Tag Archives: Germany

Why U.S. Intelligence is Inadequate, and How to Fix It

From the Editor’s Desk

With President Bush himself now expressing strong support for the intelligence reform bill, its passage in early December 2004 would appear very likely. This would be unfortunate, because, as Prof. Angelo Codevilla argues persuasively in the essay below, this “reform” consists of little more than “rearranging bureaucratic wiring diagrams” and does nothing to address the systemic problems that have been dogging US intelligence for decades and are currently hindering America’s war on terror.  While most observers now agree that 9/11 was the result of a monumental intelligence failure, neither the 9/11 Commission nor the elected officials now clamoring for reform have delved seriously into the real reasons for this failure. Yet, in the absence of a critical reappraisal of what ails our intelligence, any “rewiring” reform of the kind suggested is likely to do more harm than good.

Where to begin such a reappraisal is exactly the focus of Mr. Codevilla’s essay. Armed with three decades of experience as a foreign service officer, key Senate Intelligence Committee official and an academic gifted with a keen analytic acumen, Dr. Codevilla zeroes in with characteristic clarity on CIA’s failings. These include but are not limited to the agency’s politicization and preference for influencing policy rather than providing impartial analysis, its abject failure in the humint collection area by a clandestine service that is “clandestine in name only” and largely incapable of covert action and its “groupthink” predisposition and lack of meaningful quality control. If his analysis is correct and it is difficult to argue with most of it, it is easy to understand why we are in the intelligence predicament in which we are and why bureaucratic reshuffling is not going to do much good.

One wishes that our elected officials will read Prof. Codevilla’s analysis before casting their votes for an intelligence reform that isn’t.

Alex Alexiev is Editor of the “Occasional Papers” series and CSP’s Vice-President for Research. He could be reached at alexiev@centerforsecuritypolicy.org.

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After Arafat

In his press conference last Thursday, President Bush said people who don’t believe in the applicability of democracy to the Arab world cannot really believe in a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict with Israel. That is, as long as the Palestinians remain governed by terrorists, there is no way they will be willing to live at peace with Israel.

With Palestine Liberation Organization chieftain Yasser Arafat, the godfather of Islamic terrorism, now dead or dying in France, is there at last a real chance the Palestinians will achieve a democratic transformation that will enable peace to emerge?

In answering this question, we should take an example from one of Mr. Arafat’s guiding lights: Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s suicide in his bunker in Berlin in May 1945 was not what enabled Konrad Adenauer to lead a democratic West Germany. Adenauer could not have led, and certainly would never have been a democrat, if all he did was replace Hitler in May 1945. Before Adenauer was brought in to lead West Germany, aside from Hitler passing from the scene, the Nazi regime he created was militarily defeated and Nazi leaders — both political and military — were brought before war crimes tribunals.

Adenauer presided over a German democracy whose truncated borders were determined by the Allies; where Nazi propaganda was expunged from the schoolbooks; where Nazis were barred from positions of power and influence; and where Germans educators were made to teach their pupils the evil Germany had wrought in the war. Adenauer’s ascension was only possible after the total destruction of the Nazi power apparatus.

The analogy of Hitler’s death is pertinent in the case of Mr. Arafat not merely because of his ideological affinity with Hitler, but because Mr. Arafat, like Hitler, has built the Palestinian power apparatus in his own murderous image. All of Mr. Arafat’s presumed heirs — from Mahmud Abbas to Ahmed Qureia to Muhammed Dahlan and their colleagues in the Palestinian Authority are terrorists.

Mr. Abbas and Mr. Qureia owe their prominence to their having co-founded the Fatah terror group with Mr. Arafat. Mr. Abbas, who has been upheld by the United States and Israel alike as a "reformer," wrote his Ph.D. dissertation and later a best-selling book "explaining" the Holocaust is a hoax. Mr. Abbas has overseen terrorist attacks for the past several decades and has outspokenly conditioned peace on the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state through the so-called "right of return" of millions of foreign born Arabs to Israel.

Mr. Qureia, who also has a rich history of terror involvement, has been the PLO’s chief money man for the past three decades. From Tunis to Lebanon to the Gulf States to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Mr. Qureia has overseen a confidence operation that puts the Sicilian Mafia to shame. Mr. Qureia overtly supports terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and in recent months has openly called for terrorists to murder Israeli civilians.

Muhammed Dahlan, who with his charismatic smile won the hearts of Israeli and American policymakers alike, is one of the architects of the current terror war. In 1994, Mr. Arafat put him in charge of coordinating with Hamas. Mr. Dahlan’s militia in Gaza has actively carried out attacks against Israelis, including an Israeli school-bus bombing in November 2000, in which three persons were murdered and a half-dozen children lost legs and arms. Since then, Mr. Dahlan’s forces have retained their leadership role in terror attacks, as well as in the weapons smuggling and development in Gaza.

And so on, down the line. Today there is no Palestinian political party that is not a terrorist organization. Of the 12 militias Mr. Arafat formed in the West Bank and Gaza since 1994, every one is deeply involved in terror activities. Documents seized by the Israeli army during major combat operations in the West Bank have shown Mr. Arafat’s generals ordering suicide bombings and authorizing payments to terrorists.

Under Mr. Arafat’s leadership, Palestinian society has been indoctrinated to jihad in a manner unmatched throughout the Arab world, perhaps with the exception of al Qaeda training camps. Children have been brainwashed to believe their life goal should be to die carrying out acts of genocidal mass murder of Jews. Women have been inculcated with the inhuman belief their wombs are bomb factories, rather than the sources of life.

Through the Palestinian media, school system, religious institutions, sports teams and iconographers, Palestinians over the past decade have been brought to believe their sole purpose as a people is to liquidate the Jewish people. Suicide bombings in Israel are greeted with carnival-like celebrations in the West Bank and Gaza. There is no remorse, no regret, no shame and no guilt of the wanton brutality and barbarity of suicide bombings.

And so, in light of the current derangement of Palestinian society, does Mr. Arafat’s passing have any significance for policymakers?

On a basic level, the death of an evil man is always a cause for hope. Yet Mr. Arafat’s death will provide an opportunity for building a better future if the Bush administration uses his disappearance as a catalyst for a true overhaul of Palestinian society. This requires more than just pressuring Israel to meet with and make concessions to a new PLO warlord, raised on Mr. Arafat’s knee.

There is no doubt there are Palestinians alive today who have the potential to be Palestinian Adenauers. But for these leaders to come forward, the apparatus of genocide and terror that Mr. Arafat has wrought over the past four decades must first be dismantled. Mr. Arafat’s heirs have no more chance of bringing peace and democracy to the Palestinians than Hitler’s heirs could have done so in Germany. For peace to arise, Palestinians cleanly break not only with Mr. Arafat but with his legacy.

 

Caroline B. Glick was one of Israel’s negotiators with the Palestine Liberation Organization, 1994-1996. She is the Jerusalem Post’s deputy managing editor and is senior Middle East fellow of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C.

Friend and foe

(Washington, D.C.): Throughout history, troops like those brave Americans currently liberating Fallujah have demanded the identity of people approaching their lines with the challenge “Who goes there: Friend or foe?” In the case of Tony Blair, the British prime minister whose esteemed stature in the Bush White House has been recognized by an invitation to be the first foreign leader to congratulate the President on his reelection in person, the answer might be “Both.”

To be sure, Mr. Blair has amply demonstrated his friendship with America and its leader by his stalwart performance to date on Iraq. In the face of withering criticism at home, most especially within his own Labor Party, the PM has proven a worthy successor to Margaret Thatcher, the famed Iron Lady of 10 Downing Street.

Three of Mr. Blair’s Wrongheaded Ideas

It would be a mistake, however, to permit our gratitude for such solidarity and our admiration for Mr. Blair’s pluck to obscure the necessary clear-eyed assessment of certain of his other policy proclivities that are, if not actually hostile, then at least contrary to U.S. interests and ill-advised. Three items on (or behind) Mr. Blair’s agenda during this week’s state visit illustrate his other aspect, a side of the man of which Mr. Bush should be wary:

  • “Solving” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: For some time, Mr. Blair has insisted that, as he put it last week, this issue is “the single most pressing political challenge in our world today.” He has for months tried to parlay his high standing with George W. Bush into something the President understands quite well: political capital. The idea has been to expend it in such a way as to make U.S. policy track with that of the other notoriously anti-Israel members of the so-called “Quartet” – the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.

    • While Mr. Blair bided his time during the U.S. election crunch, he comes to Washington intent on cashing in. He will try to euchre Mr. Bush into agreeing to compel Israel to make sweeping territorial and other concessions to the Palestinians, without regard for the real and abiding danger posed to democracy’s only real and reliable outpost in the Middle East. Such concessions have been met in the past with greater violence, born of the inevitable conclusion that the more terrorism is waged against Israel, the more Israel will be forced to accept the terrorists’ demands. The fact that this strategy has not worked in the past and is wholly incompatible with the Bush-Blair policy approach in Iraq seems not to trouble the Prime Minister. It cannot be ignored by the President.

  • “Containing” Iran: The Prime Minister will also be seeking Mr. Bush’s support for the latest in a series of unsavory diplomatic efforts undertaken by Britain, France and Germany and aimed at preventing Islamist Iran from realizing its ill-concealed nuclear weapons ambitions. The Associated Press reported on Monday that “a major breakthrough” was achieved in negotiations last weekend resulting in “a preliminary agreement at the expert level.”

    • Unfortunately, it is absolutely predictable that this “breakthrough” – which Iran’s chief negotiator said would, if approved by his government and its European interlocutors, result in “an important change in Iran’s relations with Europe and much of the international community in the not-too-distant future” – will go the way of previous efforts to appease Tehran: In due course, it will be supplanted by fresh evidence that Iran continues to acquire nuclear weapons-related technology and capabilities. The United States has no interest in endorsing what amounts to political cover and protection for the further covert pursuit of such activities. Mr. Blair must be firmly if cordially told “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  • “United States of Europe”: One item that Mr. Blair may just as soon have go unremarked, but that should be taken up by Mr. Bush nonetheless is the damage the Prime Minister is doing to the Anglo-American “special relationship” by signing onto a European Constitution largely dictated by the French and Germans. Although John Kerry and his ilk would have us believe the recent Franco-German animus over Iraq was a product of President Bush’s diplomatic shortcomings in the run-up to the war, actually something far bigger was at work – bigger even than the bribes Saddam paid his French and German friends through the Oil-for-Food scam.

    • France’s Jacques Chirac and Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder make no secret of their determination to build a united Europe that will be at least diplomatically and economically a rival to American power and an insurmountable obstacle to its exercise. This goal animates the policies Paris and Berlin are applying in every arena and the French and Germans seek through an appalling new constitution to create institutions, bureaucracies and assorted policy mechanisms to assure conformity on the part of Britain and the heretofore pro-American “New Europeans” recently added to the EU.

    The Bottom Line

    The European Constitution is neither in America’s interest nor that of a sovereign and independent Great Britain – the nation that has for so long proven to be an important and valued friend to this country. The fact that Tony Blair has been obliged to submit the document to a referendum offers hope that his people will repudiate it and, in so doing, improve the chances that this relationship will remain special, indeed – and an especially necessary bulwark against the sorts of evils that will arise were we foolishly to sacrifice Israel to, among others, a nuclear-armed Iran.

    W.’s ‘moral values’ drive his foreign policy, too

    According to the exit polls, George W. Bush owes his victory to the priority attached by millions of voters to "moral values." This somewhat nebulous term is said to have trumped terrorism, Iraq, and the economy as a driving force behind the turnout — and the outcome.

    Inevitably, some of President Bush’s critics (possibly on the right, and certainly on the left, once they recover from the electoral-shock trauma) will interpret this finding insidiously: They will assert that the president’s conduct of the war on terror and, in particular, his efforts to consolidate the liberation of Iraq do not enjoy the popular mandate accorded to his social conservative agenda. We will be told, at the very least, that W. won despite his handling of the war, thanks to the help of the evangelical Christians and like-minded folks who turned out for other reasons.

    Don’t believe it for a minute. Such contentions would miss the point of this election almost as much as John Kerry did.

    The reality is that the same moral principles that underpinned the Bush appeal on "values" issues like gay marriage, stem-cell research, and the right to life were central to his vision of U.S. war aims and foreign policy. Indeed, the president laid claim squarely to the ultimate moral value — freedom — as the cornerstone of his strategy for defeating our Islamofascist enemies and their state sponsors, for whom that concept is utterly anathema.

    It follows, then, that among those who deserve credit for shaping this stunning triumph of American virtues and values are the much-maligned "neoconservatives" and their friends, who have been responsible for helping Bush design and execute his wartime agenda. Special recognition and thanks are thus accorded, for example, to: Vice President Dick Cheney and key members of his staff (including Lewis "Scooter" Libby, John Hannah, and David Wurmser); the National Security Council’s Condoleezza Rice, Robert Joseph, and Elliott Abrams; the Defense Department’s Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and William Luti; and the State Department’s John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, and Paula DeSutter. These people — and too many others — have helped the president imprint moral values on American security policy in a way and to an extent not seen since Ronald Reagan’s first term.

    The important thing now, of course, is not simply to acknowledge past achievements, but to build upon them. This will require, among other things:

    The reduction in detail of Fallujah and other safe havens utilized by freedom’s enemies in Iraq — a necessary precondition not only to holding elections there next year, but to the establishment of institutions essential to a functioning and stable democracy;

    Regime change — one way or another — in Iran and North Korea, the only hope for preventing these remaining "Axis of Evil" states from fully realizing their terrorist and nuclear ambitions;

    Providing the substantially increased resources needed to re-equip a transforming military and rebuild human-intelligence capabilities (minus, if at all possible, the sorts of intelligence "reforms" contemplated pre-election that would make matters worse on this and other scores) while we fight World War IV;

    Providing, to the fullest extent possible, for the protection of our homeland — including the adoption of sensible policies on securing our borders and contending with illegal aliens, and by deploying effective missile defenses at sea and in space, as well as ashore;

    Keeping faith with Israel, whose destruction remains a priority for the same people who want to destroy us (and for the same reasons — i.e., our shared, "moral values") — especially in the face of Yasser Arafat’s demise and the inevitable, post-election pressure to "solve" the Mideast problem by forcing the Israelis to abandon defensible boundaries;

    Contending with the underlying dynamic that made France and Germany so problematic in the first term: namely, their willingness to make common cause with our enemies for profit, and their desire to employ a united Europe and its new constitution — as well as other international institutions and mechanisms — to thwart the expansion and application of American power where deemed necessary by Washington;

    Adapting appropriate strategies for contending with China’s increasingly fascistic trade and military policies, Vladimir Putin’s accelerating authoritarianism at home and aggressiveness toward the former Soviet republics, the worldwide spread of Islamofascism, and the emergence of a number of aggressively anti-American regimes in Latin America.

    These items do not represent some sort of neocon "imperialist" game plan. Rather, they constitute a checklist of the work the world will demand of this president and his subordinates in a second term.

    None of these priorities will be easy or painless. All will require of President Bush a readiness to incur political costs and to assume risks far in excess of those his handlers were comfortable running before the election.

    Yet President Bush has amply demonstrated his willingness to take such risks. More to the point, he appears to fully appreciate that his values, America’s long-term strategic interests, and his electoral mandate allow him to do no less.

    By redoubling his administration’s efforts along these lines, President George W. Bush will not only be making the world less dangerous for America and her vital interests. He will also be doing so in a way that is consistent with our country’s moral values, the stuff of which history — not just consequential elections and presidencies — is made.

    Happy birthday, Patriot Act!

    (Washington, D.C.): Today marks the third anniversary of President Bush’s signature of the bipartisan counterrorism law enforcement legislation known as the USA PATRIOT Act. As Attorney General John Ashcroft notes in an op.ed. article in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, the past three years have been safer and freer for America and her citizens, thanks to the tools provided by this act.

    The Attorney General reminds the Journal‘s readers that – notwithstanding the saturation bombing advertising/disinformation campaign that has been mounted by the Patriot Act’s opponents – it has proven to be an enormous boon to those responsible for protecting us without infringing Americans’ constitutional rights. He notes that: “The parade of witnesses that appeared before the 9/11 Commission spoke of the importance of the Patriot Act. Former Attorney General Janet Reno and many others credited the Patriot Act with updating the law to deal with terrorists, and, most critically, for tearing down the ‘wall’ in terrorism investigations that restricted the communication and cooperation between law enforcement and intelligence officials….Misleading rhetoric aside, not a single instance of abuse under the Act has been cited by any court, the Congress or the Justice Department’s own Inspector General – not one.”

    General Ashcroft met last week over a working lunch at the Justice Department with members of the bipartisan Coalition for Security, Liberty and the Law and signatories of a recently released joint letter to the Congress that was sponsored by the Coalition. The letter strongly endorsed the Patriot Act and urged the congressional leadership to renew its key provisions that will otherwise expire next year.

    President Bush, the Congress and, not least, the Patriot Act’s most effective champion, Attorney General Aschroft, deserve great credit for securing the enactment of this critical piece of legislation and for utilizing it so effectively on behalf of us all. With the track record of the past three years, it clearly behooves the Act’s beneficiaries – the American people and their elected representatives – to ensure that this counterterrorism tool remains available for the duration of the War on Terror.

    The Patriot Act: Wise Beyond its Years

    By John Ashcroft

    The Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2004

    The Patriot Act turns three today, but its age belies its experience – and its phenomenal success. Over the past 36 months, the Patriot Act has proved itself to be an indispensable tool that the men and women of law enforcement use to combat terrorism and to compile a record of accomplishment that has grown even as their responsibility for the safety of Americans has increased.

    The Patriot Act enhanced communication on every level of law enforcement to combat terrorist threats, while also giving investigators the same tools to use in terrorism cases that they were using to combat other serious threats.

    Armed with these tools, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agents have pursued and captured operatives in the war on terrorism from Florida to New York, from Virginia to Oregon and points in between. Since Sept. 11, 2001, 368 individuals have been charged and 194 have been convicted.

    Despite the documented successes in keeping Americans safe from terrorism, the Patriot Act rarely receives its due, and indeed is often portrayed in an outright false light.

    Take the latest example. Just last month, several major news organizations erroneously reported that a federal judge in New York had overturned “an important surveillance provision” of the Patriot Act. In fact, the judge ruled on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act – sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) and passed in 1986, 15 years before the Patriot Act. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post were forced to print corrections the next day.

    Time and again, the image of the Patriot Act is at odds with the facts on the ground. Three years ago today, Congress passed, and President Bush signed, a piece of long-overdue legislation that has been critical to keeping Americans safe and free. The parade of witnesses that appeared before the 9/11 Commission spoke of the importance of the Patriot Act. Former Attorney General Janet Reno and many others credited the Patriot Act with updating the law to deal with terrorists, and, most critically, for tearing down the “wall” in terrorism investigations that restricted the communication and cooperation between law enforcement and intelligence officials.

    This new ability to share information helped U.S. law enforcement, working with German authorities, to break up an alleged al Qaeda fund-raising plot in Germany. Here in the United States, the Patriot Act helped federal, state and local law enforcement dismantle the “Portland Seven” terrorist cell in Oregon, as well as cells in Seattle and New York, and alleged terrorist financers in Florida and Texas.

    The Patriot Act has also been successful in updating anti-terrorism and criminal laws to bring law enforcement up to date with technology. Pre-Patriot Act, a new court order was required to continue surveillance of a suspected terrorist whenever he switched phones. The Patriot Act gave anti-terrorism investigators the same authority that investigators in criminal cases had to get a single court order allowing surveillance of every phone a suspect uses. Common sense dictates that tools that help fight the drug lords should be available to protect the American people from terrorist attacks.

    The Patriot Act also increased penalties for not only those who commit terrorist acts, but for those who provide support to terrorists as well. In particular, the Act enhanced law enforcement’s ability to crack down on unlicensed foreign money transmittal businesses, a favored method of financing for terrorists. Prosecutors in New Jersey recently used the Patriot Act to convict Yehuda Abraham, whose services were used in a plot to sell shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to terrorists with the understanding that they were going to be used to shoot down U.S. commercial aircraft.

    The Patriot Act has proved its usefulness beyond the war on terrorism in protecting our most vulnerable citizens from harm. During the course of drafting and debating the Patriot Act in 2001, Congress wisely decided to provide some investigative tools for all criminal investigations, including terrorism investigations.

    The result? In pedophile and kidnapping investigations, for example, a delay can literally mean the difference between life and death for a child. For years, investigators could subpoena some information from Internet service providers. But filing subpoenas to get information quickly to identify and locate a suspect could cost life-saving time.

    Section 210 of the Patriot Act changed that. In Operation Hamlet, sexual predators were using the Internet to exchange photos and videotapes of children being sexually abused. Sometimes the abusers molested children while running a live feed via a Web cam; this allowed other child sexual abusers to watch in real-time online. Investigators used the Patriot Act to quickly obtain subpoenas for information from Internet service providers. The sexual predators were identified, and 19 were convicted. More than 100 children were spared further harm.

    The Patriot Act has helped law enforcement achieve more safety and security for the American people without any abuse of civil liberties. Misleading rhetoric aside, not a single instance of abuse under the Act has been cited by any court, the Congress or the Justice Department’s own Inspector General – not one.

    The public has expressed overwhelming support for the Patriot Act in opinion poll after opinion poll. They know what the 9/11 Commission affirmed: that for the past three years, America’s families and communities have been safer, and their freedom is enhanced because of the president’s resolve and leadership, the foresight of Congress in enacting these vital tools, and the courageous men and women on the front lines who have used the Patriot Act to protect our lives and liberties.

    The War on Terror can’t be won by losing Iraq

    (Washington, D.C.): As the polls suggest John Kerry is losing ground against President Bush, he and his new campaign handlers (most of whom are re-treads from the Clinton presidency) have reportedly decided on a novel strategy: Staking out just one position on the war in Iraq. After months of embracing every position from damn-the-torpedoes and no-price-too-high-for-victory to parroting Howard Dean‘s wrong-war, wrong-place, wrong-time formulation, the emerging party line is, as senior Kerry advisor Richard Holbrooke put it, “Iraq is worse than Vietnam.”

    In other words, the Democratic candidate has evidently decided to run against the conflict in Iraq by arguing it is even more screwed up than the last war that became hugely unpopular, Vietnam. He is betting (not unreasonably) that the situation on the ground there will get uglier in the next six weeks. His latest incarnation will position him to draw support from swing voters who decide, in the end, they would rather cut-and-run from the “worse than Vietnam” quagmire than stand and fight. And, evidently, John Kerry wants them to know that he is the man to do it – and with good reason.

    Kerry’s Vietnam Syndrome

    To be sure, the man who “report[ed] for duty” at the Democratic Convention in Boston was determined to harken back to a different phase of his formative Vietnam experience. Then, it was all about medal-winning combat service and turning the boat into an attack. He and his surrogates insisted that his service as a Vietnam War hero better equipped him than President Bush to win the war on terror, including in Iraq.

    In remarks today, moreover, the Senator continued to hedge his bets a bit. He still talks euphemistically of “supporting the troops” and making “the right choices” in Iraq. And he blithely promises to “internationalize” the conflict, as though the key to doing so is not our success in restoring order and stability, but rather a new president’s diplomatic savoir faire.

    Still, the Democratic candidate now sounds eerily like that other Vietnam-era Kerry – the angry young man who, after leaving the theater, launched his public career less on having fought the war than his role in swiftly ending it. In New York on Monday, he declared: “Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.”

    Of his earlier anti-war persona, Sen. Kerry has lately said he regrets causing pain to comrades by sweepingly accusing them of war crimes. To date, though, Sen. Kerry has expressed no remorse whatsoever for the cumulative effect of his testifying, demonstrating, medal-throwing, book-writing and other anti-war agitation: the United States’ abandonment of the people of South Vietnam to brutal enslavement by their Communist enemies to the North. Not only is he unapologetic about his contributions to the cutting-and-running that produced that tragic result; now he appears to hope it will be the credential that will put him in the White House.

    Iraq is Not Vietnam

    There is, of course, a profound difference between the Vietnam War that John Kerry helped the United States to lose and the ongoing conflict in Iraq. The United States could – and did – walk away from many of its friends and allies in Southeast Asia. The result was pretty awful for them, but of no grave strategic consequence for us.

    It is the height of irresponsibility to think that a similar prospect awaits us if the United States once again follows John Kerry and abandons Iraq to its fate. Turning the Iraqi people over to the tender mercies of Saddam Hussein’s loyalists, Saudi- or Iranian-backed Islamists and/or foreign fighters of other stripes will not simply ensure their country remains a festering sore in the Middle East. It will guarantee that we are subjected to a vastly intensified war wrought by emboldened terrorist enemies with global reach.

    Senator Kerry has accused President Bush of getting everything wrong about the war with Iraq. More objective observers and even Mr. Bush’s admirers can discern aspects of the conflict with which to find fault. And yet, on the single most important decision – whether or not to go to war in the first place – the President made a tough call, one with which Mr. Kerry at the time (and for years before) ostensibly agreed.

    The United States and the world could not safely allow Saddam Hussein to wriggle out of sanctions, secure fresh infusions of funds from around the world, end the no-fly zones, expand his sponsorship of terror, return to his ambitions to have and to wield weapons of mass destruction and, quite possibly, act on his stated desire for revenge against America for Operation Desert Storm.

    Given the diplomatic trends at the time – notably, the insistence of France, Germany, Russia and China (the countries Senator Kerry implies he will be able to get more help from on Iraq) that Saddam be let out of his “box” – the only way to prevent such a dangerous outcome was to act preemptively, together with such allies as would join us. It took vision and guts for President Bush to do so. It will take nothing less to make sure the resulting liberation of Iraq comes out right.

    The Bottom Line

    While Senator Kerry would have us believe otherwise, it does not take particular vision or guts to respond when the going gets rough to the popular sentiment to cut and run. It did not during Vietnam. It will not now. God help us if we fall prey once again to the “leadership” of someone who made that mistake before and who would have us make an infinitely bigger one now.

    Dr. Constantine C. Menges, R.I.P.

    (Washington, D.C.): On Sunday, the Nation lost one of its most creative and forceful exponents of democracy and the Reagan principle of “peace through strength” with the untimely passing of Dr. Constantine C. Menges. The Center for Security Policy, with which Dr. Menges was associated both as a Fellow and as a longtime and valued colleague, mourns his loss at a time when his principled, courageous and deeply knowledgeable intellect is more needed than ever.

    Constantine was a world-class mind and prolific author. His wide-ranging interests, formidable intelligence, impressive language skills (giving him a command of French, German, Spanish and Russian) and powerful and persuasive rhetorical abilities made him a true national asset. His written legacy includes innumerable articles and seven important books including: Spain: The Struggle for Democracy (1979), The Future of Germany and the Atlantic Alliance (1991), Transitions from Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (1994), Partnerships for Peace, Democracy and Prosperity (1997), The Marshall Plan From Those Who Made It Succeed (1999). At the time of his death, he had just completed the manuscript for yet another work entitled, China, the Gathering Threat: The Strategic Challenge of China and Russia.

    While Dr. Menges distinguished himself through his association with many of the leading policy research institutions in Washington – including the Hudson Institute where he was a Senior Fellow from 2000 until his death – he was also an accomplished policy practitioner. Particularly noteworthy in light of the present controversy surrounding the quality, reliability and need for reform of U.S. intelligence is the fact that Constantine was one of a relatively few individuals who served with great competence in both senior ranks of the intelligence community and as a top policy-maker. During the Reagan Administration, he was a National Intelligence Officer at the CIA and subsequently a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. About the latter period, he wrote one of his best-known and most influential books, Inside the National Security Council (1988).

    Dr. Menges’ service in government during that period included the formulation and adoption of key strategies aimed at countering Soviet political warfare and aggression through proxies, and at encouraging transitions to democracy abroad. These strategies were shaped by his experiences as a young man including, among other, his extensive travel throughout the former Soviet Union, Europe and Latin America in 1961. He took justified pride in the help he gave during these travels to individuals seeking to escape as the Berlin Wall was being built. Subsequently, while in Czechoslovakia in 1968, Dr. Menges again helped the forces of freedom by encouraging non-violent civic resistance to the Soviet-led invasion.

    In the years after the Reagan Administration, Dr. Menges tirelessly pursued initiatives aimed at encouraging democratic change around the world, with a special focus on the post-communist states, Iraq and Iran and the Americas. For a brief period, he was based at the Center for Security Policy and then, from 1990 to 2000, he founded and directed the Program on Transitions to Democracy at George Washington University. While associated with the University, he also taught courses in related subjects, helping to cultivate in a new generation the attachment to principles of freedom and human rights that were his personal credo – and lasting legacy.

    Time to pay the price for supporting Saddam

    Some American politicians apparently want to let France, Germany and Russia get away with sabotaging the US-led effort to oust Saddam Hussein. Some even want to reward those countries as a "gesture" that America wants to "make amends" for the hard feelings over Iraq.

    Those politicians – including some prominent Republicans – are upset that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz wants to punish countries that tried to save Saddam, by barring them from competing for $18 billion in primary Iraq reconstruction contracts funded by the US taxpayers.

    President Bush, despite reports that he thought the timing unfortunate, is standing firmly behind Wolfowitz and his policy statement – even as former Secretary of State James Baker readies to ask the countries that bailed out the Ba’athist regime with over $100 billion in loans, to forgive part of the debt.

    In reality, Wolfowitz’s timing was perfect. He has given Baker the perfect negotiating position: the French, Germans, Russians and others can either forgive most of Iraq’s Saddam-era debt now and start to earn back Washington’s good graces, or they can lose it all in case oil-rich Free Iraq chooses to default.

    Such an American-brokered bargain would be unduly generous to the likes of Jacques Chirac, his socialist minion Gerhard Schroeder, and their KGB colonel ally, Vladimir Putin.

    Their governments pushed bad loans to bad people. They bet on the wrong horse. Their diplomatic shenanigans may have cost American lives. Now it’s time for them to pay.

    Non-starter

    (Washington, D.C.): It has become an article of faith in certain circles that President Bush fought an unnecessary and ill-advised war with Iraq. Most of his critics believe that, instead of needlessly using military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein and to liberate his country, the President could instead have “internationalized” the problem.

    ‘Dj vu All Over Again’

    Lest anyone actually think such an alternative course of action to the U.S.-led invasion was available – let alone a viable one, the United Nations and its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have provided a helpful corrective with their response in recent days to Iran’s burgeoning nuclear weapons program.

    In the past few months, it has become ever more clear that, under the leadership of its radical Islamic clerics, Iran has been beavering away for nearly two decades on a covert nuclear weapons program. It has done so in violation of that nation’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), according to which it was allowed to receive nuclear technology for peaceful purposes on condition that it promised not to divert such technology or otherwise to engage in weapons-related activities.

    Nonetheless, defectors have revealed the existence of Iranian facilities that had not been disclosed to the IAEA, some of which are assumed to be intended for bomb-making. The IAEA itself has detected traces of highly enriched uranium that are consistent with covert production of weapons-grade materials needed for nuclear arms.

    In addition, the Iranians have made no secret of their pursuit of long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction – including nuclear ones – to Israel, other targets throughout the Middle East and, in due, course Europe and beyond.
    The response of the so-called “international community” to the evident Iranian intention to go nuclear has been all too familiar. Just as it preferred to continue to express concern about – and occasionally to denounce – Saddam Hussein’s serial violations of the Gulf War cease-fire accords and successive UN resolutions, the IAEA wants very much to do nothing meaningful about Iran.

    This fecklessness was on display last week in Vienna as the IAEA debated a lengthy report prepared by its inspectors. As the New York Times observed, the report “described in great detail Iran’s deceptions, including its attempt to use an exotic laser technology to enrich uranium.” The most hotly disputed portion of this report, however, was its contention that, “There is no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.” As Groucho Marx famously put it, who are you going to believe – me or your own eyes?”

    ‘There You Go Again’

    The U.S. representative, Ambassador Kenneth Brill, challenged the IAEA’s see-no-evil conclusion. “It will take time to overcome the damage caused to the agency’s credibility by this highly unfortunate and misleading ‘no evidence’ turn of phrase.” According to the Los Angeles Times, the IAEA director, Mohamed ElBaradei, a former law professor at New York University, sallied forth to defend his organization’s honor saying ” the report used the word ‘evidence’ to mean ‘proof’ – words that he argued were interchangeable in a legal sense.”

    In fact, Secretary of State Colin Powell has been quoted as saying that he believed the evidence inevitably led to the conclusion that Iran intended to build a weapon, even if it had not yet succeeded. ElBaradei declared, “I cannot verify intentions.”
    If this sounds familiar, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the line ElBaradei and his colleague, Hans Blix, the then-head of the UN weapons inspection program in Iraq, employed to excuse Iraqi non-compliance in the run-up to war last Spring.
    Another reprise of the international community’s dithering over Iraq is to be found in the role France and Germany have been playing vis a vis Iran – this time around, joined by Great Britain.

    Last month, the three European countries’ foreign ministers traveled to Tehran for the purpose of securing still more promises from the mullahs that they would not build nuclear weapons. In exchange, the EU diplomats publicly assured the Iranians that, their countries would reward improved behavior (such as Tehran’s agreement not to reprocess nuclear reactor fuel and its signing up to – and implementing – a new, more intrusive inspection accord with the IAEA) with still more Western nuclear technology.

    It would appear that the Europeans also pledged to preclude the United States from doing anything to denuclearize Iran, either via the UN Security Council or through covert or military means.

    Interestingly, press reports indicate that the French and Russians gave similar assurances to Saddam Hussein a while back. Tariq Aziz, the erstwhile Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, is said to have told his American captors that the Iraqi despot’s friends promised him they would delay and, if necessary, veto any American-initiated UN punitive action. Only President Bush’s determination to take steps alone, if necessary, and if possible with a “coalition of the willing” enabled Saddam to be overthrown, his country liberated and the threat he posed to his neighbors and us liquidated.

    The Bottom Line

    As long as veto-wielding Security Council members are determined to thwart UN action, it is a non-starter to think we can “internationalize” a problem like that posed in the past by Iraq or by Iran (and North Korea, for that matter) today. And doing nothing generally means allowing the initiative to pass to those who will use whatever time they are given to increase the danger they pose to us. This is neither evidence of the judgment necessary to provide competent national leadership, nor a formula for American security.

    Remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations

    Presenter: Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

    (Particpating was Robert Gallucci)

    Feith: Good Evening. Thank you, Bob, I appreciate the introduction and I’m very pleased to have the opportunity to address the council.

    My talk is on the global war on terrorism and I’d like to start with a personal story.

    On September 11, 2001, I was in Moscow with my colleague J.D. Crouch, discussing the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an ancient text. As we were leaving the defense ministry in the late afternoon, the world entered a new era, for that was when the first plane hit the World Trade Center.

    We asked the U.S.-European command for the means to get back to Washington despite the general shutdown of U.S. air traffic, and EUCOM provided us with a KC-135 tanker, which met us in Germany. And we collected there a handful of stray Defense Department officials who were also stranded by the suspension of the commercial air traffic and these included Under Secretary Dov Zakheim, Assistant Secretary Peter Rodman and his deputy Bill Luti and General John Abizaid, then on the joint staff, and now as you know Tommy Frank’s successor as the commander of the Central Command. All of us were frustrated to be away at such a moment and grateful to be getting back to the Pentagon fast, which was of course still smoldering.

    In the KC-135, we conferred and wrote papers about how to comprehend the September 11th attack as a matter of national security policy.

    President Bush’s statements even then showed that he thought of the attack, in essence, as an act of war rather than a law enforcement matter. Now, this point may seem unremarkable, but think back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and to the attacks on Khobar Towers in 1996, on the U.S. East African embassies in ’98, on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000. When such attacks occurred over the last decades, U.S. officials avoided the term "war." The primary response was to dispatch the FBI to identify individuals for prosecution. Recognizing the September 11th attack as war was a departure from the established practice. It was President Bush’s seminal insight the wisdom of which I would say is attested by the fact that it looks so obvious in retrospect.

    We in the KC-135 chewed over such questions as what it means to be at war not with a conventional enemy, but with a network of terrorist organizations and their state sponsors. We talked about how to formulate our war aims, how to define victory, what should be our strategy.

    And as we were mulling all of this, the airplane’s crew invited us to the cockpit to look down on the southern tip of Manhattan, and we saw smoke rising from the ruins of the twin towers. Aside from sadness and anger, the smoke engendered an enduring sense of duty to prevent the next big attack.
    When we landed in Washington on September 12th, we were primed to join the work the President had already gotten underway to develop a strategy for the war.

    That work has held up well since September 2001.

    The President and his advisors considered the nature of the threat. If terrorists exploited the open nature of our society to attack us repeatedly, the American people might feel compelled to change that nature, to close it, to defend ourselves. Many defensive measures come at a high price. That is, interference with our freedom of movement, intrusions on our privacy, inspections, and an undesirable, however necessary, rebalancing of civil liberties against the interests of public safety. In other words, at stake in the war in terrorism are not just the lives and limbs of potential victims, but our country’s freedom.

    It isn’t possible to prevent all terrorist attacks. There are simply too many targets in the United States – too many tall buildings. It’s possible, however, to fight terrorism in a way that preserves our freedom and culture. So the conclusion was that our war aim should be to eliminate terrorism as a threat to our way of life as a free and open society.

    Because the United States can’t count on preserving our way of life by means of a defensive strategy, there was and is no practical alternative to a strategy of offense. We have to reach out and hit the terrorists where they reside, plan and train, and not wait to try to defeat their plans while they are executing them on U.S. soil. To deal with the threat from the terrorists we have to change the way we live or change the way they live.

    Accordingly, the President’s strategy in the war on terrorism has three parts. One is disrupting and destroying terrorists and their infrastructure. This involves direct military action, but also intelligence, law enforcement and financial regulatory activity. The list of senior members of al-Qaida and affiliated groups who’ve been killed or captured since 9-11 is impressive, and includes such figures as Khalid Shaykh Mohammad, Abu Zubaydah, Hambali, Mohammad Atef.

    These and other successes against the terrorists demonstrate that international cooperation is alive, well and effective. We’ve worked jointly with the Philippines, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Spain, France, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt among others.

    From our interrogations of detainees, we know that the absence of large-scale attacks on the United States since 9-11 has not been for want of bad intentions and efforts on the terrorists’ part. We have been disrupting their plans and operations. Our strategy of offense, which is to say forcing the terrorists to play defense, is sound.

    The second part of our strategy targets the recruitment and indoctrination of terrorists. The objective is to create a global intelligence and moral environment hostile to terrorism. We refer to this part as "the battle of ideas." As the President’s national strategy for combating terrorism puts it, "We want terrorism viewed in the same light as slavery, piracy or genocide – behavior that no respectable government can condone or support, and all must oppose." This requires a sustained effort to de-legitimate terrorism and to promote the success of those forces, especially within the Muslim world, that are working to build and preserve modern, moderate and democratic political and educational institutions.

    And the third part of the strategy of course is securing the homeland. The Bush Administration has created the Department of Homeland Security, while the Defense Department has organized a new Northern Command in which for the first time a combatant commander has the entire continental United States within his area of responsibility. By the way, it’s a matter of some pride that the U.S. Northern Command managed to achieve full operational capability – quite appropriately on September 11th, 2003 – in less than a year. And we are in the process also for the first time of fielding defenses against ballistic missiles of all ranges.

    Our strategy envisions international cooperation. The war is global. We have forged formidable, adaptable partnerships – a rolling set, because some coalition partners are comfortable helping in some areas but not in others.

    After 9-11, nearly 100 nations joined us in one or more aspects of the war on terrorism, in military operations against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, in maritime interdiction operations, in financial crackdowns against terrorist funding, and in law enforcement actions, as well as intelligence sharing and diplomatic efforts.

    In Operation Enduring Freedom Afghanistan, there are 71 members of the coalition, including contributors to the International Security Assistance Force; 37 have contributed military assets. In Iraq, 32 countries are now contributing forces.

    As President Bush noted early on, the war’s greatest strategic danger remains the possibility that terrorists will obtain chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The list of states that sponsor terrorism correlates obviously and ominously with the list of those that have programs to produce such weapons of mass destruction.

    The nexus of terrorist groups, state sponsors of terrorism and WMD is the security nightmare of the 21st century. It remains our focus. We are treating this threat as a compelling danger in the near term. We are not waiting for it to become imminent, for we cannot expect to receive unambiguous warning of, for example, a terrorist group’s acquisition of biological weapons agents.

    We know the list of terrorist-sponsoring states with WMD programs – Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea. Iraq used to be in that category but no longer is.

    Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a sadistic tyranny that developed and used weapons of mass destruction, launched aggressive attacks and wars against Iran, Kuwait, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and supported terrorists by providing them with safe harbor, funds, training and other help. It had defied a long list of legally binding U.N. Security Council resolutions. It undid the U.N. inspection regime of the 1990s. It eviscerated the economic sanctions regime and it shot virtually daily at the U.S. and British aircraft patrolling Iraq’s northern and southern no-fly zones. In sum, containment of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a hollow hope.

    The best information available from intelligence sources said that, one, Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear weapons; and, two, if Saddam Hussein obtained fissile material from outside Iraq as opposed to producing it indigenously, he could have had a nuclear weapons within a year.

    Those assessments, and most of the underlying information, were not recent products of the intelligence community. They were consistent with the intelligence that predated the administration of George W. Bush, and they were consistent with the intelligence from cooperative foreign services and with the United Nations’ estimates of weapons unaccounted for.

    It was reasonable – indeed necessary – for the U.S. government to rely on the best information it had available. And while we haven’t yet found, and may not find, stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, David Kay reports that the Iraq survey group has obtained corroborative evidence of Saddam’s nuclear, chemical and biological programs, covert laboratories, advanced missile programs, and Iraq’s program active right up to the start of the war to conceal WMD-related developments from the U.N. inspectors.

    The Iraqi dictator posed a serious threat. Given the nature of that threat, seen in light of our experience with the 9-11 surprise attack, and the crumbling one after another of the pillars of containment, it would have been risky in the extreme to have allowed him to remain in power for the indefinite future. Intelligence is never perfect, but that’s not grounds for inaction in the face of the kind of information the President had about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

    Saddam’s demise has freed Iraqis of a tyrant, deprived terrorists of a financier and supporter, eliminated a threat to regional stability, taken Iraq off the list of rogue states with WMD programs, and created a new opportunity for free political institutions to arise in the Arab world. All of this serves our cause in the global war on terrorism.

    In Iraq and Afghanistan, democratization has begun. Success will strengthen the forces of moderation in the Muslim world. It could create a new era in the Middle East. Already since Iraq’s liberation talk of reform and democracy is more common and more intense in the Arab world. It would be desirable if the Middle East reached a political turning point similar to the points in history when Asian democracy and Latin American democracy blossomed and spread rapidly.

    As the President said last week at the National Endowment for Democracy, "It should be clear to all that Islam, the faith of one fifth of humanity, is consistent with democratic rule. Democratic progress is found in many predominantly Muslim countries. More than half of all Muslims in the world live in freedom under democratically-constituted governments."

    Opposition to democratic rule motivates extremists in both Afghanistan and Iraq to try to tear down the newly formed institutions. They see the potential for modernization, democratization, and liberalization of the economy, and they oppose and fear what they see.

    Extremism of the type that fuels terrorism is a political phenomenon. It’s driven by ideology, and ideologies we know can be defeated. Like Soviet communism and Nazism, radical Islamism can be discredited by failure.

    When the Soviet system collapsed it helped demonstrate that our nation’s positive message – individual liberty, the rule of law, tolerance and peace – has global appeal. Soviet communism was discredited, practically and morally, by its ultimately undeniable failures to deliver goodness or happiness. Radical Islamism, an ideological stew of historical resentments, political hatreds, religious intolerance and violence, can be expected to have a similar end. Like communism, it promises a Utopia that it can’t deliver.

    As the President noted, "Many Middle Eastern governments now understand that military dictatorships and theocratic rule are a straight, smooth highway to nowhere. The good and capable people of the Middle East all deserve responsible leadership. For too long many people in that region have been victims and subjects. They deserve to be active citizens."

    In Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as elsewhere in the region, this process has begun. Afghanistan has a way to go before it achieves a stable, permanent government. Taliban forces are working to regroup and attack, often from bases in the rough terrain of the tribal areas just across the Pakistan border. Afghanistan’s central government needs more skilled administrators. It needs better control over the country’s customs revenues. And important open question remain as to the right relationship between the central government and the local governors and military commanders.

    But Afghanistan has come far since its liberation from the Taliban only two years ago. President Karzai is increasingly extending the government’s authority across the country. He has replaced about one third of the provincial governors. Reform of the Defense Ministry is underway and producing greater ethnic balance. The government and the constitutional commission have just produced a draft constitution that the Loya Jirga may approve next month. National elections in Afghanistan are scheduled for next year. International assistance to the country is increasing. A modern ring road, a boon to commerce, security and national unity, is being built around the country. The Kabul-to-Kandahar portion is to be usable by December of this year, and NATO has taken over the U.N.- mandated International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, and is expanding its peacekeeping role outside the capital.

    Afghanistan’s courage and unity will continue to be tested, but it appears that Afghanistan is passing these tests. It’s a country on the rise, and it’s a country that is no longer affording terrorists the quiet enjoyment of bases of operation.

    Iraq too is a story of difficulties, but also progress and promise. Iraqis, like Afghans, know that they have been liberated from tyranny. They recognize their stake in the coalition’s success, even though a thick residue of fear inhibits many from contributing to that success.

    Our strategic goal in Iraq is to give Iraq back to the Iraqi people well launched, on the road to freedom, security and prosperity. We can’t build the new Iraq for them, but we can make sure that when we leave they are in a position to build it themselves. Our foremost objective now is to improve the security situation to make political and economic development possible. We recognize that security, freedom and prosperity are tightly interrelated. There’s no solution to the security problem without progress on the economic and political fronts.

    The enemies of our strategic goal are: One, former regime loyalists, Saddam’s dead-enders; two, foreign fighters – jihadists; three, terrorist groups – al-Qaida and its allies; and, four, the scores of thousands of criminals that Saddam released from his prisons in the months before the war.

    We don’t underestimate the task we face. We recognize the enemy has a number of strengths. For example, the country is awash in munitions. Our enemies have access to a lot of money and Saddam remains at large. It doesn’t take an enormous effort to attack small numbers of soldiers every week, and the international jihad network has opted to support the fight against the coalition in Iraq, making Iraq the central battlefield now in the global war on terrorism.

    But we also know that our enemies have vulnerabilities. For example, the former regime is not popular in the country, and it had and has a very narrow base of public support. Moreover, Iraqis resent the presence of foreign jihadists who have chosen Iraq as the battlefield on which to confront the U.S. Few Iraqis support the jihadists’ ideology.

    Another enemy of vulnerability is its relatively small geographic base. The vast majority of the attacks against coalition forces in recent months have occurred in Baghdad and in Saddam’s former stronghold north and west of the capital. In large parts of the country, in the north and south, the population is well disposed to the coalition, and those areas are relatively free of such attacks, though there have been horrific bombings in Mosul, Najaf and yesterday in Nasariyah. And I’d like to just take the occasion to express condolences to the Italians who lost 18 of their Carabineri in the attack on Nasariyah yesterday. Our sympathies go to Italy and to the families of those who lost their lives in that attack.

    We believe the enemy strategy is to: One, break the coalition’s will through daily attacks on coalition forces; two, target embodiments of success through attacks on infrastructure and police, for example; three, divide and intimidate Iraqis through assassinations of civilians, including attacks on the Governing Council; four, portray the coalition, and especially the United States, as imperialist and exploitative; five, drive out international organizations and non-governmental organizations; and, six, slow down progress toward self-rule in the hope that the coalition will run out of patience and leave.

    Coalition forces are taking the initiative to search out the enemy, defeat his efforts, and cut of his bases of support. We are doing this through direct action based on specific intelligence, such as the raid conducted against Uday and Qusay, and the recent raid by the 82nd Airborne, which netted two former Iraqi generals in Fallujah, who are suspected as being key financiers and organizers of anti- coalition activities in the city.

    Our forces are innovating at the tactical level. They’re using battlefield surveillance radars to locate mortar positions. They are developing and deploying technical means to deal with roadside bombs. And they are continually developing special convoy security measures. Coalition forces have stepped up efforts to guard the borders, to prevent the infiltration of foreign fighters and terrorists.

    Although the coalition is doing a lot, the strategic solution to the security problem in Iraq is to enable Iraqis to provide for their own security. And so the coalition is organizing and equipping Iraqis and putting them in positions of responsibility for their own security. Having more Iraqis active in their security forces will yield several benefits in helping to reach our strategic objectives: Iraqis have more familiarity with the people and terrain; Iraqis can provide better intelligence on the location of terrorists; a leading role for Iraqi security forces will also show that Iraq is on a rapid course to self-rule, and reduce friction between the coalition troops and the population.

    More than 100,000 Iraqis are already active in the five security forces – the Police, Border Police, Site Protection Service, Civil Defense Corps of the new Iraqi Army. This number has been growing rapidly. In early September it stood at 62,000. The Iraqi security forces have proven effective in a number of actions. They are taking on an increasing share of the security burden and are suffering casualties.

    As I’ve said, we understand how tightly interrelated the governance, economic and security problems are. Therefore, a key element of our security strategy is improving the lives of the Iraqi people and building Iraqi political institutions. Regarding essential services, oil production now exceeds two million barrels a day, and provides revenues for Iraqi salaries and other governmental expenses. Electricity production has attained prewar levels. Iraq’s educational system has been reestablished. There are record 97,000 university- level school applications. Levels of health care comparable to the prewar level have been achieved.

    As you know, the Congress has recently appropriated a large sum of money, approximately $20 billion, for Iraqi reconstruction, including the building up of the security forces. But the U.S. isn’t bearing the whole burden. At the recent donor’s conference in Madrid, other countries and international institutions pledged about $13 billion. The major donor countries, aside from the United States, were Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Kuwait, Spain, Italy, Canada, the UAE and South Korea.

    As for the building of Iraqi political institutions, the Governing Council has been operating since July, and has appointed interim ministers to run the Iraqi ministries. The Governing Council has won international recognition in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1511, from the General Assembly and the Arab League. In addition to the national level Governing Council, there are more than 250 governing councils at the provincial and municipal levels. These represent important steps toward Iraqi self-rule. An Iraqi runs the central bank and an Iraqi council of judges has been established to supervise the prosecutorial and judicial systems.

    As you are aware from recent press reports, we are continuing our efforts to build up the Iraqis’ capability to run their own affairs, and we are working with the Governing Council to help them develop a timeline for drafting a new constitution and holding elections under it, as called for under Resolution 1511. Our guiding principle is that as much authority as possible should be transferred to the Iraqi institutions as soon as possible.

    We understand how important it is to communicate effectively with the Iraqi people. Our basic message is two-fold. First, we intend to stay the course, to fulfill our responsibilities and ensure that Iraq is well launched on the path to freedom, security and prosperity. Second, we don’t want to rule Iraq. Nor will we stay any longer than is necessary. Now, we understand that there is some tension between these two messages, but we are conveying both of them, and neither is subordinated to the other.

    Although the major combat operations that toppled the Saddam regime were over by May 1, the war to determine the future of Iraq continues. The stakes are large. If Iraq can be launched on the path toward freedom, stability and prosperity, the terrorists will have suffered a major defeat and the people of the Middle East will have an alternative model to follow. Our enemies understand this, and we must expect them to throw all their resources into the fight. This struggle will take time – time to root out enemy fighters and supporters within Iraq, time to gain control of the borders, and most of all time to help the Iraqis rebuild their political and security institutions to the point that they’ll be able to take over the main burden of the fight.

    Visitors returning from Iraq commonly comment that what they saw there jibed not at all with the picture of the country that outsiders get from television and newspapers. This is hardly surprising. If all one knew about life in the United States was what one saw on local TV news broadcasts, one would imagine that life in America is nothing but murders, power outages, fires and the like. Because we live here we know that a lot else is going on – business and industrial work, cultural and educational life, politics, government, social activities. There’s a lot going on in Iraq too that doesn’t make the evening news.

    From its inception in the days following 9-11, the President and his team have implemented their strategy for the war on terrorism with steadiness, prudence and good results. The plans for our combat and post-combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq get challenged from time to time, as is inevitable and good in a democracy. Though these plans have by and large worked well, we review and revise them continually, as Jerry Bremer’s recent visit to Washington highlights.

    Those plans were and are the product of much cooperation across the U.S. government and with key allies. They helped us avert many ills. For example, Iraq has not found itself with masses of internally displaced persons and international refugees, starvation, a collapse of the currency, destruction of the oil fields, the firing of Scud missiles against Israel or Saudi Arabia, or widespread inter-communal violence. There’s value in pausing and reflecting on the anticipated catastrophes that we were spared through a combination of foresight, military skill, and the kind of luck that tends to favor forces that plan and work hard and wisely.

    The United States and its coalition partners are on sound courses in Afghanistan and Iraq, though much remains to be done in both places. As long as we are making progress in rebuilding the infrastructure, in allowing normal life to return, and most important in helping the Afghans and Iraqis develop political institutions for the future, we are on the path to success, despite the attacks of the terrorists and former regime supporters.

    Staying the course won’t be easy or cheap. We’re reminded of this every time we hear of another attack on U.S. or coalition forces. The President asked Congress to make available the necessary resources, and Congress has done so. To crown our military victories with strategic victories, we will have to succeed in both the civil and the military aspects of our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    In the global war on terrorism we’re succeeding in our goal. We are defeating terrorism as a threat to our way of life. Our coalitions are on the offensive. The terrorists are on the run. And the United States has preserved our freedom. The world is safer and better for what we have accomplished. Americans have much to be proud of. Thank you. {Applause).

    Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, we have some time for questions. I am asked to encourage you when you do ask a question to please stand, state your name and your affiliation, and wait for a microphone.

    I’m also encouraged to say that you should please keep your questions concise so that many people can ask a question. And it would be nice of course if you did indeed ask a question.

    I am going to take a prerogative that I am allowed to ask Doug the first question, and this is sort of a do as a I say, not as I do, because I’m allowed to ask two questions, but will ask only one, and it may be slightly longer than it would be ideal.

    But as I listened, Doug, to the presentation, I don’t think at least I have any difficulty with the diagnosis of the problem that threat facing us is international terrorism. What I have a problem with is the prescription and your linkage of international terror to the war in Iraq. I was trying to think of a metaphor, and I was thinking of a correct diagnosis of the patient has cancer, life- threatening cancer, and you as a doctor find a broken bone, clearly a broken bone, and decide to focus on the bone. Nobody is going to argue here that – I don’t think – that Iraq was broken. There’s a serious problem – horrendous human rights problem, ignoring the United Nations – all the points you made.

    But I think the key for a lot of us is do we feel as though your shot selection was good? Do we feel as though we are safer from international terrorism by devoting all these resources to Iraq, by not only devoting these resources but alienating other governments, even friendly governments, in the course of doing this that we clearly need against a systemic problem like Iraq? And then if you look at the case as you made it for weapons of mass destruction, it’s there but it’s strained. It’s okay for chemical weapons it’s okay for biological weapon at the toxin and bacteriological, but not the viral. And the nuclear issue I think is highly strained. There is no connection, I think as has been admitted, to 9/11, itself and the connection you made even now to terrorism could be said of any number of countries. So a question which I am now getting to – {Laughter} is: Can you say more about why, if you have gotten the diagnosis correct, why the application of resources, so massive and so massive yet to come, is to this problem rather than to a more frontal attack on international terrorism?

    Feith: As I at least touched on in the remarks, when we looked at the 9/11 attack, and we saw that the terrorists were able to kill 3,000 people, one of the first thoughts that struck us was these are people who are willing, the terrorists, to kill as many people as they possibly can. And if they had access to biological weapons or nuclear weapons they would have been happy to kill 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times the number of people that they killed in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11th. And so we were focused, as I said on this connection among the terrorist groups, their state sponsors and weapons of mass destruction. And that is I think a proper strategic focus in the global war on terrorism. It is the principal and the largest danger that we face.

    And in fighting terrorist organizations one of the most effective approaches is denying them bases of operation and denying them their state support. And we did that in Afghanistan, and we did that with one of the regimes in the world that was a prominent supporter of terrorist organizations and aspired to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. And there is no question they had those programs. The debate right now is over did they actually have stockpiles as opposed to programs for chemical and biological weapons?

    When it comes to chemical and biological weapons, if you have the program you have the knowledge, you have the production capability. One can produce militarily significant quantities in very short order. Furthermore, the Saddam Hussein regime had actually used chemical weapons. And so the danger that this regime, which advocated terrorism, supported it, rewarded it, had links with terrorist organizations and had these capabilities, that this regime might, if left alone, get to the point where it would be providing weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organization was a serious risk and went to what I said was the strategic heart of the problem. And so I think it was – that was the reason that it fitted in, that was I think the motive for taking this action and I think that it was justified. Now, it happens to be, as I explained in my remarks, there are a number of other aspects to the problem, including the fact that the Saddam Hussein regime was one of the worst scofflaw regimes in violating U.N. Security Council resolutions, and a tyranny and a threat to its neighbors, and all those other points I made, which are important. But specifically with regard to your question, I don’t think there is any question that if one had one’s eye on the ball the key strategic issue in the global war on terrorism, this connection that I discussed, that Iraq lived right at that connection.

    Moderator: Thank you, Doug. The floor is open. First hand, right there. Please wait for the mike.

    Q: Sherman Katz, CSIS (Center for Strategic & International Studies): Regarding the stand-down of the Iraqi Army, I wondered if you would be kind enough to share with us what your thinking was about how that ought to be managed before the fact, and if indeed there are any distinctions what you are thinking is now about how it might have better been handled, if there is any distinction?

    Feith: Before the war there was an idea, which Jay Garner talked about in press briefings that he did here in Washington. There was an idea that we could use the Iraqi Army for reconstruction. And the thought was that the Army had organized units, it had people who had various skills it had its own assets for mobility. I mean, there were a lot of reasons why one looking toward reconstruction would say we could make good use of the Army.

    What we found however in the war was that the Army in effect disbanded itself and by the time Jerry Bremer was heading off to assume the leadership of the Coalition Provisional Authority, there was no Army left as an organization. The people had dispersed the barracks had been destroyed and stripped of everything in them, the tile taken off the walls. The mobility assets were all gone. The Army was gone. It had, as I said, it had dissolved itself and the decision was made in essence to simply confirm the dissolution of the Army as part of the overall effort of de-Ba’athification, which Ambassador Bremer made as his theme when he arrived in Baghdad. And there are some drawbacks and there were some advantages in that situation. The drawback obviously was that the asset that we thought might be available for reconstruction didn’t exist, so we didn’t have it. The advantage though is that we now have the opportunity to create an Army that is not tainted by the various aspects of rottenness that characterized the old Iraqi Army under Saddam Hussein – the corruption, the cruelty, the abuse by the senior officers of the junior people, the lack of professionalism, the politicization. I mean there were major cultural problems and other types of problems in the Iraqi Army. This is not to say that everybody in the Army as an individual was tainted and people in the Army are welcomed to come back and join – and have come back to join various other security forces once they are vetted and it’s determined that they are not part of the previous regime’s crimes. But I think that is the difference that accounts for why we had a certain thought before the war and why we proceeded differently since.

    Moderator: Ann?

    Q: Thank you. I’m Ann Kahn from American University. If the prewar intelligence on Iraq was so uniform and so consistent in its findings as you’ve stated in your prepared remarks, why was it necessary to set up a special office of strategic planning within the Defense Department, and does that office still exist? And if not, why not?

    Feith: I’m delighted that you asked that question.

    Moderator: I almost believe that. {Laughter}.

    Feith: No, I am, because this is a subject of such thoroughgoing misinformation that it’s nice to have a chance to say something true about it. First of all, the Office of Special Plans that you referred to has nothing really whatsoever to do with intelligence it is one of the regional offices in the policy organization. We have regional offices for Latin America and Africa and Asia. We had – it is the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs. It was created in the fall of 2002 when we had to beef up our staff to handle all of the extra Iraq related work. We needed to increase it by something like 18 people. So we created a new office, and since there was an enormous amount of attention on the Pentagon, on what we were doing and are we planning for war and the creation of a new office that would have been called the Iraq office would have probably in and of itself created headlines. We chose the kind of name that the government gives to offices throughout the government that’s kind of nondescript – you know, "special plans," long-range plans" – that kind of thing and it’s been grist for the conspiracy mongers ever since. But you referred to some intelligence unit, as many press reports did, confuse it with the special plans office. The so-called intelligence unit that was much discussed – it was two people, it was two people who did a project for about – it as not a unit, it was not an office. It was two people. And they did a project for about three months, and then another two people did a follow-on project for about 6 or 7 months.

    It’s rather amazing that there have been numerous stories that said this was the Pentagon’s effort to replace the CIA and I can assure you that we do not hold the CIA in such low regard that we think we could replace them with two people. And in fact we think we – what those people did in that so-called intelligence unit that has been written about, was simply help me read and absorb the intelligence produced by the intelligence community, the CIA and other members of the intelligence community. So all I can say is there is, as I said, so much misinformation on this subject that I would urge everybody to treat with great skepticism what you read on that subject.

    Moderator: Bob?

    Q: Robert Gard. You mentioned in passing missile defense $9.1 billion in the ’04 budget, over $60 billion over the next 7 years. We can detect missile launches with deployed technology. It would appear to me that deterrence ought to work pretty well in this regard.

    I was pleased to see you agreed with the President the greatest threat is the possibility of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists. Wouldn’t it make sense to divert some of that missile defense money – as large as it is, to doing something about securing the nuclear weapons and materials in the Soviet Union, which could become a Home Depot for terrorists, and beefing up home security to try to prevent the terrorists from being able to smuggle in a weapon of mass destruction?

    Feith: You have identified a number of threats. We need to be responsible; we need to address the range of threats that face our country. We don’t have the luxury of simply picking one or two that happen to interest us and investing only in those. There is a problem of, as its called, loose nukes in the former Soviet empire. There is a problem of vulnerability to ballistic missiles there is a problem of terrorist access to chemical, biological, nuclear weapons, all of those things are problems and threats and they all have to be addressed.

    Q: Barbara Slavin of USA Today. Yeah. My question is about the current political arrangements in Iraq. Are we willing to contemplate expanding the Governing Council, changing its nature, before a constitution is written? Is this what I’ve been given to understand? And why would any of these changes make any difference to Iraqis? Why would they regard an expanded council as more legitimate while we have tens of thousands of American soldiers there? Thank you.

    Feith: This is a subject that is being discussed right now by Ambassador Bremer with the Iraqis. He was here in town the beginning of this week and brought a number of ideas that he had been discussing with the Governing Council and other Iraqis, and those ideas were kicked around over two days in sessions with the President and the National Security Council and Ambassador Bremer is now – I think he already may be back in Iraq or he is on his way – and he is going to be reviewing them with the Iraqis.

    The goal of the political work that’s being done in Iraq is creating political institutions that can assume real responsibility, growing responsibility. The Governing Council has accomplished certain things, it needs to accomplish a lot more, and it needs to be doing executive functions, it needs to be organizing the constitutional progress, it needs to be organizing the electoral process. And there are various ideas about how to do that and how to move that forward.

    Now your question is to why should that matter for Iraqis? I think the answer is that it does matter for Iraqis. The Iraqis want to run their own country, and we want them to run it, and we want them to run it as soon as possible. Now we are not going to just drop our responsibilities and walk away and just leave a mess. On the other hand, we want to make it clear that we are not looking to stay there any longer than we need to. And our enemies in Iraq use as one of their information operations themes against the coalition the argument that we intend to stay, intend to colonize, intend to run Iraq. It’s not true – and if we can have clear steps toward Iraqi self-rule in the near term, we are helping to negate, to contradict, that line of argument that is an asset for the terrorists and the former regime loyalists in their fight against us in the country. So it has important political and security implications.

    Q: I want to follow-up on –

    Moderator: – your name please?

    Q: Walter Pincus. I’m at the Washington Post.

    Moderator: Thank you.

    Q: I want to follow up on Bob’s original question about why Iraq? Because if you take all your definitions, and particularly your nexus there are two issues, I agree. One is there is no hint although he had plenty of time that he ever did contemplate giving weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. But the second part is you have North Korea and you have Iran and particularly Iran, which is openly supporting terrorists. I just imagine your nexus is there and why did you choose diplomacy with those two countries, when you had as you said a kind of containment which wasn’t perfect, but it appeared to be working because he wasn’t doing the thing you feared the most and because your own intelligence said he wouldn’t do it unless he was attacked and his back was to the wall?

    Feith: First of all, on the issues of Saddam’s intentions. We knew that he had these programs – these weapons of mass destruction, we knew that he had used it. We knew that he had relationships with various terrorist organizations and supported them in various ways, including by the way, in some cases in connection with training and exercising regarding chemical weapons, we had information about that in exchanges between the Saddam Hussein regime and terrorist organizations in that area.

    But our information is, as everybody knows, never complete about a subject like that – never perfect, and the idea that we didn’t have, you know specific proof that he was planning to give a biological agent to a terrorist group doesn’t really lead you to anything because you wouldn’t expect to have that information even if it were true. I mean our intelligence is just not – it’s just not at the point where if Saddam had that intention that we would necessarily know it. What we knew were the things I said from which one could infer he had these connections, he supported the terrorist groups, the danger was there. So I think it was, as I said, reasonable to take that threat seriously.

    Q: (Inaudible).

    Feith: Well, there are other problems in the world. Each problem has its own unique circumstances. I mean, the argument that there are other problems in the world and that becomes an argument for not addressing a particular problem, I don’t quite understand that logic.

    Moderator: That’s good. We don’t want to discourage you from diplomacy in the other cases. {Laughter}. Right here.

    Q: Katie Jennings, Council on Foreign Relations. Very quickly, I don’t want to be flippant, but we’ve done Afghanistan, we’ve done Iraq, so what’s the next stop on the war on terror and if you have any ideas how were going to pay for it, that would be good too?

    Feith: The next steps in the war on terror are going to be continuations of steps that we’ve been taking.

    Q: Stop.

    Feith: Excuse me?

    Q: The next stop, not step.

    Feith: The next stop?

    Moderator: You mean the next place we go? The stop as in the series of places you go. What’s your next endeavor? {Laughter}.

    Feith: You seriously expect an answer to that question? {Laughter}.

    Moderator: I do.

    Feith: The fact is we are operating in the war on terrorism in numerous countries right now, and we’re going to continue to do so and the operations are in some cases military, in some cases intelligence, and some cases law enforcement. There’s a lot going on in the war on terrorism and its in many countries around the world.

    Moderator: The last question will be right there.

    Q: Hi, Ira Stoll, from the New York Sun. Do you buy the argument that one of the reasons that the terrorist and people who aren’t terrorists hate America is because of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and that America is allied with Israel in that conflict? And how great a part of the hatred of America do you think that accounts for, if any?

    Feith: Don’t know how to measure it, but it’s clearly an element. There are a lot of people who are focused on that conflict and don’t like our policy. But I think that the terrorist phenomenon is considerably bigger and more complex than just the Arab/Israeli conflict. And I think that a large part of what is going on in the world that underlies, that motivates; terrorism is really a clash within the world of Islam between people of a particularly extremist view and school and the people who oppose them. And al-Qaida’s main enemy for years, as one gathered from their public pronouncements, was not Israel or even the United States, but Saudi Arabia and the government of Saudi Arabia.

    There is a large fight going on within the world of Islam, and the war on terrorism should not be seen, as I believe, as a war between the United States and Islam. It is largely a war going on within Islam where the United States is allied with the opponents of this extremist view of Islam.

    Moderator: Doug, I want to thank you on the behalf of the council and everyone here for not only a very intelligent presentation, solid one, but for being very frank and open in your comments and answers to questions. Thank you very much. {Applause}.

    Feith: Thank you.

    Courtesy of United States Department of Defense.