CBS: Attacks An Al-Qaeda Sleeper Operation
CBS News reports this morning that the attacks in Britain started with a proposal by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to infiltrate the West. At least one of the attackers got their training in Zarqawi's organization, and the use of doctors was a deliberate part of the deception:
British intelligence services increasingly believe that the failed car bombings in London and Glasgow bare the fingerprints of al Qaeda in Iraq, CBS News has learned.Intelligence sources tell CBS News that the people behind the attempts were directly recruited by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the present leader of the terror group's Iraq franchise. ...
Sources tell CBS News that al-Muhajir recruited the men between 2004 and 2005, while they were living in the Middle East, upon orders from then-al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Al-Muhajir was told to recruit young men who could easily move into Western countries, assimilate and lay low until the time came to attack. Britain has a fast-track visa program for medical students which makes it easier for them to enter the country.
It's still early in the investigation, and more information may change some of the conclusions drawn from this attack. However, the failures of all three attacks have allowed the British to get a much clearer picture of the conspiracy sooner than with the 7/7 attacks two years ago, chiefly because they caught everyone alive. They have been able to roll up an international network comprised mainly of physicians, and have learned that that is no coincidence.
Why physicians? The British had a fast-track entry program to get doctors into the country from abroad. Does that sound familiar? The US had a similar system for students before 9/11.
This tells us that the jihad in Iraq presents a direct threat to the West, and that it didn't begin with the invasion -- and the invasion didn't entirely stop it, either. Zarqawi had set up shop in Iraq before the Americans arrived with the complicity of the Iraqi government and ramped up his organization in the aftermath of the invasion. He had always threatened to reach outside of Iraq with AQ-Iraq, and almost a year after reaching room temperature, he almost succeeded.
This should make it official -- Iraq is a center in the war against radical Islamist terrorism. People can debate whether it would have been so absent an American invasion honestly and with evidence to support either position, but none can escape the fact that al-Qaeda operates in Iraq and that they have used that base to attack the West at home. They failed, which gives us optimism that we can beat them both at home and in Iraq, but it doesn't negate the threat.
Congress will debate the Iraq war policy in the next two months. They need to recognize that we cannot simply disengage and allow Iraq to serve as a base of operations for al-Qaeda. In the event of a successful attack from this group, we would have to re-invade all over again. Better that we stomp out AQI now and ensure a stable Iraq that can keep terrorists out in the long term than to pretend that the biggest problem in Iraq is the American forces fighting the terrorists.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on July 3, 2007 9:02 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (0)
Comments (21)
Posted by Drew | July 3, 2007 9:54 AM
"Progressives" are fond of harping at us that we need to address the "root causes" of...whatever. Is it then obvious that one of the root causes of British Jihadism are Medical Schools?
Posted by Drew | July 3, 2007 9:55 AM
"Progressives" are fond of harping at us that we need to address the "root causes" of...whatever. Is it then obvious that one of the root causes of British Jihadism are Medical Schools?
Posted by dopdep | July 3, 2007 10:33 AM
"This tells us that the jihad in Iraq presents a direct threat to the West, and that it didn't begin with the invasion -- and the invasion didn't entirely stop it, either. Zarqawi had set up shop in Iraq before the Americans arrived with the complicity of the Iraqi government and ramped up his organization in the aftermath of the invasion."
Apart from the rather obvious fact that, prior to the invasion, Zarqawi had no allegiance to Bin Laden, and was firmly rooted in the No-Fly zone where Saddam Hussein had no forces, but which was monitored and controlled by Allied air power.
As usual the story is a lot more complex than the soundbite.
Posted by Lew | July 3, 2007 10:58 AM
No Drew, the root cause is not Medical Schools. Its Tehran.
Sooner or later, we're going to have to force "regime change" on Iran, because Iran is at the center of every terrorist network on earth. That's where the problem is, and that's where the solution is!
Posted by NahnCee | July 3, 2007 11:03 AM
It's apparent to me that the "root cause" is moonbats like dopdep.
Posted by docjim505 | July 3, 2007 11:11 AM
Dealing with this crap is simple:
1. Kill terrorists wherever we find them
2. Destroy the regimes that give them aid and support
3. Work with other nations to root out and destroy terror financial and communication networks
4. "Encourage" various regimes (Saudi Arabia leaps to mind, for some reason) to liberalize
5. Improve our border security and counterintelligence apparatus to help us detect and destroy terrorist cells that may already exist in our country
6. See #1
To do these things, we will ALL have to realize that the GWOT is NOT a bumper sticker slogan, but a very real and deadly threat to our country and our allies. Unless and until certain segments of our society (i.e. the filthy liberals) realize that fighting terrorism is more important than fighting George Bush, we're in trouble.
Posted by AnonymousDrivel | July 3, 2007 11:39 AM
RE: Lew (July 3, 2007 10:58 AM)
To Tehran I'd be inclined to add portions of tribal Pakistan. Pakistan could turn very ugly almost instantaneously, but there's no doubt that Iran is the saber-rattling worst and has been at war with us for decades.
Some day soon we will be at war with them.
Posted by MarkT | July 3, 2007 12:02 PM
> 2. Destroy the regimes that give
> them aid and support
I would be more inclined to support this if I thought it was effective.
My personal opinion is that it is a dangerous roll of the dice: it might help or it might create more terrorists than it destroys.
Posted by Scott Malensek | July 3, 2007 12:05 PM
So, the idea of giving a timetable for leaving Iraq, and the idea that they'll never attack at home are both null and void now.
Tony Blair's gone, so it's not an attack against him
The Brits gave a timetable for leaving Iraq and it has neither quelled the violence for them there or at home
AQ in Iraq just attacked the UK at home so, the argument that AQ isn't in Iraq, hasn't been in Iraq, and would never leave Iraq because their fight is all about Iraq is just more empty political rhetoric.
If those who oppose the war want to really oppose it, then protest the terrorists and give up protesting those who fight them.
Posted by exDemo | July 3, 2007 12:15 PM
My ex Party is filled withcynical office seekers who don't care. As long as they can hide behind gate compounds, troops and armoured limosuines they don't care even for theior own Democrat constituents.
The 3500 or so killed in NYC were 80% Democrats acording to the previous voting patterns. It didn't help them at all,
I sometimes am tempted toregret that the United 93 passengers killed their terrorists. It might have been better for a lot of these poliitciasan to see a goodly number of themselves killed.
Then they might have a more realistic viewpoint that we are ALL in this together.
Oh Well, When LA and//or NYC turn iinto radiocative gas most of these elite idiots will have been reminded of that reality as they glow in the dark. Their absence will probably also raise the collective intelligence level as well.
Posted by Fight4TheRight | July 3, 2007 12:44 PM
We have this going on in the World at this very moment:
1. The Iraq War - fueled by Al Qaeda in Iraq forces
2. Iranians training, arming and supervising death squads in Iraq
3. Iran building a nuclear bomb
4. Hamas taking over Gaza, killing Christians
5. Hezbollah fully re-armed , taking new aim at Israel
6. The Taliban engaging NATO troops in Afghanistan
7. The Taliban slowly taking over the NW territories of Pakistan
8. The Red Mosque in Pakistan is now a blood field - with Taliban supported extremists forcing a war with Musharaff
9. Al Qaeda directed bombings in Great Britain.
10. Germany and Czechoslovakia on high alert for terrorist attacks.
With all of that (and of course, more than 20 other items could be listed), I have been perusing the internet to find the response to all of these "happenings" by Presidential candidates Clinton, Obama and Edwards. You know what I have found? Crickets. Nothing but the sound of bloody crickets!
These three people want to lead this country, they wish to be the most powerful man or woman in the World and the only thing out of their mouths about the fate of this World is outrage over a commutation of a peon's sentence.
These people are the answer???!!
Posted by Bennett | July 3, 2007 3:11 PM
I can certainly see the logic in AQ wanting to recruit doctors as they can move more easily into our societies, etc.. What I don't understand is WHY these doctors would willingly participate. I wonder if we will discover that there was some sort of compulsion, outside of ideology or religion, that made these doctors agree to carry out these attacks. Family members back home at risk, that sort of thing.
Just idle speculation on my part.
Posted by gb506 | July 3, 2007 3:55 PM
Interesting. Why would the British need to "fasttrack" getting foreign doctors into the country when Michael Moore says we should be emulating them by implementing single-payer government run health care?
Could it be that they pay their doctors so little that they need to bring impoverished folk in from abroad to fill the need? I thought so...
Posted by docjim505 | July 3, 2007 4:16 PM
Bennett,
Why do you think that there must have been compulsion? There may well HAVE been, but why do you think so? Is it beyond the realm of possibility that a (presumably) well-educated man could be so swayed by islamofascist ideology that he would become a would-be mass murderer?
Let me drop one name: Dr. Mengele.
Posted by exhelodrvr | July 3, 2007 4:20 PM
docjim,
"2. Destroy the regimes that give them aid and support"
In general, that is too strong an action, and will cause more problems than it fixes.
Targeted actions (escalating if necessary) against regimes that give them aid and support would have better long-term results. (i.e. If the Assad regime in Syria had been "destroyed", that country would be a mess right now. But targeted actions against them several years ago would likely have made them stop.)
Posted by docjim505 | July 3, 2007 4:20 PM
MarkT,
I see your point, but I think we'd be loading the dice if the various goons around the world got it firmly in their heads that sponsoring terrorists would lead inevitably to a visit from the USAF.
Posted by Bennett | July 3, 2007 4:26 PM
Docjim505, I didn't write that there WAS compulsion, I was just curious if that might be a factor. I believe, based on some of what we've seen in Iraq, that sometimes those who carry out attacks are forced to do so, under threat to families and so on. I think that is something that doesn't get looked at too often. It's too easy to assume that every participant is Super Jihadi, eagerly salivating at the prospect of blowing himself up and killing a bunch of us at the same time.
Yes it is certainly true that these doctors may have volunteered willingly. I have no idea either way. But it wouldn't surprise me if AQ leadership threatened death to someone's family if he (or she) didn't participate. Because there is no floor to their depravity.
Posted by KauaiBoy | July 3, 2007 4:34 PM
Both docjim505's and Fight4TheRight's lists and comments are important and must be the main (and only) focus of our next President. Right now Rudy is the only viable candidate to do any of those things IMHO.
What is important now is to begin to silence the mullahs and imans and other jackasses who are fomenting hatred against the West and the US and twisting religious dogma. It's dirty work that needs to get done and with utmost haste both here and abroad.
This will be going on for the rest of our lives and don't expect the next President to perform any miracles. This is a war of mental attrition----who believes the strongest will prevail. Peace through superior firepower will help.
Oh and Bush needs to pardon those 2 border patrol agents.
Posted by bayam | July 3, 2007 5:54 PM
He had always threatened to reach outside of Iraq with AQ-Iraq, and almost a year after reaching room temperature, he almost succeeded.... People can debate whether it would have been so absent an American invasion honestly and with evidence to support either position
Based on many of the comments, there are a lot of right wingers who still live in a twisted version of reality.
NO ONE in the CIA or other intelligence agencies has ever said that al Qaeda had any kind of significant operational presence in Iraq that would have led to these kinds of attacks under Saddam. There is NO evidence cited by PROFESSIOINAL CIA ANALYSTS that attacks against the United States staged from Iraq were about to occur before the US invasion. Per the CIA's pre-war assessment, Saddam was a rational actor who was very, very unlikely to use chemical weapons against Western targets, even if he possessed such weapons. Saddam's primary goal was self-preservation. You can inject as much paranoia and xenophobia into your thinking as you'd like, but it doesn't change the facts.
In reality, Saddam was a pro-Western, secular dicatator who was a close ally of the United States until his dreams of regional domination led to the invasion of Kuwait. Members of al Qaeda wanted to see Saddam replaced with an Islamic state- and that may yet happen.
The invasion of Iraq has created in Iraq a new terrorist staging ground that projects outward- sending people, financing, and operational guidance to other parts of the world. Nothing even remotely close to this existed prior to the invasion of US forces.
You can honestly debate the merits of staying in Iraq for the long-term, but this other argument about how 'maybe things are a little different' is complete nonsense. No wonder that a sizable percentage of the US population still believes today that Saddam was somehow involved in 9-11.
Posted by bayam | July 3, 2007 5:58 PM
Apart from the rather obvious fact that, prior to the invasion, Zarqawi had no allegiance to Bin Laden, and was firmly rooted in the No-Fly zone where Saddam Hussein had no forces, but which was monitored and controlled by Allied air power.
As usual the story is a lot more complex than the soundbite.
An intelligent comment that I missed. Then again, right wing bloggers who are reviewing intelligence documents may reach a different conclusion. Right before they find a cure for cancer by analyzing DNA sequences.
Posted by Terry Gain | July 3, 2007 11:23 PM
' There is NO evidence cited by PROFESSIOINAL CIA ANALYSTS that attacks against the United States staged from Iraq were about to occur before the US invasion. '
Bayam ,
Who said they were? And so what. These same professionals didn't know 9/11 was coming.
And don't let the fact of Abdul Rahman Yasin being on Saddam's payroll interfere with your smug litttle name-calling narrative.
" Saddam's primary goal was self-preservation."
Right. Salman Pak was all about self preservation. In fact it wasn't a terrorist training camp at all. It was an aviation theme park.
Anser al Islam and Qarqawi were in northern Iraq but there's no proof that the man running this closed society even knew they were there.
The same could surely be said for the Abus- Abbas and Nidal
Self preservation wouldn't of course be motivation to co-operate with terrorists would it. Or perhaps our poor old misunderstood ally- when he wasn't trying to have former presidents killed-just had a soft spot in his heart for homeless terrorists.
Saddam needed to invade Kuwait to preserve himself. He would have invaded Saudi Arabia for the same reason. (He only took Sudetenland because it was naturally part of Germany.)
"In reality, Saddam was a pro-Western, secular dicatator ...."
Sure. His last words belie this claim but what the hell, when you are o for .. what difference does it make.
Your strategy of let's just leave those Islamofascists alone and they'll go away and not bother us was tried by the last Democratic administration.
Some of us still remember how well that worked.