ABC News reports
Mimicking the hijackers who executed the Sept. 11 attacks, insurgents reportedly tied to al Qaeda in Iraq considered using student visas to slip terrorists into the United States to orchestrate a new attack on American soil.
Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently testified that documents captured by coalition forces during a raid of a safe house believed to house Iraqi members of al Qaeda six months ago "revealed [AQI] was planning terrorist operations in the U.S."
...Sources tell ABC News that the plot may have involved moving between 10 and 20 suspects believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq into the United States with student visas — the same method used by the 19 al Qaeda terrorists who struck American targets on Sept. 11.
...The plot was discovered six months ago, roughly the same time that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed by coalition forces. Sources tell ABC News that the suspects involved in the effort to launch the U.S. attack were closely associated with Zarqawi.
The plan also came only months after Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2, had requested that Zarqawi attempt an attack inside the United States.
"This appears to be the first hard evidence al Qaeda in Iraq was trying to attack us here at home," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, former chief counterterrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council.
Still, most Democrats and Republicans like Senators Warner and Hagel believe that losing in Iraq will help us defeat the Islamists who want to kill us. It is for this reason that the State of the Union Address that should be delivered tonight was instead written by Jules Crittenden (via Glenn Reynolds)
The State of the Union is a disaster. I did my best, but I made mistakes, and my best wasn’t good enough.
We went to war without building up our army, and now, I am trying to make up for that.
But that is not the disaster.
The disaster is that you, Congress and the American people, do not care to fight.
Faced with a fundamental challenge to our own security, to everything we believe in, to the world order to peace and security for which we and our parents fought so hard for so many years, you now want to pretend like none of these threats are real. You want to surrender to the evil I have been telling you about. An evil that, unchecked, can consume large parts of the world and threatens to usher in a dark age.
You didn’t like it when I talked about evil. Sounded too simple, too uncompromising, too moralistic. Too … biblical.
I don’t know what else you call people who fly passenger jets into office buildings; who rape women in front of their husbands and children, and execute their opponents in acid baths; who seek to spread tyrannical and archaic religious regimes that enslave women and stifle fundamental freedoms. Who want to dominate the world’s primary oil fields with nuclear weapons.
I call it evil. Works for me.
I’ve heard all the comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. George Bush’s Vietnam. The myopia is astonishing, even for me, George Bush, who you all think just isn’t that smart. But I learned something in school: People who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Didn’t you learn anything from Vietnam? Didn’t you see what happened when your predecessors in Congress, disgruntled and responding to public opinion polls just like you are, voted repeatedly to undermine an ally that was fighting for its survival and making headway against evil? There, I’ve said it again. Millions of people were murdered or imprisoned.
And then, those who wished us ill … the evil-doers … evil, evil evil … took advantage of our weakness.
The Soviet Union, evil personified, invaded Afghanistan, knowing we’d do nothing about it. Iran defied all international norms, took our sovereign embassy and held our people hostage for 444 days. They knew we’d do nothing about it. It was a massive humiliation we have been paying for with our own precious blood ever since.
Where do you think this war we are now engaged in started, anyway? Just ask Osama bin Laden, veteran of the Afghan war against the Soviets, what lesson he learned from two decades of American appeasement and withdrawal in the face of provocation.
Now, you want to negotiate with two of the world’s primary sponsors of terrorism, who are directly involved in support of the terrorists who murder our soldiers. You want to make an arrangement by which we will exit Iraq, and leave it to them. To loot, to murder, to fight over, while the rest of the world’s evil regimes look on, see our weakness, and plot their own moves.
You can try that, with resolutions, by cutting spending for troops in the field, as you seek the short-term satisfaction of withdrawal. But I remain President of the United States, and as long as I am, I will be no lame duck in this fight.
I will engage evil directly where I find it, in Iraq and in Iran. With an aggressive and ruthless new strategy and a plan to build our army as we should have a long time ago, I will show the American people that we can fight and we can win. I expect that the American people, though misled by their press and many of their elected representatives, will see results and will get it. Because the American people are a people who in the end don’t give up, don’t stop fighting, refuse to lose, and will choose to win. I have faith in them.
Oh, there’s another one of those words you don’t like.
A nation that is not willing to fight for what it believes in, for its place in the world, is not worthy of its own ideals. But that is not America. I now intend to help America restore its faith in itself. By fighting this necessary fight that we cannot afford to lose.
So … are you with me, or against us?
al Qaeda's Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri delivers the Democratic response (cheered on by Senators Hagel, Warner, Collins and Coleman among others)
Bush raved in his latest speech and among his ravings was that he will be sending 20,000 of his troops to Iraq so I ask him why send 20,000 only – why not send 50 or 100 thousand?
Aren’t you aware that the dogs of Iraq are pining for your troop’s dead bodies?
Send your entire army to be annihilated at the hands of the Mujahedeen to free the world from your evil and theirs because Iraq, the land of the caliphate and Jihad is able to burry ten armies like yours with God’s help and power....
And I address the American people saying to them I know that most of you don’t understand the language of religion, morals and principles and instead understand the language of running after pillage and plunder and desires so that’s why I address with what you understand
I tell you if you want to live in security you must accept the facts of what is happening on the ground, and reject the fantasies with which Bush tries to deceive you, you must honestly try to reach a mutual understanding with the Muslims for then and only then you might enjoy security, if however you continue with the policy of Bush and his gang, you will never even dream of peace
Security is a shared destiny, if we are secure, you might be secure and if we are safe, you might be safe, and if we are struck and killed, you will definitely with God’s permission be struck and killed. This is the correct equation
So try to understand it, if you understand
Oh, we understand all right. al Qaeda wants us to negotiate with it for peace, just like it was a legitimate government. And we are supposed to believe that they could be trusted.
We, the United States of America is supposed to sue for peace with the Islamists.
If we are going to negotiate for peace with al Qaida, it has to be from a position of strength, not weakness. When we negotiated with Japan in 1945 it was: make peace or in your whole country there won't be two sticks standing on top of each other when we are done. That's how you talk peace with people who attack you and want to kill you.
And is there anyone reading this that thinks that withdrawing from Iraq will better our hand in that regard?
What counter terrorism expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross said in December 2006 is still true today
Negotiation with al-Qaeda is a terrible idea now, just as it was on all the previous occasions that the terrorist group suggested the course. What has changed is the political environment. The Waziristan Accord was a surrender to al-Qaeda and Taliban factions. The world has looked the other way as the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Courts Union rose to power in Somalia, drawing foreign fighters to the country and implementing a strict version of sharia law in the process. The Iraq Study Group frames Iran and Syria as partners for peace in Iraq that need to be engaged, despite both countries' active support for the insurgency. The op-ed pages of major newspapers reveal an increased taste for negotiation with our enemies: witness Jason Burke's call in The Observer for negotiation with the Taliban. We are increasingly in a negotiating mood.
Yes, there are those in this country who harbor the possibility of negotiating with Islamists who will only promise they might leave us alone. And many of those also think the first step is to withdraw from Iraq. Clearly these people do not believe our way of life are worth defending.
It's sad to say, but the State of the Union is wobbly.
And the State of our political class is even worse because many of whom are too busy looking towards the next election cycle instead of to the well-being of our nation.
