Remembering 9/11: 4 of 5 (Where We Are Now)

Yesterday was a day of remembrance. As a nation, we remember where we were when terrorists struck the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. People around the country are gathering to remember the thousands of people killed. On Dec. 11, 2001, Bush stated, "In time, this war will end. But our remembrance never will." But today, we are also reminded that President Bush has failed to fulfill his promise to make the world safer. Five years later, global terrorist attacks have increased, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, and 86 percent of national security and terrorism experts believe the "global war on terror" has made the world more dangerous for the American people. Today, we remember not only the brutal tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but also how much more the nation needs to do to be secure. As the New York Times notes, when the nation's leaders stop and reflect on 9/11, it would be miraculous if the best of our leaders did something larger -- expressed grief and responsibility for the bad path down which we've gone, and promised to work together to turn us in a better direction.

We’ll Protect America –Trust Me
In his weekend radio address, Bush again stated that we are "safer today" than we were before 9/11. But national security and terrorism experts dispute that claim. A recent survey by the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine found not only that 86 percent believe the world is now more dangerous, but that 84 percent believe the United States is losing the war on terror. Seventy-nine percent of the experts anticipate a terror attack on the scale of 9/11 will occur inside the United States by the end of 2011. "Even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude we are winning," John F. Lehman Jr., a former Navy secretary under President Reagan, warned in a recent article for the U.S. Naval Institute. Just 14 percent of Americans feel more safe now than they did five years ago, the same amount who believe the threat of terrorism has decreased since 9/11. Terrorism continues to kill more than 2,300 people each year since 2001, and in 2005, civilian deaths from terrorism swelled to more than 10,000. Al-Qaeda -- "the initial focus of the 'global war on terror'" -- still remains strong; a 2005 U.N. report warned that the terrorist organization "continues to evolve and adapt to the pressures and opportunities of the world around it."

The Original War on Terror
Nearly five years after the Taliban was overthrown, the fighting in Afghanistan is the bloodiest since the beginning of the war. A violent Taliban resurgence has killed more than 1,600 people over the past four months, including many American and NATO soldiers. In July, a senior British military commander in Afghanistan described the country's situation as "close to anarchy." Opium production is up 60 percent from last year. In his recent speeches, Bush has glossed over Afghanistan's violence and the Taliban's vicious resurgence, simply stating, "Five years later, Taliban and al Qaeda remnants are desperately trying to retake control of that country. They will fail. ... They will fail because they are no match for the military forces of a free Afghanistan, a NATO Alliance, and the United States of America." But his speeches haven't laid out a plan for resurrecting the flailing country. Osama bin Laden remains at large and the trail on him has gone "stone cold," nearly five years after Bush said he wanted him "dead or alive" and more than a year since Vice President Cheney said he had a "pretty good idea" where bin Laden was hiding. The Senate recently reinstated a special CIA unit dedicated to hunting Osama bin Laden after the agency closed it in late 2005.

Iraq/ al Qaeda Link
On Dec. 9, 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that the 9/11 hijackers had contact with Iraqi officials before the attack. In March 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice stated Iraq had "a very strong link to training Al Qaeda in chemical and biological techniques," and in Oct. 2002, Bush said, "We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making, in poisons, and deadly gases." This link has been repeatedly discredited, but Bush administration officials continue to assert it. The 9/11 Commission Report found that there was "no evidence" Iraq and al Qaeda ever developed a "collaborative operational relationship" and a Defense Intelligence Agency report from 2002 concluded, "Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Ladin any useful CB [chemical or biological] knowledge or assistance."

As you know, a new Senate Intelligence Committee report notes that not only did Iraq and al-Qaeda not collaborate, but their leaders were enemies: "Saddam did not trust al-Qa'ida or any other radical Islamist group and did not want to cooperate with them." Despite these pre- and post-war findings, both Rice and Cheney yesterday continued to assert there were ties going on between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime.Iraq WMD

In 2002, President Bush promised the nation that war was necessary because "Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons." That was a lie. Bush now states, "The greatest threat before humanity today is the possibility of secret and sudden attack with chemical or biological or radiological or nuclear weapons." National security experts agree with the President, but Bush hasn't backed up his rhetoric with action. Of the three countries that Bush declared to be part of the "axis of evil" -- Iraq, Iran, and North Korea -- Iraq, the country the United States chose to invade, is the one country that had no weapons of mass destruction. "While the U.S. has been playing poker in the region, Iran has been playing chess," says Nadim Shehadi of the British think tank Chatham House, which has issued a report stating there is "little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East."

Iran recently ignored a U.N. deadline to suspend aspects of its nuclear fuel program. On North Korea, the Bush administration's policy has largely been a failure. Diplomatic efforts have broken down, missiles have been test fired, and plutonium production has resumed. North Korea now has enough plutonium to produce as many as ten additional nuclear weapons. Unity After the Attacks
President Bush promised that the United States would lead the world in the war on terror. Does leadership takes more than unilateral shows of power? Have Bush’s strategy gone much beyond that tactic

Six in 10 Americans believe Bush is not respected as a world leader and 65 percent of Americans think the United States less respected by other countries than it was in the past. (Just seven percent think it is more respected.) This global unpopularity continues to hurt U.S. efforts to fight terrorism. A U.S. counterterrorism official acknowledged that "the unpopularity of the U.S. had made it harder for allied governments -- like Pakistan and India -- to cooperate with U.S. counterterrorism efforts."

Yesterday President Bush gave a primetime address to the nation on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The day before, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow assured reporters that the speech is "not going to be a political speech." Unfortunately, it was (other than the first two minutes) just that. Instead of focusing on the 9/11 attacks and our common national ties, Bush used the speech to justify his decision to go to war in Iraq and called on the country to support his "stay the course" policy: "I'm often asked why we're in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. My administration, the Congress, and the United Nations saw the threat."

Last night on NBC, Tim Russert noted that after the speech, the President could be viewed as the "partisan-in-chief." "The president should be ashamed of using a national day of mourning to commandeer the airwaves to give a speech that was designed not to unite the country and commemorate the fallen, but to seek support for a war in Iraq that he has admitted had 'nothing' to do with 9/11," said Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA). Yesterday's address capped a series of terrorism speeches over the last 11 days.War Plan

In an interview with the Hampton Roads Daily Press last last week, retiring Army Transportation Corps commander, Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, revealed that in the months heading up to the Iraq war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan. Scheid was a colonel with the U.S. Central Command, the unit that oversees military operations in the Middle East, in late 2001 when Rumsfeld "told us to get ready for Iraq." Scheid said the emphasis in the war-planning stages was on taking out the Saddam regime and then leaving. "The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," he said. "We won't stay." Rumsfeld rejected recommendations to plan for a post-invasion occupation. Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we [would] have to plan for it," Scheid said. "I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today. "He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

(Sources: WashingtonTimes, USAToday, FOXNews, AP, WashingtonPost, WhiteHouse website, PollingReport.com, LA Times, CNN, Chatham House, Center For American Progress, US Senate website, Hampton Roads Daily Press, NBC, DailyPress, 911 Commission Report)