Bush compares Iraq to Vietnam

by Olivier Knox

KANSAS CITY, Missouri, Aug 23, 2007 (AFP) -

US President George W. Bush has warned that a hasty withdrawal from Iraq would trigger a bloodbath like the one in Southeast Asia after the US defeat and retreat from Vietnam.

"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left," Bush said Wednesday in an effort to turn on its head the analogy by critics who liken the Iraq war to the Vietnam quagmire.

see video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=sw_hTMeKVqA

"Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms, like 'boat people,' 'reeducation camps,' and 'killing fields,'" he said.

Bush, speaking to US veterans of 20th century conflicts in Asia, also likened nation-building and military operations in Iraq to democracy-fostering efforts in Japan and the decision to defend South Korea, respectively.

"Even the most optimistic among you probably would not have foreseen that the Japanese would transform themselves into one of America's strongest and most steadfast allies, or that the South Koreans would recover from enemy invasion to raise up one of the world's most powerful economies," he said.

The US president, pleading for patience with his unpopular war-fighting strategy, said those efforts held an important lesson and amounted to a valuable precedent.

"A free Iraq is not going to transform the Middle East overnight, but a free Iraq will be a massive defeat for Al-Qaeda. It will be an example that provides hope for millions throughout the Middle East. It'll be a friend of the United States. And it's going to be an important ally" against terrorism, he said.

Less than a month ahead of a key US report on progress in the Iraq war, Bush sought in his address to answer critics calling for a US withdrawal and also to reaffirm his support for embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

"Prime Minister Maliki's a good guy, good man, with a difficult job, and I support him," said Bush, seeking to dispel any sense that Washington has been distancing itself from the beleaguered government in Baghdad.

"Many are frustrated by the pace of progress in Baghdad, and I can understand this," he said. "A free Iraq's not going to be perfect. A free Iraq will not make decisions as quickly as the country did under the dictatorship."

Leading Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton was one who urged the Iraqi parliament to get rid of Maliki.

She spoke after a top Democratic senator, Carl Levin, hinted after a two-day visit to Iraq that Maliki should go.

"I share Senator Levins hope that the Iraqi parliament will replace Prime Minister Maliki with a less divisive and more unifying figure when it returns in a few weeks," Clinton said in a statement.

In his historical analysis, Bush glossed over key differences, such as the fact that Japan, unlike Iraq, was not in the throes of sectarian violence that some have called civil war when Washington tried to plant democracy in the ruins of empire there.

Democrats quickly fired back, with Bush's 2004 rival for the White House, Senator John Kerry, saying it was "not surprising that he (Bush) would oversimplify the differences and overlook the tragic similarities."

"If the president wants to heed the lessons of Vietnam, he should change course and change course now," said Kerry.

Senator Edward Kennedy also criticized Bush's speech, in which the president drew broad parallels between the global war on terrorism and conflicts in Asia, and likened Japan's 1941 strike on the US Pearl Harbor base to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

"The president is drawing the wrong lesson from history," Kennedy said.

Meanwhile in Iraq, the death toll continued to rise.

Fourteen US troops were killed when their helicopter crashed and a US soldier was killed in Baghdad, bringing the US military death toll since the 2003 invasion to 3,720 according to an AFP count.

The Iraqi security forces say they have lost at least 12,000 members, while Iraqi civilian death estimates range from 70,000 to 655,000.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said that his country would fall apart and regional wars would break out if US-led coalition forces were pull out.

"The sudden withdrawal of American troops in Iraq would cause the collapse of Iraq and will lead to the disintegration of and division within Iraq," he told US-funded Alhurra Television.

"Sudden withdrawal would also mean regional interventions and conflicts."

Osama Bin Laden Is `Healthy and Active,' Taliban Says

By Michael Heath

Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- A Taliban commander in Afghanistan said al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is alive and well, according to the transcript of a video provided by a U.S.-based organization that monitors extremist Web sites.

"He is extremely healthy and active," Mansour Dadullah said, according to the video's English-language subtitles. The clip was dated June 15, the IntelCenter in Alexandria, Virginia, said today.

Since bin Laden escaped U.S. and Afghan forces at the battle of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in December 2001, there have been no confirmed sightings of him. He has released several video and audio tapes from his presumed hiding places on the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Bush administration said in its latest National Intelligence Estimate last month that al-Qaeda, the group that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., is regaining strength in Pakistan and honing its tactics in Iraq.

The State Department is offering as much as $25 million for information leading to bin Laden's capture.

Dadullah, whose brother Mullah Dadullah was a top commander in the Taliban until he was killed this year, said he was contacted by bin Laden. "I received a message from him in which he advised me, `I must follow Mullah Dadullah and continue the same activities so that the mujahedeen may not weaken.' "

Death Speculation

"There's a very high percentage chance" that bin Laden is dead, Will Geddes, managing director of the London-based International Corporate Protection security company, said in a telephone interview today.

Even if bin Laden is alive, it may not be a "massive blow" to the U.S., Geddes said. "Al-Qaeda is no longer one man leading an international army." The organization has become a "generic umbrella name," he said.

L'Est Republicain newspaper reported in September that Saudi Arabian intelligence officials believe Saudi-born bin Laden died from a fever in a remote region of Pakistan.

The French newspaper cited a report from France's DGSE external intelligence agency. Saudi Arabia and Western governments, including France and the U.S., cast doubt on the report.

--With reporting by Camilla Hall in London and William McQuillen in Washington. Editors: Johnson (pmt/erj/jjd/hcl)

Dick Cheney 1994: Why the USA should not invade Iraq

Bush ties Al Qaeda in Iraq to Sept. 11

In a speech, he says Al Qaeda in Iraq is run by foreign leaders loyal to Osama bin Laden. Some experts challenge his assertions.

By Josh Meyer, James Gerstenzang and Greg Miller, L.A. Times Staff Writers

CHARLESTON, S.C. — President Bush made provocative new assertions Tuesday about Al Qaeda's role in Iraq, using recently declassified information to make his case that the global battle with the terrorism network — and Americans' safety at home — hinges on keeping U.S. troops there to fight.

Bush's comments were met with skepticism by some terrorism experts and former U.S. intelligence officials, who said the president exaggerated or even misrepresented the facts in Iraq. For a transcript of the president's remarks, click here.

Speaking to about 300 troops at Charleston Air Force Base, Bush said that Al Qaeda in Iraq was essentially the same organization that attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, and that it was by far the biggest threat facing Iraqis and U.S.-led coalition troops there. Bush said that its leaders took orders from Al Qaeda officials coordinating the organization's worldwide jihad, or holy war, and that they would be killing civilians somewhere else if they were not in Iraq.

"Those who justify withdrawing our troops from Iraq by denying the threat of Al Qaeda in Iraq and its ties to Osama bin Laden ignore the clear consequences of such a retreat," Bush said. "If we were to follow their advice, it would be dangerous for the world and disastrous for America.

"Here's the bottom line," he said. "Al Qaeda in Iraq is run by foreign leaders loyal to Osama bin Laden. Like Bin Laden, they are coldblooded killers who murder the innocent to achieve Al Qaeda's political objectives.

"Yet despite all the evidence, some will tell you that Al Qaeda in Iraq is not really Al Qaeda and not really a threat to America," the president continued. "Well, that's like watching a man walk into a bank with a mask and a gun and saying's he's probably just there to cash a check."

Bush's impassioned 28-minute speech was the administration's longest and most detailed argument to date that Al Qaeda in Iraq and Bin Laden's terrorist operation were one and the same. Bush used it, he acknowledged, to rebut his critics' assertions that the Iraqi militant group was not justification enough for keeping U.S. troops in the war-riven country.

"For the security of our citizens and the peace of the world, we must give Gen. [David H.] Petraeus and his troops the time and the resources they need so they can defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq," Bush said of his top commander in the country.

White House officials said Bush used declassified intelligence reports and assessments to make his case, though they would not disclose details of where the information came from.

Bush's address to the 437th Airlift Wing contained oft-repeated assertions that the president and other officials have made in recent months to rally lagging support for the war. He mentioned Al Qaeda 95 times — and of those, 29 were in references to the group Al Qaeda in Iraq. Bush also employed chilling new language to expand on his warnings that a pullout could have grave consequences in the United States, turning Iraq into a country like Afghanistan in 2001, from which Al Qaeda could plot devastating attacks on U.S. soil.

"If we were not fighting these Al Qaeda extremists and terrorists in Iraq, they would not be leading productive lives of service and charity," Bush said. "Most would be trying to kill Americans and other civilians elsewhere, in Afghanistan or other foreign capitals or on the streets of our own cities."

Some U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials said Bush's broader assertions were in line with analysts' views. They noted that Bush used careful wording and deliberate attribution in cases in which he was citing intelligence that had not been substantiated.

But other experts and former U.S. intelligence officials questioned those assertions.

They noted that the Iraq conflict had undoubtedly attracted Islamic extremists who were trained in Afghanistan and might have fought in other theaters. But some cited an official U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released last year that described Iraq as a "cause celebre" for Islamic radicals worldwide, fanning anger and resentment across the Muslim world and beyond.

"I think what the president is saying is in some sense fundamentally misleading," said Robert Grenier, former head of the counter-terrorism center at the CIA as well as the agency's mission manager for the war in Iraq. "If he means to suggest the invasion of Iraq has not created more jihadists bent on killing Americans, and that if Iraq hadn't been there as a magnet they would have been attracted somewhere else, that's completely disingenuous."

The war "has convinced many Muslims that the United States is the enemy of Islam and is attacking Muslims, and they have become jihadists as a result of their experience in Iraq," Grenier said.

Bush also said Al Qaeda in Iraq posed a threat to Americans at home. "We've already seen how Al Qaeda used a failed state thousands of miles from our shores to bring death and destruction to the streets of our cities, and we must not allow them to do so again," he said.

Several experts said prevailing U.S. intelligence was at odds with that assertion as well.

Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University, a veteran counter-terrorism analyst and government consultant, said the vast majority of fighters who are part of Al Qaeda in Iraq are Iraqis who have shown little interest in seeking targets beyond that country's borders.

In his speech, Bush acknowledged that the organization was one of several Sunni Muslim radical militant groups in Iraq, but that the intelligence community considered it to be the most dangerous because it was behind "most of the spectacular, high-casualty attacks," which were intended to accelerate sectarian violence.

Frank Hyland, a former consultant at the CIA's counter-terrorism center and at the multi-agency National Counterterrorism Center, said he agreed that Al Qaeda in Iraq was a dangerous organization with ties to Al Qaeda central in Pakistan.

But he added that Al Qaeda in Iraq was one of dozens of groups attacking civilians and U.S.-led troops in Iraq.

Other Sunni groups, Shiite Muslim militias such as the Al Mahdi army, criminal gangs, "throwaway kids" and Iranian intelligence operatives are doing so as well, he said.

A British panel of private and government experts known as the Iraq Commission released a report this month that concluded there were between 50 and 75 "disparate groups, formed to rid the country of coalition forces."

One of the more controversial claims that the Bush administration has made involves the operational link between Al Qaeda in Iraq and Al Qaeda's command-and-control operations headed by Bin Laden and others in Pakistan.

On Tuesday, Bush sought to bolster what he said were direct ties between the two, in response to criticism that the administration has been exaggerating the connections.

Bush said the founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the late Abu Musab Zarqawi, merged his organization with Al Qaeda and pledged allegiance to it.

Some experts and former U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday that the Iraq group had always had its own agenda, as evidenced by a public fallout between Zarqawi and Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman Zawahiri, over Zarqawi's killing of Shiite Muslims in Iraq.

Bush alluded to that disagreement in his speech, but he emphasized repeatedly that Al Qaeda in Iraq was part of Al Qaeda's "decentralized chain of command, not … a separate group" and that the two operations were "united in their overarching strategy."

As evidence of Al Qaeda's connection to the Iraqi group, Bush said, after Zarqawi — a Jordanian-born Palestinian — was killed by a U.S. airstrike last year, he was replaced by another foreigner, Egyptian Abu Ayyub Masri, whose ties to the Al Qaeda senior leadership are "deep and long-standing."

Bush said that according to the declassified intelligence, many of Al Qaeda in Iraq's other senior leaders are also foreign militants. They include a Syrian who is Al Qaeda in Iraq's "emir" in Baghdad, a Saudi who is its top spiritual and legal advisor, an Egyptian who fought in Afghanistan in the 1990s and a Tunisian who U.S. officials believe plays a key role in managing foreign fighters, the president said.

Rand Beers, a former senior Bush and Clinton administration counter-terrorism official, said Bush was exaggerating the connections.

"There is no question that he is oversimplifying what is happening there in Iraq," Beers said. "He is misrepresenting where the major front of Al Qaeda is, which is in Pakistan."

Two U.S. soldiers charged with murder in Iraq

By Alister Bull

BAGHDAD, July 19 (Reuters) - Two U.S. soldiers have been charged with murdering an Iraqi last month near Kirkuk, the U.S. military said on Thursday, the latest in a string of accusations of abuse laid against American forces in Iraq.

Sergeant 1st Class Trey Corrales, from San Antonio, Texas, and Specialist Christopher Shore, from Winder, Georgia, were each charged with one count of premeditated murder, the military said in a statement.

Incidents of American soldiers illegally killing Iraqis since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 have incensed ordinary Iraqis and added to calls for a withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Some of the most publicised cases include the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqis in 2005 by U.S. Marines in the town of Haditha, and the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Mahmudiya in March 2006.

In fresh violence, a roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter on Wednesday while they were on patrol in eastern Baghdad, the military said, lifting the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq this month to 47.

The premeditated killing of the Iraqi was alleged to have taken place on or around June 23 near the northern oil-city of Kirkuk, where the two soldiers were serving with the 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, the military statement said.

In addition, their battalion commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Browder, while not a suspect in the case, was relieved of his duties because of a lack of confidence in his ability to command effectively, the statement said.

It gave no specific details on the incident.

On Wednesday, a military jury in California found a U.S. Marine guilty of conspiring to kidnap and kill an Iraqi man, who was shot dead last year.

Last month three U.S. soldiers were charged with the unlawful killing of three Iraqis in separate incidents during U.S. operations between April and June near the town of Iskandiriya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad.

The death of four more U.S. soldiers lifts the number killed since the U.S. invasion to 3,626 and was announced after Democrats in the U.S. Senate failed in a night-long bid to impose a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have launched a major security clampdown in and around the capital to flush out Sunni militants and Shi'ite militiamen, and commanders warn that casualties may rise as their troops tackle riskier neighbourhoods.

The previous three months were the bloodiest for U.S. forces since the war began, with 331 personnel killed.

"It is a tough fight and it is one that will continue to be so for some time," military spokesman Brigadier-General Kevin Bergner said at a news conference in Baghdad on Wednesday.

U.S. President George W. Bush, under pressure to change the course of a war that is increasingly unpopular at home, says he is waiting for a September progress report from his top men in Iraq, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

"War on Freedom" trailer 3 released

Life under Saddam was bad, but nothing compared to the American "freedom".

"Bush in Denial about Iraq": BarackObama.com starts sending letters to editors

In an effort to send a strong message about Iraq to Americans, Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has begun a system for supporters to easily email editors of major national and local newspapers about Iraq, or any issue for that matter.

A letter is even written out for the supporters who have the option of re-writing it entirely or editing it.

An extract of an AP wire ("New intel report: Al-Qaida renewing efforts to sneak terror plotters into U.S.") :

On Thursday, news of the counterterrorism center's threat assessment renewed the political debate about the nature of the al-Qaida threat and whether U.S. actions -- in Iraq in particular -- have made the U.S. safer from terrorism.

At a news conference Thursday, President Bush acknowledged al-Qaida's continuing threat to the United States and used the new report as evidence his administration's policies are on the right course.

"The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on Sept. 11," he said. "That's why what happens in Iraq matters to security here at home."

Yet Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Iraq has distracted the United States. He said the U.S. should have finished off al-Qaida in 2002 and 2003 along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Instead, "President Bush chose to invade Iraq, thereby diverting our military and intelligence resources away from the real war on terrorism," Rockefeller said. "Threats to the United States homeland are not emanating from Iraq. They are coming from al-Qaida leadership."