Written by: Beck

Matt Margolis has posted an interview with Richard Miniter, author of the book Shadow War. The book, and consequently the interview, detail how the war on terror is being prosecuted in over 100 countries. In essence, it makes the point that the election campaign focus on only two theaters--Iraq and Afghanistan--is an entirely inaccurate representation of what's actually going on in the world. Some choice bits:

Here's the key statistic: More 3,000 al Qaeda fighters have been seized or slain since 9-11 in 102 different countries. That shows that the effort is larger than the public has been told--3,000 may be equal to one-quarter of al Qaeda's total strength--and far more global than the public believes. If you destroy a division of the enemy and it does not score a comparable victory against you, you are winning. That is the position of the U.S. today.

The war is more than Iraq and Afghanistan: In all but a handful of those 102 cases, those captures and kills have occurred with the help of local governments. Forget the 30 allies we have on the ground in Iraq, we have almost 100 allies in the war on terror--including virtually every Muslim-majority country in the world...

The key difference between the candidates on the war comes down to the nature of the threat. Kerry seems to see the war as limited to Afghanistan and Iraq--despite the intelligence briefings he has received. And he has surrounded himself with Clinton NSC officials who saw terrorism as primarily a law enforcement problem. I'd feel better about Kerry if I thought that he and his advisers had thought deeply about the counterterrorism mistakes of the Clinton years and the size of the threat manifested on 9-11. But I see no signs that they have learned from these bitter experiences.

In answer to a question about measuring success in the WoT (and whether or not that's even really possible, Miniter has this to say:

Still, records of captures and kills are hard numbers. Lists of stopped plots--such as the plot to sink U.S. warships off the coast of Spain, to blow up the US embassy in Paris, the US embassy in Bamako, Mali and to kill the US Ambassador to Singapore--are hard to dismiss as any thing other than clear-cut victories. And consider al Qaeda's "victories": all but the March 11 bombing in Madrid occurred in Muslim-majority countries. They have been unable to carry attacks in the Western world for more than 3 years. And, with the exception of the bombings in Turkey, they have been unable to strike twice in quick succession in the same country--because their cells have been smashed, slain or seized. That is another sign of victory.

Finally, a point which especially spoke to me--the damned if you do, damned if you don't double standard used by the press & others with regard to the current administration. Miniter has this to say in response to a question about the infamous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing:

The only evidence that I see in the PDB that CIA was aware of a gathering threat was the title--and that title was a based on a specific question put to the CIA in July following a plot to kill Bush in Italy in July 2001. So if anything the president was more focused on the threat than the CIA.

And since you asked, the Bush Administration had developed a plan to strike Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in retaliation for the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000. The Clinton people had declined to act, as I explain in my book Losing Bin Laden. The Bush people saw the necessity of combating the threat and had developed a plan. All of the relevant agencies, including State, Defense and CIA, had approved the plan by August 2001. Condi Rice had approved the plan in September, before 9-11. A meeting was scheduled with the president, but before he could be briefed, two planes slammed into the World Trade Center. The Administration simply did not know it was in a race against time.

If Bush had attacked bin Laden before 9-11, and the attacks on New York and Washington happened anyway, I'm sure a certain segment of the press would have blamed Bush for provoking the attacks through unilateral action.

Read the rest.

Related here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.