will follow us home and attack a shopping mall near you. The only possible thing we can do is keep feeding ~30 American kids a week in the meatgrinder sacrificing them to appease the cruel al Qaeda, who will apparently salt our fields, poison our wells, wither our crops and cause our cows to go dry and our chickens to molt. Oh - they will behead us all and make the survivors wear burkas, too. At least that's how it will be if we don't keep up with our sacrificin' until January 2009. (After all, only a Defeat-o-crat would even think such a cowardly cut-and-run thing. Right?)

You see, if you aren’t pissing-down-your-leg terrified of al Qaeda, you are obviously tetched.

Well, fine. Color me tetched.

I have been telling anyone who would listen to just calm down a bit, al Qaeda is not nearly the threat that too many people have been deluded into thinking it is.

There was no al Qaeda in Iraq before this cocked-up invasion was launched. I have also been trying to get people to remember that Iraq is a Shia majority country and al and the boys are fundamentalist Sunnis. Just like there was no al Qaeda in Iraq before the U.S. invaded, there will be no al Qaeda in Iraq after the US forces leave.

They are simply not the threat this resident makes them out to be.

Instead, the gravest threat many American G.I.’s face comes from Jaish al-Mahdi (the Mahdi Army)

In the 10-square-mile district of West Rashid, the Mahdi Army also controls the housing market, the gas stations and the loyalty of many of the residents, according to the soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment. The militia has a structure familiar to U.S. soldiers: brigade and battalion commanders leading legions of foot soldiers. Its fighters are willing and able to attack Americans with armor-piercing bombs, mortars, machine guns and grenades. Meanwhile, the political wing of Sadr's movement plays an outsize role in the national government.

West Rashid confounds the prevailing narrative from top U.S. military officials that the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq is the city's most formidable and disruptive force. While there are signs that the group has been active in the area, over the past several months, the Mahdi Army has transformed the composition of the district's neighborhoods by ruthlessly killing and driving out Sunnis and denying basic services to residents who remain. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, described the area as "one of the three or four most challenging areas in all of Baghdad."

Dominance by Shiite militias is typically associated with places in eastern Baghdad, such as Sadr City, while areas west of the Tigris River and south of the Baghdad airport road are home to large Sunni enclaves. Not long ago the western neighborhoods conformed clearly with this perception. U.S. soldiers estimate that a year ago, Sunnis made up about 80 percent of the population there and Shiites 20 percent. But those numbers have now reversed, after a concerted effort to cleanse Sunnis from the area, according to U.S. military officials. Graffiti marking the walls in these neighborhoods herald the new order: "Every land is Karbala, and every day is Ashura," read one slogan, extolling the Shiite holy city in southern Iraq and a major Shiite religious holiday.

The brazen attacks on U.S. soldiers also appear to challenge the idea that the Mahdi Army has been lying low to avoid confrontations with Americans. Street fighting between the Mahdi Army and U.S. forces has also broken out in other parts of the capital recently, including clashes in the al-Amin neighborhood Thursday in which Apache attack helicopters were called in to quell the gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades targeting U.S. troops. The next day, U.S. soldiers killed six Iraqi policemen during a raid in which they captured a police lieutenant believed to be working with Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

American soldiers who oversee West Rashid -- a district of about 700,000 people that includes the al-Amil, Bayaa and al-Jihad neighborhoods -- described an organized, well-financed Shiite enemy that rules ruthlessly and distributes the spoils of war to the area's impoverished residents.

In recent months, U.S. commanders have contended that the Mahdi Army, also known by its Arabic initials JAM, has splintered into a loosely connected militia in which its leader, Sadr, exerts a tenuous grip over disparate factions.

American commanders attribute much of the current violence to what they are now calling "special groups" or "secret cells" of Iranian-backed militiamen who may be acting independently of, or against, Sadr and his followers. But taken together, they say, militiamen acting as criminal power-brokers seeking profit and the perhaps more moderate Sadr loyalists constitute a formidable challenge for the soldiers who arrived in the capital in March as part of President Bush's troop buildup.

"We have a different fight than the rest of Baghdad," said Capt. Jay Wink, the battalion's intelligence officer. "It's all JAM, really. In one way, shape or form, everybody who lives there is associated with it."

Reading the piece in the Washington Post today, I was immediately drawn back to one of the tenets set forth in the white paper Rethinking Counterinsurgency by Dr. Steven Metz.

In cases where a serious insurgency cannot be managed, the state and its supporters might consider an approach designed to deliberately encourage the insurgency to mutate into something less dangerous such as an organized criminal organization. This is never desirable, but there may be rare instances where organized crime is less of a threat than sustained insurgency. Call this strategic methadone. [p.52]

Even before I got to this part:

"The Mahdi Army kind of shorts them out of power," said Capt. Charles Turner, who oversees reconstruction projects for the battalion. "You drive down the roads, you look over here, it's light. And you look over there, it's dark. From what I've seen, it's kind of a Tony Soprano thing: 'I outnumber you, so I'm going to do what I want.' "

Along certain militia-controlled blocks, "the curbs are painted, the streets are cleaner, they have beautification projects," Turner said. "It would be cool if it was a positive thing, but it's not."

Well, positive thing or not, it represents the current reality. And since that reality was addressed in Dr. Metz’ paper, maybe it is time the Pentagon took their fingers out of their ears, stopped saying "La La La La La! I can't hear you!!!" and stopped trying their level best to ignore it until it goes away.