[image][img]http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/07/24/us/24bush-600.jpg
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[b]President Bush spoke before an audience of American military personnel at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina
July 24, 2007
Bush Insists Al Qaeda in Iraq Threatens U.S.
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
WASHINGTON, July 24 — President George W. Bush argued forcefully today that an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Iraq is linked tightly to the central Al Qaeda leadership, and that for American forces to leave Iraq without defeating the terror group would be “dangerous for the world and disastrous for America.”
He made the remarks at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina, at a time of fierce debate in Washington over Iraq policy. Last week, a major intelligence report concluded that the international Al Qaeda organization of Osama bin Laden had successfully regrouped, probably in rugged northwest Pakistan, and that it is as strong as it has been in years.
In a half-hour speech clearly aimed at his Democratic critics, Mr. Bush said that those who argued that the affiliated group, called Al Qaeda in Iraq or AQI, was a local group with local objectives, and not a serious threat to Americans at home, were seriously misinformed.
“It’s hard to argue that Al Qaeda in Iraq is separate from bin Laden’s Al Qaeda when the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq took an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden,” Mr. Bush said, referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a leader of the affiliated group in Iraq who was killed last year.
Mr. Bush called the two similarly named groups “an alliance of killers,” and said, “No enemy is more ruthless in Iraq than Al Qaeda.”
The president’s remarks focused almost entirely on links between the two groups and on threats they pose. His tone was particularly tough. Mr. Bush’s message did not vary much in substance from what he has long said about the groups, though he added some details, apparently based in part on newly declassified information.
Critics of the administration’s policy in Iraq, including some Democratic politicians, have said that Mr. Bush’s portrayal of the links between the Qaeda groups is overblown, and that the group in Iraq did not exist before the American-led invasion. The international group, they say, is the one that poses the much greater threat to the United States, while in Iraq, sectarian violence is a far greater concern than are foreign-led terrorist groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Democrats reacted swiftly and dismissively to the president’s remarks. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, accusing Mr. Bush of “flawed logic,” said, “The president is putting forth a false rationale for continuing the war.”
Holding up a copy of the latest National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism, released by the administration last week, Mr. Kerry said, “Our own intelligence community tells us today unequivocally that our presence in Iraq has created more terrorists, attracted more terrorists.”
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said that “the president’s claim that the war in Iraq is protecting us from Al Qaeda is as misguided and dangerous as the conclusions that drove us to Iraq in the first place.”
“Despite what the president would like us to believe,” he added, “it has been established that Al Qaeda had no active cells in Iraq when we invaded, and we have long known that we were not attacked from Iraq on 9/11. Saying otherwise does not make it so.”
Still, judging by recent opinion polls, the president has had some recent success in making a case to voters for continuing the war in Iraq. He has insisted both that success is possible and that failure would be catastrophic, in part because Al Qaeda in Iraq might then turn its attentions elsewhere.
Earlier today, the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, was asked why Mr. Bush felt the need at this point to insist that the two Al Qaeda groups were closely connected.
“I think, when somebody tries to argue that Al Qaeda in Iraq is not a key part of the problem, it creates a basis of saying, well, you need to go someplace else,” he said.
Mr. Bush emphasized in his remarks that Al Qaeda in Iraq’s top leaders include people from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey, and said that American forces had recently unmasked an effort by the group to pass off an Iraqi actor, using the surname al-Baghdadi, as its leader to give it a more Iraqi image.
Mr. Bush said that after the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mr. Zarqawi “was able to expand dramatically the size, scope and lethality of his operation,” and that he swore formal allegiance to Mr. bin Laden the following year.
Mr. Bush said Al Qaeda in Iraq was now the only known extremist group in Iraq with ambitions of attacking American targets outside Iraq.
“We’ll stay on the hunt, we’ll deny them safe haven, and we will defeat them where they have made their stand,” he said. “However difficult the fight is in Iraq, we must win it. And we can win it.”
The intelligence assessment released last week concluded that the United States was losing ground against the international Al Qaeda terrorist organization, saying it had regrouped and had become significantly stronger in the past two years.
American officials have ascribed the Al Qaeda resurgence to a decision made last September by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, to take a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas in the mountainous northwestern region of his country, along the border with Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda and Taliban militants are thought to be based.
Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, has urged General Musharraf to take a sharply tougher approach. She warned on Sunday that American military forces might conduct their own strikes in the border areas if necessary an idea Pakistan has rejected.