- WASHINGTON -- A senior US
intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's
counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against
al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war
in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands.
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- Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror,
due out next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush
administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are "on the run"
and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer.
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- In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes
as "Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient
and focused organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would
"inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use
them.
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- He said Bin Laden was probably "comfortable"
commanding his organisation from the mountainous tribal lands along the
border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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- The Pakistani army claimed a big success in the "war
against terror" yesterday with the killing of a tribal leader, Nek
Mohammed, who was one of al-Qaida's protectors in Waziristan.
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- But Anonymous, who has been centrally involved in the
hunt for Bin Laden, said: "Nek Mohammed is one guy in one small area.
We sometimes forget how big the tribal areas are." He believes President
Pervez Musharraf cannot advance much further into the tribal areas without
endangering his rule by provoking a Pashtun revolt. "He walks a very
fine line," he said yesterday.
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- Imperial Hubris is the latest in a relentless stream
of books attacking the administration in election year. Most of the earlier
ones, however, were written by embittered former officials. This one is
unprecedented in being the work of a serving official with nearly 20 years
experience in counter-terrorism who is still part of the intelligence establishment.
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- The fact that he has been allowed to publish, albeit
anonymously and without naming which agency he works for, may reflect the
increasing frustration of senior intelligence officials at the course the
administration has taken.
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- Peter Bergen, the author of two books on Bin Laden and
al-Qaida, said: "His views represent an amped-up version of what is
emerging as a consensus among intelligence counter-terrorist professionals."
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- Anonymous does not try to veil his contempt for the Bush
White House and its policies. His book describes the Iraq invasion as "an
avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate
threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage.
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- "Our choice of timing, moreover, shows an abject,
even wilful failure to recognise the ideological power, lethality and growth
potential of the threat personified by Bin Laden, as well as the impetus
that threat has been given by the US-led invasion and occupation of Muslim
Iraq."
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- In his view, the US missed its biggest chance to capture
the al-Qaida leader at Tora Bora in the Afghan mountains in December 2001.
Instead of sending large numbers of his own troops, General Tommy Franks
relied on surrogates who proved to be unreliable.
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- "For my money, the game was over at Tora Bora,"
Anonymous said.
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- Yesterday President Bush repeated his assertion that
Bin Laden was cornered and that there was "no hole or cave deep enough
to hide from American justice".
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- Anonymous said: "I think we overestimate significantly
the stress [Bin Laden's] under. Our media and sometimes our policymakers
suggest he's hiding from rock to rock and hill to hill and cave to cave.
My own hunch is that he's fairly comfortable where he is."
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- The death and arrest of experienced operatives might
have set back Bin Laden's plans to some degree but when it came to his
long-term capacity to threaten the US, he said, "I don't think we've
laid a glove on him".
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- "What I think we're seeing in al-Qaida is a change
of generation," he said."The people who are leading al-Qaida
now seem a lot more professional group.
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- "They are more bureaucratic, more management competent,
certainly more literate. Certainly, this generation is more computer literate,
more comfortable with the tools of modernity. I also think they're much
less prone to being the Errol Flynns of al-Qaida. They're just much more
careful across the board in the way they operate."
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- As for weapons of mass destruction, he thinks that if
al-Qaida does not have them already, it will inevitably acquire them.
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- The most likely source of a nuclear device would be the
former Soviet Union, he believes. Dirty bombs, chemical and biological
weapons, could be home-made by al-Qaida's own experts, many of them trained
in the US and Britain.
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- Anonymous, who published an analysis of al-Qaida last
year called Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another
devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign,
not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case
in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place.
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- "I'm very sure they can't have a better administration
for them than the one they have now," he said.
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- "One way to keep the Republicans in power is to
mount an attack that would rally the country around the president."
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- The White House has yet to comment publicly on Imperial
Hubris, which is due to be published on July 4, but intelligence experts
say it may try to portray him as a professionally embittered maverick.
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- The tone of Imperial Hubris is certainly angry and urgent,
and the stridency of his warnings about al-Qaida led him to be moved from
a highly sensitive job in the late 90s.
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- But Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations
at the CIA counter-terrorism centre, said he had been vindicated by events.
"He is very well respected, and looked on as a serious student of
the subject."
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- Anonymous believes Mr Bush is taking the US in exactly
the direction Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam
under the banner of spreading democracy.
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- He said: "It's going to take 10,000-15,000 dead
Americans before we say to ourselves: 'What is going on'?"
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1242639,00.html
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