Obama reminds George W. Bush that the real terror threat remains in Afghanistan, not Iraq.Obama: Shift American Troops To Fight Al-QaedaBy Cliff Montgomery – July 16th, 2007America should move troops from Iraq to hunt down al-Qaeda leaders hiding around the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, says popular Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.He points out a simple truth: George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” policies have actually left America at increased risk from terrorist attacks. The Illinois senator said the moves of this Republican president have done little more than provide a de facto safe haven for Osama bin Laden and his top deputies.”We cannot win a war against the terrorists if we’re on the wrong battlefield,” Obama correctly stated.”America must urgently begin deploying from Iraq and take the fight more effectively to the enemy’s home by destroying al-Qaeda’s leadership along the Afghan-Pakistan border, eliminating their command and control networks and disrupting their funding,” he added.Obama made his remarks in Oelwein, Iowa on Saturday. It was the candidate’s 15th trip to that state; precinct caucuses scheduled for January will officially start the 2008 presidential process.The Illinois senator discussed the issue of terrorism as a recently-released U.S. intelligence report declares that in the past few years–or, since we’ve been spending our energy in Iraq–al-Qaeda has successfully rebuilt its organization from Afghanistan.”What I would say is that as a consequence of bad decisions we are more at risk and less safe than we should have been at this point, given all the resources we have spent and the U.S. lives that have been lost,” said Obama.Obama also pointed out that the Bush Administration wrongly chose to conquer Iraq–which had nothing to do with either al-Qaeda or the terror attacks of Sept. 11th, 2001–and ceased American emphasis on Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda’s top leadership and training camps are located.”They have entirely regrouped along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border,” Obama correctly stated.”The threat of terrorism has actually increased and we’ve seen a massive spike in terrorist activity, in part because we did not finish the job in Afghanistan and were distracted by a war of choice in Iraq,” the senator properly reasoned.”When I am president of the United States I will make this pledge: Nobody will work harder to go after those terrorists who will do the American people harm,” Obama promised.”But that requires a commander in chief who understands our troops need to be on the right battlefield, not the wrong battlefield,” he added.It was probably one of Obama’s best speeches contrasting the real enemy based in Afghanistan with the fruitless nation-building of Iraq. And it couldn’t have come at a better time for the presidential candidate.The most recent official White House threat assessment proves Obama’s simple points nicely–even if the Bush Administration did all it could to bury the facts deep into the report, where it knew most reporters would never look.The study clearly states that Al-Qaeda has made a comeback; but as usual, how that truth is being presented to the lazy corporate press and the innocent public is something else.The awful truth? The overwhelming majority of media outlets are currently owned by a mere handful of corporations; so it’s not too hard for any administration to sell any story it likes, if it treats the corporate honchos well enough.These friendships are now producing scary headlines about al-Qaeda’s resurgence, and just happen to be dovetailed with land Security Secretary Michael Chertoff telling corporate media outlets of his “gut feeling” that every American should fear more attacks this summer.But buried deep in the National Counterterrorism Center’s recent report is the quiet admission that al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the Sept. 11th, 2001 attacks on America, is not basing itself in Iraq–as George W. Bush constantly pretends–but rather at the group’s real operations base along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.This assessment only further supports Bush critics who declare that the fruitless-nation building of Iraq has only served to divert critical resources away from the real terror war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.Experts agree that the Bush Administration, which lied about an al-Qaeda-Iraq link to get us into that country, is again lying to keep us there.“The president wants to play on al-Qaeda because he thinks Americans understand the threat al-Qaeda poses,” Bruce Riedel, an expert residing at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a former C.I.A. official, told The New York Times.“But I don’t think he demonstrates that fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq precludes al-Qaeda from attacking America here tomorrow.”Al-Qaeda, both in Iraq and globally, thrives on the American occupation [of Iraq],” Riedel countered.Like what you’re reading so far? 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How Necessary Laws Are Killed These Days
Lawmakers generally only fight to protect the things they care about – and all too often, that just doesn’t include the lives of most of their constituents.
