Iraq plans raids on US backed 'beyond the law private security firms'

The Iraqi Interior Minister showing his resolve, will take risky actions against US sponsored terrorist also known as `beyond the law private security firms'.

His plan is to `raid' these firms to see if they are complying with new gun registration laws. The operative word being `raid.' The question of how many American lives will be lost, might be the point the the Interior Minister wants to get across to the American public - for undoubtedly the confrontations will pit American soldiers against American contractors.

The US leadership in Iraq blundered when Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the American commander in Iraq, was in charge of training and equipping Iraqi security forces and `lost' 190,000 fire arms. Maybe they ended up free of charge in the hands of the contractors? With the missing millions?

The Iraqi leadership's goal of `gun control' through registration seems a smart move, but `raiding' the lawless Western contractors- or even just threatening to do so, is not. The contractors should be removed, and reparations should be made for their bad behavior.




November 8, 2007
Iraq Plans to Confront Security Firms on Guns
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Nov. 7 — The Iraqi interior minister said Wednesday that he would authorize raids by his security forces on Western security firms to ensure that they were complying with tightened licensing requirements on guns and other weaponry, setting up the possibility of violent confrontations between the Iraqis and heavily armed Western guards.

The tightening of the requirements followed a shooting in September by one of those firms, Blackwater, that Iraqi authorities said left 17 Iraqis dead.

“Every company will be subject to such examination, and any company that does not follow the law will lose its license,” the minister, Jawad al-Bolani, said of the planned raids. “They are called security companies. They are not called violate-the-law companies.”

During a tour of the Interior Ministry compound in eastern Baghdad, Iraqi government officials also said for the first time that they accepted estimates by American oversight officials that some 190,000 pistols and automatic rifles supplied by the United States to Iraqi forces in 2004 and 2005 were unaccounted for.

Iraqi officials have created an elaborate computerized database to help recover the weapons and ensure that no more are lost, and officials took great pains on Wednesday to show the system to this reporter and his interpreter.

“We have 190,000 lost weapons because they were not distributed properly,” said Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman. “So we built this database.”



Many of those weapons were distributed when Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the American commander in Iraq, was in charge of training and equipping Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005. General Petraeus has said that he decided to arm the Iraqi forces as quickly as possible, before tracking systems were fully in place.

On Wednesday, Iraqi officials delicately placed blame for the loss of the weapons on the American military, saying that it had been impossible for the Iraqis to account for the weapons when they were not given necessary tracking information, such as serial numbers.

Within Baghdad’s relatively safe and heavily guarded Green Zone, there have been early indications of a battle over who controls Iraqi streets. Private security guards say that Iraqi police officers have already descended on Western compounds and stopped vehicles driven by Westerners to check for weapons violations in recent weeks.



Any extension of those measures into the rest of the country, known as the Red Zone, could quickly turn into armed confrontation. Westerners are wary of Interior Ministry checkpoints, some of which have been fake, as well as of ministry units, which are sometimes militia-controlled and have been implicated in sectarian killings. Western convoys routinely have to choose between the risk of stopping and the risk of accelerating past what appear to be official Iraqi forces.

And because Western convoys run by private security companies are often protecting senior American civilian and military officials, the Iraqi government’s struggle with the companies has in some cases become a sort of proxy tug-of-war with the United States.

That dynamic was laid bare in the weeks immediately after the shooting on Sept. 16 in Nisour Square in Baghdad. The Iraqi government at first suggested that it would ban Blackwater, which has a contract to protect American diplomats, from working in Iraq. But the government was embarrassed when it discovered that its legal options were limited, and the United States — after placing a few new restrictions on the company — quickly sent it back onto the streets.

Based on its own investigation, the Iraqi government has concluded that the Blackwater guards who opened fire committed murder. An American investigation led by the F.B.I. has not yet publicly announced any results.

The outlines of a struggle for primacy on the streets also seem apparent in what the Interior Ministry says is a decision to insist that weapons carried by members of Shiite-controlled militias that protect certain neighborhoods must also be registered. Asked about the vast areas of Baghdad patrolled by the powerful Mahdi Army, which was founded by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, General Khalaf said that it too would be challenged.




“In the near future there is a campaign that will happen,” General Khalaf said. “We are delaying this campaign until we finish this database.”

Privately, Interior Ministry officials say that they had been surprised that the Iraqi investigators’ findings of culpability by the Blackwater guards had found such a sympathetic hearing elsewhere in the world, where for years there had been questions about the loyalties and capability of Interior Ministry officials.

In one sense, by emphasizing the new steps it is taking to control weapons, the Interior Ministry seems determined to leverage the respect shown for its investigators in such a high-profile case into an improved image over all. The strategy appears to be to concede that both American and Iraqi security forces have made mistakes in the past but that both were taking steps to put those problems behind them.

During one remarkable session on Wednesday, an administrative official at the ministry said that it had had problems with “ghost payrollers,” or fictitious employees, and political pressure in the past. But the official, Maj. Gen. Jihan Hussein, said that the ministry was squarely facing those problems.

“If you knew the pressures we have from members of Parliament to have their relatives employed by the ministry, you wouldn’t believe it,” General Hussein said.

But he said the ministry would not bow to those pressures. In a similar vein, Mr. Bolani said that the ministry’s strict new approach to weapons licenses would try to redress past mistakes.

And Mr. Bolani said he believed that legal action against Blackwater in Iraq was still possible in spite of immunity given to Western security contractors under Iraqi law. He said that third parties like nongovernmental organizations or the Iraqi Bar Association could bring suits on behalf of the victims of the Sept. 16 shootings.

“We are fully aware that the people must be given their rights, and there are cases that will be brought against the criminals,” Mr. Bolani said.

Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting.

China selling weapons to Iraq - US too slow

China makes out again -loans the US money to fight the war, now sells weapons to the Iraqi's.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates called for the delivery of weapons to Iraq more quickly, because the Iraqis have ordered US$100 million (70 million EUR) in military equipment from China.

He agreed that there are concerns that it is harder for the U.S. military in Iraq to track weapons purchased from countries other than America. In many cases, the Iraqis cannot account for weapons, which often end up in the hands of insurgents.

Speaking to reporters, Gates said the issue also came up at his meeting with Chilean Defense Minister Jose Mario Goni just prior to a news conference.

"This is an issue that we have to look into and see what we can do in the United States to be more responsive and be able to react more quickly to the requests of our friends," Gates said. "Unfortunately the (foreign military sales) program was set up in a way that was not intended to provide sort of emergency or short term supplies, as in the case of Iraq and we're trying to figure out how to do that better."

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in an interview that Iraq ordered the Chinese military equipment for its police force in part because the U.S. is not delivering the arms fast enough.

Gates said he is not particularly worried that the Iraqis turned to China to get the equipment, but is more generally concerned about the slow pace of the U.S. process.

He noted that the United States has already delivered about US$600 million (425 million EUR) worth of equipment to the Iraqis, and has another US$2 billion to US$3 billion (1.4 billion EUR to 2.1 billion EUR) on order.

The Defense Department and the agency that handles foreign military sales - the Defense Security Cooperation Agency - have been working for more than a year to try to speed up the process, said Maj. Gen. Richard J. Sherlock Jr., director of operational planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It used to take a year, but now averages about five months from the time they get a precise list of what the Iraqis want to the time it is fielded, he told a Pentagon press conference.

"It depends on what equipment is being requested, it depends on whether it's in production, whether it needs to be placed in production, whether there's another claimant for those pieces of equipment that are in production, or whether that equipment's on the shelf," Sherlock said.

Gates said the U.S. has opened offices in Baghdad for the military sales, so that officials can have day-to-day dialogues with the Iraqis and "get their requirements more quickly and get them processed more quickly."

Cheney admitts only one mistake in Iraq Invasion

Asked to describe the biggest mistake made by U.S. war planners, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "I think we underestimated the extent to which 30 years of Saddam's rule had really hammered the population, especially the Shia population, into submissiveness. It's very hard for them to stand up and take responsibility, in part because anybody who's done that in the past have had their heads chopped off."

Cheney on Wednesday dismissed as "hogwash" the suggestion that blunders may have hurt the administration's credibility on Iraq and led members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to question President Bush's plan to send more troops to Baghdad.

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, conducted a day after Bush delivered his State of the Union address, Cheney was asked to respond to some Republicans in Congress who "are now seriously questioning your credibility, because of the blunders and the failures."

To that, Cheney answered, "Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash."

Cheney said the administration is committed to moving ahead with its plan to send more troops to Baghdad, even if Congress passes a resolution in opposition. (Read a transcript of the interview PDF)

"It won't stop us," he said. "And it would be, I think, detrimental from the standpoint of the troops."

If U.S. forces were to pull out of Iraq, "we would simply validate the terrorists' strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task ... that we don't have the stomach for the fight. That's the biggest threat."

He added, "The notion that somehow the effort hasn't been worth it, or that we shouldn't go ahead and complete the task, is just dead wrong."

Cheney said the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein was the right move.

James Baker makes a sugestion :Focus on Mid Eastern Peace

It has been argued that it really wasn't the Weapons of Mass destruction that was the promting point for the US invasion of Iraq. Senior Bush Administration officials insist that Saddam's opposition had doomed American efforts to make peace between the Arabs and the Israelis in the 1980s. This was the basis of the neo-conservative refrain that "the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad." Likewise, this mistaken conviction was part of the reason that Washington quickly shifted its attention from Afghanistan to Iraq, in the belief that Saddam somehow stood behind both the Taliban and al-Qa'ida. It is certainly the case that Administration figures regularly played fast and loose with the paltry evidence suggesting any kind of relationship between Saddam and bin Ladin, but it is also the case that they did so because they were certain that it existed, even if there was no evidence to support it and most of the evidence available suggested the opposite.

So perhaps the real reason for the invasion was peace in the Middle East. But because the US has become bogged down in Iraq -progress with the Middle East has been put on the back burner. Baker suggest that now, after Yasser Arafat death - the time to act is now. Below is a good analysis's from Slate Magazine - and both New York Time OP pieces it references.


war stories
The Fastest Way To Send a Message
Why is James Baker talking to the president via the New York Times op-ed page?
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, Dec. 2, 2004, at 6:12 PM ET

Is there about to be a breakthrough in U.S. policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict? If the signs aren't quite hopeful, they're at least extremely intriguing.

Most intriguing is an op-ed piece in today's New York Times by James A. Baker III, urging President George W. Bush to promote the resumption of negotiations, adding, "The time to start is now." The article is fascinating not so much for what it says but for the fact that Baker wrote it at all.

Baker is not merely the man who was secretary of state during the presidency of Bush's father. He also ran the father's re-election campaign. He led W.'s fight against the Florida recount in the 2000 election—which is to say, he's largely responsible for the son's victory. He is widely known as one of the most closely trusted advisers to the entire Bush family. Last year, when Bush tried to persuade European leaders to forgive Iraqi debt, he sent as emissary not his own secretary of state, Colin Powell, but rather, James Baker—as a signal to one and all that the trip was truly serious.

Baker could have called the president on the phone to talk about the Middle East, or any other subject, anytime he wanted. Why did he send the message through the New York Times?

It's worth recalling the last time Baker wrote a Times op-ed piece. It was in August 2002, as the Bush administration was getting set to invade Iraq. In his piece, Baker supported invasion, but he urged Bush not to "go it alone" and to "reject the advice of those who counsel doing so."

The article raised eyebrows all over Washington—and among foreign policy cognoscenti worldwide—for two reasons. First, it amounted to a critique of Bush's foremost security advisers, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, from inside his own family's circle. Second, it was widely assumed that Baker would not have published such an article without at least the tacit approval of the president's father himself, who, along with Baker, had put together a genuinely broad and successful coalition for the 1991 Gulf War.

The following month, President Bush did go to the U.N. General Assembly—against the advice of Cheney and Rumsfeld—and delivered a stern, eloquent, and well-received speech, calling on the Security Council to threaten Iraq with "serious consequences" if Saddam continued to thumb his nose at U.N. resolutions. (Bush's unilateralists won out in the end, six months later, but Baker's arguments seemed to hold sway for at least a while.)

Today's op-ed appears to have been designed with a similar purpose—to send a message to the president, with the pressure of publication behind it. In 2002, Baker meant to thwart action that Bush was about to take as a result of his advisers (invading Iraq without a coalition). Now he means to incite Bush to take action (jump-starting Arab-Israeli peace talks) against some of his advisers' inclinations.

The premise of Baker's piece is that Yasser Arafat's death has "created a unique opportunity for negotiating peace between Arabs and Israelis." Yes, he writes, the president should "continue with his goal of spreading democracy in the Middle East," and the January elections in Iraq are a "critical step in the right direction." But promoting Arab-Israeli peace is "imperative"—both in itself and for these larger goals.

"The road to peace," Baker writes, "does not run through just Jerusalem or just Baghdad. … Today it runs through both." This is a clear reference to the slogan that Bush's neoconservative advisers liked to recite before the invasion of Iraq: "The road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad." In other words, to topple Saddam would be to remove a leading supporter of Palestinian terrorism; moreover, a stable, democratic Iraq would light a blazing trail of freedom across the Middle East. Once this theory proved fanciful, Bush's critics liked to twist the slogan—the road to Baghdad, they said, runs through Jerusalem. In other words, the insurgency can't be defeated—and America's image in the region can't be repaired—until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is addressed. Baker is telling Bush that the critics are right—the road runs both ways.

Baker allows that Palestinian candidates in the upcoming presidential elections must renounce terrorism. Yet he also writes that Israel should announce that, upon the election of such a Palestinian, "it is prepared to resume substantive negotiations for peace without requiring that all terrorist activities cease in advance." The reason is purely pragmatic: Insisting on such a requirement would "simply empower the terrorists themselves to prevent the resumption of peace negotiations."

Following this advice would require Bush to switch his policies and to apply at least a little pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon—in other words, to "reject the advice" (as Baker put it, in the context of Iraq, two years ago) of those in his inner circle who are fine with letting Sharon do whatever he wants, an attitude that may seem "pro-Israel" but that in fact goes against Israel's long-term interests.

Finally, Baker writes that, while the outcome of talks can't be prejudged, "the plan presented by President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000—and rejected by Yasir Arafat—surely offers one plausible place to start." This must have been the hardest passage for Bush to read—as Baker must surely have realized when he wrote it. The primary watchword of George W. Bush's first term was to do the opposite of whatever Bill Clinton did. Baker is telling Bush to get over this neurosis and do the right thing, whatever Clinton may or may not have done.

Baker is probably stepping in at this time, pressuring Bush to get involved in this issue right away, because this is a crucial moment, a rare convergence of opportunities, and Baker—like anyone who's been involved in the delicacies of Middle East peace talks—must be fearful that we might let it pass by.

Violence in the territories has markedly declined since Arafat's death. An apparent moderate, Mahmoud Abbas, is the top candidate to replace Arafat. The announcement by Marwan Barghouti, who is in an Israeli prison for terrorism, that he too might run for the office has been denounced by leading Palestinians and by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Yet in the face of all these trends, a vacuum looms at the top of America's foreign policy apparatus. Powell is a lame-duck secretary of state whose words and actions carry no weight whatever. His replacement, Condoleezza Rice, won't be confirmed for a couple of months at least. Iraq and now Iran are occupying the little space for attention that foreign issues can occupy. Baker is telling his friend that he has to open that space a bit wider to allow for the Arab-Israeli conflict too; that this conflict may hold the key to settling the other conflicts; and that he shouldn't let his advisers—the same advisers who led him astray on Iraq—toss up obstacles on this one.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.

**************

mber 2, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Talking Our Way to Peace
By JAMES A. BAKER III

Houston

Two developments - the re-election of President Bush and the emergence of a new Palestinian leadership in the wake of Yasir Arafat's death - have created a unique opportunity for negotiating peace between Arabs and Israelis.

The president should, of course, continue with his goal of spreading democracy in the Middle East. And the planned elections in Iraq this January are a critical step in the right direction. But it is imperative that the president also actively promote peace between Israelis and Arabs.

Stability in Iraq and peace between Palestinians and Israelis can be pursued at the same time. In fact, working toward the latter improves the chances of attaining the former. The road to peace does not run through just Jerusalem or just Baghdad. That is a false choice. Today it runs through both.

The so-called quartet (the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations), which has been working on a "road map" for peace between the Palestinians and Israelis for several years, supports a two-state solution, as do the vast majority of both Palestinians and Israelis. President Bush certainly favors this goal, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel has publicly supported it as well, although in April he said that the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza could delay a Palestinian state "for many years."

Only the real hard-liners on both sides - Arabs who refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist and Israelis who want to keep the occupied territories rather than exchange them for a secure peace - prefer a one-state solution. A one-state solution would ultimately mean the end of Israel as a democratic Jewish state and would, of course, also foreclose Palestinian aspirations for their own independent state existing peacefully alongside Israel.

So the real question is how to take advantage of this window of opportunity to achieve that two-state solution. Specifically, what steps should be taken? Who needs to do what?

First, it is critical that negotiations resume. For this to happen, of course, Israel must have a negotiating partner on the Palestinian side. That partner will best emerge from free elections. Elections have been scheduled for Jan. 9, and all who support peace between Israel and the Palestinians have an obligation to do all within their power to see that those elections are successfully held.

Palestinian candidates should clearly and unequivocally renounce terrorism as a means of achieving a political result - and call upon their supporters to do likewise. And those Palestinians should commit themselves to an unequivocal, good-faith effort to crack down on terrorist groups that make a target of Israel.

In exchange, Israel should announce that upon the election of a Palestinian negotiating partner, it is prepared to resume substantive negotiations for peace without requiring that all terrorist activities cease in advance. To require the absence of any terrorist act in advance simply empowers the terrorists themselves to prevent the resumption of peace negotiations.

Also, Israel should do whatever it can to encourage freedom of movement and access to polling places under secure conditions to help such elections succeed. It is encouraging that Israel has indicated that all Palestinians will be permitted to vote in such elections whether they live in Jerusalem or in some other location.

The United States should itself clearly embrace and articulate the unequivocal, good-faith standard for the resumption of dialogue. The United States should further prevail upon Israel to cease settlement activity in the occupied territories pending Palestinian elections and during the resumption of peace negotiations. Washington should also do everything else that it can to encourage both sides to resume meaningful talks. And it should serve, where necessary, as a direct participant in the talks, offering suggestions, brokering compromises and extending assurances.

Finally, the administration must make it unambiguously clear to Israel that while Prime Minister Sharon's planned withdrawal from Gaza is a positive initiative, it cannot be simply the first step in a unilateral process leading to the creation of Palestinian "Bantustans" in the West Bank.

We cannot, of course, prejudge the final outcome of any talks. But the plan presented by President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000 - and rejected by Yasir Arafat - surely offers one plausible place to start.

It is encouraging to witness the quick response from the White House, particularly when President Bush stood with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain shortly after his re-election and said that he wanted to establish an independent Palestinian state living in peace and security next to Israel. "I intend to use the next four years to spend the capital of the United States on such a state," he said.

While the United States cannot dictate the terms of peace to either party, it can and should actively promote the resumption of negotiations. The time to start is now.

James A. Baker III was secretary of state from 1989 to 1992.

*************

James Baker: Don't go it alone with Iraq
From Kelly Wallace
CNN Washington Bureau

CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) --Former Secretary of State James Baker Sunday warned President Bush not to "go it alone" against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Writing on the op-ed page of Sunday's New York Times, Baker became the latest member of the first Bush administration to issue cautionary words about a military attack against Iraq.

"Although the United States could certainly succeed, we should try our best not to have to go it alone, and the president should reject the advice of those who counsel doing so," Baker wrote.

"The costs in all areas will be much greater, as will the political risks, both domestic and international, if we end up going it alone or with only one or two countries."

Baker said, however, that he believes the only "realistic way" to bring about regime change is through military force, including "sufficient" ground troops to occupy the country.

"Anyone who thinks we can effect regime change in Iraq with anything less than this is simply not realistic," Baker said.

The former chief diplomat urged Bush to build an international coalition like the one he and the president's father brought together during the Persian Gulf War.

He suggested Bush consider pursuing a U.N. Security Council resolution requiring Iraq to submit to an "intrusive inspections regime" and authorizing "all necessary means" to enforce those inspections.

"Some will argue, as was done in 1990, that going for United Nations authority and not getting it will weaken our case," Baker said.

"I disagree. By proposing to proceed in such a way, we will be doing the right thing, both politically and substantively. We will occupy the moral high ground."

Bush, who is winding up his August vacation at his ranch near here, "welcomes" Baker's advice, said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

"It is part of the constructive debate from thoughtful people and it underscores many of the things the president has said about ... the threat [Saddam] presents to the world," Fleischer said.

Fleischer said Bush still has not made a decision about how to bring about a change of Iraqi regimes.

Other former Bush administration officials who have spoken out recently include Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to Bush's father.

Scowcroft, in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, voiced his opposition to a military attack on Iraq.

Other Republicans strongly back military action and believe the president should pursue such a course, even if he can't bring together an international coalition.

"I'd much prefer to have a lot of allies out there, both in the Middle East and in Western Europe," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, told CNN's "Late Edition."

"I'd like to have the American people solidly behind the president. But again, if the president has to do it, he has to do it. And that's what leadership is all about."

Before any pre-emptive strike on Iraq, some Democrats argue, the president must make the case to the American people.

"What we have is an administration that is beating its breast with all this rhetoric about how they're going to do this or that," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, on the same program.

"The president needs the country behind him."

As Bush thinks through options to deal with Saddam, "he will talk to the country about it and he will make the case," a senior administration official said.

To build support in the Arab world for regime change, the State Department is encouraging Iraqi exiles to speak out about the "brutality" of Saddam Hussein, a State Department spokesman said.

Seventeen Iraqi exiles from North America and Europe plan to visit the State Department this week for four days of media training on writing opinion pieces, giving speeches and doing television and radio interviews.

The goal is to make the case that the battle is not between the United States and Iraq, and to convey that the Iraqi people and Iraq's neighbors will be better off without Saddam, U.S. officials said.

Bush will deliver that message personally to Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, in a visit to Bush's Texas ranch.

The president will plead the case to a Saudi government that so far is against a military attack.

The Saudis have also said they will not allow the United States to launch an invasion of Iraq from Saudi soil.

Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight

U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight
Failure to Send Troops in Pursuit Termed Major Error

By Barton Gellman and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 17, 2002; Page A01

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border. Though there remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December.

After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the United States. A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda's leader. Without professing second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach fundamentally in subsequent battles, using Americans on the ground as first-line combat units.

In the fight for Tora Bora, corrupt local militias did not live up to promises to seal off the mountain redoubt, and some colluded in the escape of fleeing al Qaeda fighters. Franks did not perceive the setbacks soon enough, some officials said, because he ran the war from Tampa with no commander on the scene above the rank of lieutenant colonel. The first Americans did not arrive until three days into the fighting. "No one had the big picture," one defense official said.

The Bush administration has never acknowledged that bin Laden slipped through the cordon ostensibly placed around Tora Bora as U.S. aircraft began bombing on Nov. 30. Until now it was not known publicly whether the al Qaeda leader was present on the battlefield.

But inside the government there is little controversy on the subject. Captured al Qaeda fighters, interviewed separately, gave consistent accounts describing an address by bin Laden around Dec. 3 to mujaheddin, or holy warriors, dug into the warren of caves and tunnels built as a redoubt against Soviet invaders in the 1980s. One official said "we had a good piece of sigint," or signals intelligence, confirming those reports.

"I don't think you can ever say with certainty, but we did conclude he was there, and that conclusion has strengthened with time," said another official, giving an authoritative account of the intelligence consensus. "We have high confidence that he was there, and also high confidence, but not as high, that he got out. We have several accounts of that from people who are in detention, al Qaeda people who were free at the time and are not free now."

Franks continues to dissent from that analysis. Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, his chief spokesman, acknowledged the dominant view outside Tampa but said the general is unpersuaded.

"We have never seen anything that was convincing to us at all that Osama bin Laden was present at any stage of Tora Bora -- before, during or after," Quigley said. "I know you've got voices in the intelligence community that are taking a different view, but I just wanted you to know our view as well."

"Truth is hard to come by in Afghanistan," Quigley said, and for confidence on bin Laden's whereabouts "you need to see some sort of physical concrete proof."

Franks has told subordinates that it was vital at the Tora Bora battle, among the first to include allies from Afghanistan's Pashtun majority, to take a supporting role and "not just push them aside and take over because we were America," according to Quigley.

"Our relationship with the Afghans in the south and east was entirely different at that point in the war," he said. "It's no secret that we had a much more mature relationship with the Northern Alliance fighters." Franks, he added, "still thinks that the process he followed of helping the anti-Taliban forces around Tora Bora, to make sure it was crystal clear to them that we were not there to conquer their country . . . was absolutely the right thing to do."

With the collapse of the Afghan cordon around Tora Bora, and the decision to hold back U.S. troops from the Army's 10th Mountain Division, Pakistan stepped in. The government of President Pervez Musharraf moved thousands of troops to his border with Afghanistan and intercepted about 300 of the estimated 1,000 al Qaeda fighters who escaped Tora Bora. U.S. officials said close to half of the detainees now held at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were turned over by the Pakistani government.

Those successes included none of the top al Qaeda leaders at Tora Bora, officials acknowledged. Of the dozen senior leaders identified by the U.S. government, two are now accounted for -- Muhammad Atef, believed dead in a Hellfire missile attack, and Abu Zubaida, taken into custody late last month. But "most of the people we have been authorized to kill are still breathing," said an official directly involved in the pursuit, and several of them were at Tora Bora.

The predominant view among the analysts is that bin Laden is alive, but knowledgeable officials said they cannot rule out the possibility that he died at Tora Bora or afterward. Some analysts believe bin Laden is seriously ill and under the medical care of his second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, an Egyptian-trained physician. One of the theories, none supported by firm evidence, is that he has Marfan syndrome, a congenital disorder of some people with bin Laden's tall, slender body type that puts them at increased risk of heart attack or stroke.

The minority of U.S. officials who argue that bin Laden is probably dead note that four months have passed since any credible trace of him has surfaced in intelligence collection. Those who argue that he is probably alive note that monitoring of a proven network of bin Laden contacts has turned up no evidence of reaction to his death. If he had died, surely there would have been some detectable echo within this network, these officials argue.

In public, the Bush administration acknowledges no regret about its prosecution of Tora Bora. One official spokesman, declining to be named, described questions about the battle as "navel-gazing" and said the national security team is "too busy for that." He added, "We leave that to you guys in the press."

But some policymakers and operational officers spoke in frustrated and even profane terms of what they called an opportunity missed.

"We [messed] up by not getting into Tora Bora sooner and letting the Afghans do all the work," said a senior official with direct responsibilities in counterterrorism. "Clearly a decision point came when we started bombing Tora Bora and we decided just to bomb, because that's when he escaped. . . . We didn't put U.S. forces on the ground, despite all the brave talk, and that is what we have had to change since then."

When al Qaeda forces began concentrating again in February, south of the town of Gardez, Franks moved in thousands of U.S. troops from the 101st Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division. In the battle of Shahikot in early March -- also known as Operation Anaconda -- the United States let Afghan allies attack first. But when that offensive stalled, American infantry units took it up.

Another change since Tora Bora, with no immediate prospect of finding bin Laden, is that President Bush has stopped proclaiming the goal of taking him "dead or alive" and now avoids previous references to the al Qaeda founder as public enemy number one.

In an interview with The Washington Post in late December, Bush displayed a scorecard of al Qaeda leaders on which he had drawn the letter X through the faces of those thought dead. By last month, Bush began saying that continued public focus on individual terrorists, including bin Laden, meant that "people don't understand the scope of the mission."

"Terror is bigger than one person," Bush said March 14. "He's a person that's now been marginalized." The president said bin Laden had "met his match" and "may even be dead," and added: "I truly am not that concerned about him."

Top advisers now assert that the al Qaeda leader's fate should be no measure of U.S. success in the war.

"The goal there was never after specific individuals," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week. "It was to disrupt the terrorists."

Said Quigley at the Central Command: "There's no question that Osama bin Laden is the head of al Qaeda, and it's always a good thing to get rid of the head of an organization if your goal is to do it harm. So would we like to get bin Laden? You bet, but al Qaeda would still exist as an organization if we got him tomorrow."

At least since the 1980s, the U.S. military has made a point of avoiding open declaration of intent to capture or kill individual enemies. Such assignments cannot be carried out with confidence, and if acknowledged they increase the stature of an enemy leader who survives. After-action disclosures have made clear, nonetheless, that finding Manuel Noriega during the Panama invasion of 1989 and Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf War were among the top priorities of the armed forces.

The same holds true now, high-ranking officials said in interviews on condition that they not be named. "Of course bin Laden is crucial," one said.

In Britain, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram told BBC radio yesterday that bin Laden's capture "remains one of the prime objectives" of the war.

Staff researcher Robert Thomason contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

Book Description
What do our enemies believe? What motivates their war against the West? What is their vision of the ideal Islamic society? Surprisingly, more than five years after 9/11, there is very little understanding of these questions.

Despite our tendency to dismiss Islamic extremism as profoundly irrational, al-Qaeda is not without a coherent body of beliefs. Like other totalitarian movements, the movement’s leaders have rationalized their brutality in a number of published treatises. Now, for the first time, The Al Qaeda Reader gathers together the essential texts and documents that trace the origin, history, and evolution of the ideas of al-Qaeda founders Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden.

This extraordinary collection of the key texts of the al-Qaeda movement—including incendiary materials never before translated into English—lays bare the minds, motives, messages, and ultimate goals of an enemy bent on total victory. Al-Qaeda’s chilling ideology calls for a relentless jihad against non-Muslim “infidels,” repudiates democracy in favor of Islamic law, stresses the importance of martyrdom, and mocks the notion of “moderate” Islam.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these works is how grounded they are in the traditional sources of Islamic theology: the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet. The founders of al-Qaeda use these sources as powerful weapons of persuasion, reminding followers (and would-be recruits) that Muhammad and his warriors spread Islam through the power of the sword and that the Koran is not merely allegory or history but literal truth that commands all Muslims to action.

In addition to laying bare al-Qaeda’s ultimate motives, The Al Qaeda Reader includes the organization’s propagandist speeches, which are directed primarily at Americans, Europeans, and Iraqis. Here, al-Qaeda’s many "official" accusations against the West are meticulously delineated, from standard complaints such as the Palestinian issue and Iraq to wholly unexpected ones concerning the U.S.’s exploitation of women and the environment.

Taken together, the Theology and Propaganda sections of this volume reveal the most comprehensive picture of al-Qaeda to date. They also highlight the double-speak of bin Laden and Zawahiri, who often say one thing to Muslims in their religious treatises ("We must hate and fight the West because Islam commands it") and another in their propaganda directed at the West ("The West is the aggressor and we are fighting back merely in self-defense").

Westerners from across the political spectrum will be fascinated and enlightened by The Al Qaeda Reader’s insights into the nature of Islamic texts and the ways in which al-Qaeda has used these texts to manufacture hatred against our civilization and our way of life.