[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 20757-20761]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            WHERE ARE THEY?

  Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, I have sought recognition to insert 
into the Record an article by Michael Smerconish, Esquire, concerning 
efforts by the United States to capture Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-
Zawahiri. Mr. Smerconish is a distinguished columnist who writes for 
the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, has a 
morning talk show on the ``Big Talker,'' 1210 WPHT-AM, and appears on 
MSNBC. I have known Mr. Smerconish for more than 20 years and have a 
very high regard for his scholarship, among his other fine qualities. 
While I do not agree with all his comments, especially all his 
political evaluations, I believe this article should be made available 
to my colleagues and the public generally to the extent that the 
Congressional Record is read. Accordingly, I ask unanimous consent to 
have the article to which I refer printed in the Record.

                              Pakisourced

                  (Michael Smerconish, Sept. 11, 2008)

       Where the hell are Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? 
     And why does virtually no one ask anymore? What's changed 
     since the days when any suburban soccer mom would have 
     strangled either of them with her bare hands if given the 
     chance? And what happened to President Bush's declaration to 
     a joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11 that ``[A]ny 
     nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be 
     regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.'' Doesn't 
     that apply to Pakistan?
       These are things that I wonder as I watch from my perch in 
     Philadelphia, where I'm a talk show host, columnist and MSNBC 
     talking head. I have also spoken and written about them 
     incessantly, so much so that I've exhausted my welcome with 
     many conservative members of my own talk radio audience. My 
     editors at The Philadelphia Daily News and The Philadelphia 
     Inquirer have made it clear that I've published my last 
     column on this issue because I have written seven to date. On 
     the day after the Pennsylvania primary, I told Chris Matthews 
     on Hardball that this was an issue that could help Barack 
     Obama win support among white male voters, he recognized that 
     it was ``[my] issue,'' before adding, ``And I agree with you 
     completely.''
       I can't help myself. So strong is my belief that we've 
     failed in our responsibility to 3,000 dead Americans that I 
     am contemplating voting for a Democratic presidential 
     candidate for the first time in my life. It's the chronology 
     I find so compelling.
       We're at the seven year anniversary of 9/11, lacking not 
     only closure with regard to the two top al Qaeda leaders but 
     also public discourse about any plan to bring them to 
     justice. To me, that suggests a continuation of what I 
     perceive to be the Bush Administration's outsourcing of this 
     responsibility at great cost to a government with limited 
     motivation to get the job done. Of course, I may be wrong; I 
     have no inside information. And I'd love to be proven in 
     error by breaking news of their capture or execution. But 
     published accounts paint an intriguing and frustrating 
     picture.
       To begin, bin Laden is presumed to have been in Afghanistan 
     on 9/11 and to have fled that nation during the battle at 
     Tora Bora in December of 2001. Gary Berntsen, who was the CIA 
     officer in charge on the ground, told me that his request for 
     Army Rangers to prevent bin Laden's escape into Pakistan was 
     denied, and sure enough, that's where bin Laden went. Then 
     came a period when the Bush Administration was supposed to be 
     pressing the search through means it couldn't share publicly. 
     But as time went by with no capture, the signs became more 
     troubling.
       We now know that in late 2005, the CIA disbanded Alec 
     Station, the FBI-CIA unit dedicated to finding bin Laden, 
     something which was reported on July 4, 2006 by The New York 
     Times. At the time, I hoped we'd closed the bin Laden unit 
     because Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was fully 
     engaged in the hunt in his country's northwest territories, 
     where the duo were supposedly hiding. In September 2006, 
     however, Musharraf reached an accord with tribal leaders 
     there, notorious for their refusal to hand over a guest. In 
     doing so, he agreed to give them continued free reign.
       The following month, in October of 2006, I participated in 
     a week-long, Pentagon-sponsored, military immersion program 
     called the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference. This was a 
     unique opportunity for 45 civilians who were invited to play 
     military tourist and learn first-hand about the United States 
     Central Command (CENTCOM). We traveled 15,000 miles and spent 
     time in four nations. Our days began at 5 or 6 a.m. and 
     didn't end until 10 or 11 p.m. Along the way, we boarded the 
     USS Iwo Jima by helicopter in the Persian Gulf, fired the 
     best of the Army's weaponry in the Kuwait desert (just 10 
     miles from Iraq), drove an 11-kilometer Humvee obstacle 
     course (designed to teach about IEDs), boarded the Air 
     Force's most sophisticated surveillance aircraft in Qatar, 
     and even took a tour of a military humanitarian outpost in 
     the Horn of Africa. In addition to Secretary Rumsfeld, we 
     were briefed by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
     Staff, the vice admiral of CENTCOM and other high-ranking war 
     commanders.
       I came home with the utmost respect for the men and women 
     throughout the ranks of all five branches of the service 
     committed to eradicating the forces of radical Islam. But 
     there was one thing noticeably absent: The search for bin 
     Laden and al-Zawahiri. It was not part of our otherwise 
     comprehensive agenda, and when I did ask specific questions, 
     there was no information forthcoming except a generic 
     assertion that, indeed, the hunt continued.
       When we were briefed at Andrews Air Force Base by Vice 
     Admiral David Nichols, the No. 2 to Army Gen. John Abizaid, I 
     asked him whether the hunt for bin Laden was, at that stage, 
     completely dependent upon Pakistani President Pervez 
     Musharraf. He told me we respect national sovereignty, and 
     described the search as ``difficult and nuanced.'' I took 
     that as a confirmation of my concern about outsourcing.
       When in Bahrain, I put the same question to Marine Brig. 
     Gen. Anthony Jackson. He told me that the search was the 
     equivalent of finding one man in the Rockies, an analogy that 
     I heard repeatedly from men I met overseas. He also said that 
     ``no one is giving up,'' and that my question was better put 
     to the guys in special ops.
       So, when we got to the special ops headquarters in Qatar, I 
     raised the matter yet again, this time with Col. Patrick 
     Pihana, the chief of staff to the Combined Forces Special 
     Operations Component Command. He offered nothing substantive 
     on the issue.
       No one told me the search was over, but I came home worried 
     that the days of aggressively hunting bin Laden and al-
     Zawahiri had ended. Of course, I could fully appreciate that 
     an aggressive pursuit was underway but that I, a blowhard 
     from Philadelphia, was simply deemed unworthy of any 
     information. That would have been fine.
       But there was another consideration. More than one 
     individual with whom I spoke--and no one that I have named 
     here--raised with me the question of what would happen to 
     public support for the war against radical

[[Page 20758]]

     Islam if we were to find and kill bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. 
     They wanted to know: Would the American people then expect 
     the military to pack up and go home? No one ever told me that 
     we're not hunting bin Laden because killing him would cause 
     Americans to want to close up shop in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
     but it was absolutely on the minds of our warriors as support 
     for the war in Iraq dissipated.
       A few months before my return, there was news of our 
     response to the accord reached between Musharraf and the 
     tribal warlords. The agreement, which was effected on 
     September 5, 2006, stipulated that the Pakistani army would 
     pull back from the tribal areas. A report from the BBC 
     detailed what the tribal leaders would grant the army for 
     withdrawing: ``Local Taleban supporters, in turn, have 
     pledged not to harbor foreign militants, launch cross-border 
     raids or attack Pakistani government troops or facilities.''
       Meanwhile, there was no demand for accountability by our 
     government. The White House and the Pentagon consistently 
     played down the significance of capturing bin Laden and al-
     Zawahiri, and President Bush offered only superficial 
     responses to the few questions raised on the status of the 
     search. On February 23, 2007, the Army's highest-ranking 
     officer, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, said he didn't know whether 
     we would find bin Laden, and ``I don't know that it's all 
     that important, frankly.''
       At a May 24, 2007 White House news conference, when asked 
     why Osama was still at large, President Bush offered his 
     usual refrain: ``Because we haven't got him yet . . . That's 
     why. And he's hiding, and we're looking, and we will continue 
     to look until we bring him to justice.'' For me, somewhere 
     between two and four years removed from 9/11, it had all 
     begun to wear thin--especially because it seemed bin Laden 
     remained active. Unfortunately, the President's standard line 
     has long been accepted by the media and American people.
       Then, On May 20, 2007, the Times reported that we were 
     paying $80 million a month to Pakistan for its supposed 
     counter-terrorism efforts, for a total of $5.6 billion.
       In July 2007, a National Security Estimate concluded that 
     the failure of Musharraf's accord with warlords in Pakistan's 
     tribal areas had allowed bin Laden's thugs to regroup there. 
     On July 22, National Intelligence Director Adm. Mike 
     McConnell said on Meet the Press that he believed bin Laden 
     was in Pakistan in the very region Musharraf had ceded to the 
     warlords.
       I hoped that the presidential campaign would move the issue 
     to the front burner, but despite its 24/7 nature it failed to 
     stir up a discussion about the failure to capture or kill 
     those who pushed us down such a perilous path. In the first 
     seven presidential debates--four for the D's, three for the 
     R's--there was only one question in 15 hours of discourse 
     that touched on the subject of finding bin Laden in Pakistan, 
     and it came from the audience. Though I did not keep count 
     thereafter, I know that the issue never gained resonance in 
     any subsequent debate.
       Things changed somewhat on August 1, 2007, when Barack 
     Obama delivered a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International 
     Center for Scholars: ``If we have actionable intelligence 
     about high-value terrorist targets, and President Musharraf 
     won't act, we will,'' he said.
       ``We can't send millions and millions of dollars to 
     Pakistan for military aid, and be a constant ally to them, 
     and yet not see more aggressive action in dealing with al 
     Qaeda.''
       Finally, I thought, a presidential candidate saying 
     something about this foreign-policy failure.
       The reaction? Ridicule.
       Then presidential candidates Joe Biden and Chris Dodd 
     responded derisively. Pakistani foreign ministers did 
     likewise. Across the aisle, John McCain pounded Obama for a 
     perceived lack of seasoning in the realm of foreign 
     relations: ``The best idea is to not broadcast what you're 
     going to do,'' McCain said in February. ``That's naive.'' 
     (More recently, McCain has grown fond of saying that he'll 
     ``follow bin Laden to the gates of hell.'') Not to be left 
     out, Hillary Clinton said, ``You can think big, but, 
     remember, you shouldn't always say everything you think when 
     you're running for president because it could have 
     consequences across the world, and we don't need that right 
     now.''
       Of course, that didn't stop Senator Clinton from including 
     bin Laden's image--along with reminders of the attack on 
     Pearl Harbor--in a television commercial that aired in the 
     final days before the Pennsylvania primary election. After 
     scolding her opponent for advocating a specific course of 
     action in Pakistan, the world's most infamous terrorist 
     became a bankable issue for the junior senator from New York 
     when her back was against the wall.
       To his credit, Obama refused to back away from his 
     insistence on reasserting American control over the hunt for 
     bin Laden. I interviewed him on March 21, 2008, and he 
     admitted that a resurgence of the Taliban had occurred in 
     Pakistan.
       ``What's clear from . . . what I've learned from talking to 
     troops on the ground is that unless we can really pin down 
     some of these Taliban leaders who flee into the Pakistan 
     territories, we're going to continue to have instability, and 
     al Qaeda's going to continue to have a safe haven, and that's 
     not acceptable.''
       I was pleased by what he had to say about the issue, and 
     asked about it again on April 18, 2008, when I interviewed 
     him for a second time. He told me that Musharraf, despite 
     being flush with billions in American aid, was not taking 
     counter-terrorism seriously.
       ``That's part of the reason that I've been a critic from 
     the start of the war in Iraq,'' Obama told me. ``It's not 
     that I was opposed to war. It's that I felt we had a war that 
     we had not finished.''
       ``And al Qaeda is stronger now than at any time since 2001, 
     and we've got to do something about that because those guys 
     have a safe haven there and they are still planning to do 
     Americans harm.''
       He also pointed out that the Bush administration had 
     actually shown signs of following his lead. Obama reminded me 
     that a late-January airstrike killed a senior al Qaeda 
     commander in Pakistan, calling it an example of the type of 
     action he'd been recommending since August. The CIA, it was 
     reported a few weeks after the strike, acted without the 
     direct approval of Musharraf.
       Soon after I spoke with Senator Obama, the non-partisan 
     Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of 
     the United States Congress, issued a report dated April 17, 
     2008 with a title requiring no interpretation: ``Combating 
     Terrorism: The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to 
     Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in 
     Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.''
       The report, undertaken at the bipartisan request of U.S 
     House and Senate members, minced no words in issuing a 
     conclusion that should have made Americans' blood boil: Six 
     years after September 11, the United States had failed to 
     destroy the terrorist havens in Pakistan's federally 
     administered tribal areas (known in the report as FATA). The 
     GAO confirmed prior reports that al Qaeda was revitalized and 
     poised to launch an attack, and said that no comprehensive 
     U.S. plan existed to combat terrorism on its most central 
     front.
       In the days that followed its release, I spoke to Charles 
     Johnson, under whose signature the GAO report was issued. He 
     told me: ``With respect to establishing a comprehensive plan, 
     we found that there were some individual plans that had been 
     prepared by the various entities I mentioned earlier [the 
     Department of Defense, Department of State, U.S. Agency for 
     International Development, among others].''
       ``But yet there was no comprehensive plan that integrated 
     all of the key elements of national power that was called for 
     by the 9/11 Commission, by the National Security Strategy for 
     Combating Terrorism and the United States Congress. And those 
     elements I'm referring to are: the use of military, economic 
     and development assistance; law enforcement support; 
     intelligence support; as well as political and diplomatic 
     means by which we would want to address the root cause of 
     terrorism in a particular region.''
       From there the headlines continued to defy the GAO 
     recommendations. ``Pakistan asserts it is near a deal with 
     militants,'' read the front page of the April 25 edition of 
     the New York Times. Pakistan's newly elected government was 
     again on the verge of an accord with the militants running 
     amok in the FATA--despite the new government's previously 
     stated desires to move away from Musharraf's policies in 
     those regions. Less than a week later, under the headline 
     ``Pakistan's planned accord with militants alarms U.S.,'' The 
     New York Times reported that the Bush administration 
     expressed concern that the new agreement could contribute to 
     ``further unraveling of security'' in the region.
       The arrangement was tailor made for bin Laden. It permitted 
     the local Taliban group, Tehrik-e-Taliban, to assist in 
     keeping law and order in the area known as Swat in the 
     northwest frontier province--while not attacking the existing 
     security forces--in return for an exchange of prisoners 
     between the Pakistani Army and the Taliban. The Army also 
     agreed to withdraw forces from parts of Swat. According to a 
     report from the May 22 edition of The New York Times, the 
     Bush Administration was concerned that the deal would ``give 
     the Taliban and Al Qaeda the latitude to carry out attacks 
     against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.'' Some U.S. 
     officials even went so far as to call it a ``victory'' for 
     bin Laden, as reported by ABC News. What else are we to 
     assume, except that the climate in Pakistan may grow even 
     more hospitable to al Qaeda?
       In a refreshing opportunity free from the stock answers so 
     often given by politicians, I was given the chance to 
     interview Marcus Luttrell as part of my radio book club 
     series in May 2008. He was the only survivor of Operation Red 
     Wing, a mission that would result in the worst loss in Naval 
     Seal history. He earned a Navy Cross for his valor and wrote 
     about his harrowing story in The New York Times' best seller, 
     Lone Survivor. Unlike most of the bureaucrats from 
     Washington, who have only been able to offer me talking 
     points from a failed policy, Luttrell gave a brutally honest 
     account of the time he spent in the Hindu Kush, a mountainous

[[Page 20759]]

     area located just a few miles from the northwestern border of 
     Pakistan. Luttrell described how his efforts were too often 
     constricted by red tape.
       ``Yeah, we've got some problems with that border . . . 
     because we'd be chasing the bad guys in there and they had a 
     lot of security set up and we have to stop what we're doing 
     while they just run across and if we don't, we'll get engaged 
     by the Paki border guards and that's an international 
     incident.''
       Luttrell couldn't delve into the details of the prickly 
     international problem that was created by the tension with 
     the border guard, but when I asked him if the Pakistan issue 
     was a problem in general, he wholeheartedly agreed.
       ``Hell yeah it's a problem. Heck, they're harboring the 
     enemy. It's such a joke, it's so stupid. [T]hey come over and 
     do their business, whatever is, and if it gets them in to 
     trouble, all they have to do is sink back into Pakistan and 
     stay there. They say, ``We're good here, we're good here' . . 
     . It's frustrating.''
       Americans may be uncertain about which talking point of the 
     day to believe on this issue, but I'm taking the word of a 
     guy who saw the conditions first-hand. Marcus Luttrell and 
     thousands of other men and women in uniform serve their 
     country valiantly. Don't we owe it to them to aggressively 
     pursue and kill the enemies that seek to destroy them?
       Supporting the account of Marcus Luttrell is a chilling 
     report released by the RAND Corporation, a think tank, on 
     June 9, 2008. The report warned that the ``United States and 
     its NATO allies will face crippling long-term consequences in 
     their effort to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan'' if it 
     does not eliminate Taliban strongholds in Pakistan.
       All of this while the presidential contenders and the 
     Americans headed to the polls were mostly silent in the face 
     of a seven year timeline moving in the wrong direction. For 
     his part, Ayman al-Zawahiri was apparently so comfortable 
     that he spent time logging into jihad chat rooms and 
     attracting thousands of questions from the peon terrorists 
     prepared to do his dirty work.
       All of this drives me batshit, and it just might drive me 
     into the Obama camp. That'd be quite a departure. I've been 
     active in the Republican Party since I turned eighteen and 
     registered to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980. While a college 
     undergraduate at Lehigh University, I did advance work for 
     then Vice President George H.W. Bush. And soon after I 
     graduated from law school at the University of Pennsylvania, 
     Penn, he appointed me, at age 29, to run the Department of 
     Housing and Urban Development in five states under the 
     direction of Secretary Jack Kemp. I supported Bush 43 in both 
     of his campaigns. Hell, in 2004, I MC'd his final 
     Pennsylvania rally with 20,000 people in a suburban 
     cornfield.
       My frustration is so apparent that a fellow journalist from 
     The Philadelphia Daily News has labeled me ``fixated'' with 
     9/11. At least I'm consistent. In 2004, I donated all of my 
     proceeds from my first book, Flying Blind: How Political 
     Correctness Continues to Compromise Airline Safety Post 9/11, 
     to a memorial in Bucks County, Pennsylvania called the Garden 
     of Reflection for Ground Zero victims. Many of my radio 
     listeners bought that book. Now some of them pound out 
     hatriolic emails to my website because, on the strength of 
     this issue, I said Barack Obama was the better of the two 
     Democrats in the Pennsylvania primary.
       But frankly, I don't care.
       The Bush Administration's failure to orchestrate a 
     successful counter-terrorism plan--one topped off with 
     justice for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri--has left 
     me embarrassed of my party and angry. The oft-repeated 
     explanations of the search being nuanced or covering 
     difficult terrain should have worn thin long ago.
       Unfortunately, even after dangling my vote in front of 
     Senator John McCain, the nominee from my own party, he only 
     offered a continuation of the Bush Administration's policy. 
     In a conversation I had with the Senator on June 13, 2008, he 
     first attempted to say that our counterterrorism efforts were 
     working and that remaining on good terms with Pakistan was 
     imperative to our safety.
       ``There has been progress in those areas. Pakistan is a 
     sovereign nation and we have to have the cooperation of 
     Pakistan in order to have these operations succeed. I don't 
     have any classified information, but I do know that there are 
     activities taking place that are intended to counter some of 
     these activities, so all I want to say to you is that if you 
     alienate Pakistan and it turns into an anti-American 
     government, then you will have much greater difficulties.''
       Even when the Senator attempted to remind me of the fact 
     that the United States also gives a great deal of money to 
     Egypt, who, like Pakistan, could be more helpful in assisting 
     the U.S. in the War on Terror, I pointed out to him that 
     these guys aren't hiding in Cairo. The people responsible for 
     the atrocities of 9/11 are concentrated in an area 
     northwestern Pakistan, a fact which I repeated to the 
     Senator. He then pointed out the historic difficulty with the 
     region.
       ``I have promised that I will get Osama bin Laden when I am 
     President of the United States, but . . . you can go on the 
     internet, and look at that countryside, and there's a reason 
     why it hasn't been governed since the days of Alexander the 
     Great. They're ruled by about, it's my understanding, 
     thirteen tribal entities, and nobody has ever governed them, 
     not the Pakistani government, not the British--nobody, and so 
     it's a very, very difficult part of the world.'' He added, 
     ``I agree with you that we should've gotten Osama bin Laden, 
     but I can't put all of it at the doorstep of the Pakastani 
     government.''
       I have a great deal of respect for the Senator, but I have 
     a serious disagreement with him over this issue, something 
     which I let him know would dramatically influence my vote in 
     November. For the entirety of my interview, I tried to keep 
     the Senator focused on Pakistan, and though he answered all 
     of my questions, at the end of the interview, the Senator 
     tried to insert his message of the day, which was about the 
     Supreme Court ruling that granted habeas corpus rights to 
     enemy combatants. When he did, I responded, ``I hear you, and 
     all I think is that the guys who sent those guys over here 
     are still on the lamb and we're writing a big check, and I'm 
     unhappy about it.'' To my disappointment, the Senator said 
     the following, ``Yes, sir, and I understand that, and if you 
     let KSM, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, and others go, they'll join 
     them over there. Thirty guys, who have been released, have 
     gone back to the battlefield.'' It wasn't the fact that he 
     once again dodged my clear dissatisfaction with the Pakistan 
     issue that left me dismayed--I've become quite used to it at 
     this point; it was the fact that I clearly heard an aide 
     mutter the line to him before he delivered it before me and 
     my captive audience. The campaign clearly had a stock answer 
     for me, an answer that I've heard before and have clearly 
     rejected.
       Put quite simply, the support for this failed policy is 
     driving me to the edge of my long Republican career. And 
     despite never pulling a lever for a Democratic presidential 
     candidate, I believe the election this November will present 
     the chance to relieve this country of the conventional wisdom 
     that President Bush has offered for seven years and Senator 
     McCain appears resigned to advance: That President Musharraf 
     was a friend who did what he could to prevent Pakistan from 
     defaulting towards further extremism; that the hunt for Osama 
     bin Laden is nuanced and U.S. forces are doing everything 
     they can to find him; and that the war in Iraq is a necessary 
     one that hasn't distracted from the fight against those who 
     perpetrated and planned 9/11.
       That wisdom has been proven unequivocally wrong.
       The kicker? We, the tax payers, are footing the bill for 
     this negligence. According to a June 25, 2008 article in The 
     Philadelphia Inquirer, a GAO report showed that nearly two 
     billion given in aid to Pakistan was spent improperly. The 
     article states:
       `` `For a large number of claims, Defense did not obtain 
     sufficient documentation from Pakistan to verify that claimed 
     costs were incremental, actually incurred or correctly 
     calculated,' the report concluded. `It seems as though the 
     Pakistani military went on a spending spree with American 
     taxpayers' wallets and no one bothered to investigate the 
     charges,' said Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa), a member of the 
     Senate Appropriations Committee. `How hard would it have been 
     to confirm that a road we paid $15 million for was ever 
     built?' ''
       The leaks about our Pakistani misadventures continued. It 
     was reported in The New York Times on June 30, 2008 that the 
     Bush Administration had created a secret plan in late 2007 to 
     settle disagreements between counterterrorism agencies that 
     were blocking the path of special ops forces into Pakistan. 
     Months after the plan was developed, however, the special ops 
     are still waiting, entangled in bureaucratic red tape. As 
     these highly-trained soldiers, who should be on the prowl for 
     Osama bin Laden, sit with their hands tied, al Qaeda's 
     presence has grown. According to the Times:
       ``After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the 
     nation to a `war on terrorism' and made the destruction of 
     Mr. bin Laden's network the top priority of his presidency. 
     But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration 
     will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated 
     its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan's tribal areas, where 
     it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region 
     and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.''
       In light of increasingly negative press about Afghanistan, 
     both the Obama and McCain campaigns addressed the issue in 
     foreign policy speeches on July 15, 2008. Senator Obama was 
     first up to bat. Here's some of what he said:

       ``In the 18 months since the surge began, the situation in 
     Afghanistan has deteriorated. June was our highest casualty 
     month of the war. The Taliban has been on the offensive, even 
     launching a brazen attack on one of our bases. Al Qaeda has a 
     growing sanctuary in Pakistan. That is a consequence of our 
     current strategy.''
       ``In fact--as should have been apparent to President Bush 
     and Senator McCain--the central front in the war on terror is 
     not Iraq, and it never was. That's why the second goal of my 
     new strategy will be taking the fight to al Qaeda in 
     Afghanistan and Pakistan.

[[Page 20760]]

       ``It is unacceptable that almost seven years after nearly 
     3,000 Americans were killed on our soil, the terrorists who 
     attacked us on 9/11 are still at large. Osama bin Laden and 
     Ayman al-Zawahari are recording messages to their followers 
     and plotting more terror. The Taliban controls parts of 
     Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has an expanding base in Pakistan that 
     is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a 
     train ride from Washington to Philadelphia. If another attack 
     on our homeland comes, it will likely come from the same 
     region where 9/11 was planned. And yet today, we have five 
     times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan.''
       ``The greatest threat to that security lies in the tribal 
     regions of Pakistan, where terrorists train and insurgents 
     strike into Afghanistan. We cannot tolerate a terrorist 
     sanctuary, and as President, I won't. We need a stronger and 
     sustained partnership between Afghanistan, Pakistan and NATO 
     to secure the border, to take out terrorist camps, and to 
     crack down on cross-border insurgents. We need more troops, 
     more helicopters, more satellites, more Predator drones in 
     the Afghan border region. And we must make it clear that if 
     Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level 
     terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our 
     sights.''
       ``Make no mistake: we can't succeed in Afghanistan or 
     secure our homeland unless we change our Pakistan policy. We 
     must expect more of the Pakistani government, but we must 
     offer more than a blank check to a General who has lost the 
     confidence of his people. It's time to strengthen stability 
     by standing up for the aspirations of the Pakistani people. 
     That's why I'm cosponsoring a bill with Joe Biden and Richard 
     Lugar to triple non-military aid to the Pakistani people and 
     to sustain it for a decade, while ensuring that the military 
     assistance we do provide is used to take the fight to the 
     Taliban and al Qaeda. We must move beyond a purely military 
     alliance built on convenience, or face mounting popular 
     opposition in a nuclear-armed nation at the nexus of terror 
     and radical Islam.''
       ``Only a strong Pakistani democracy can help us move toward 
     my third goal--securing all nuclear weapons and materials 
     from terrorists and rogue states. One of the terrible ironies 
     of the Iraq War is that President Bush used the threat of 
     nuclear terrorism to invade a country that had no active 
     nuclear program. But the fact that the President misled us 
     into a misguided war doesn't diminish the threat of a 
     terrorist with a weapon of mass destruction--in fact, it has 
     only increased it.''
       Senator McCain offered a different view:
       ``A special focus of our regional strategy must be 
     Pakistan, where terrorists today enjoy sanctuary. This must 
     end. We must strengthen local tribes in the border areas who 
     are willing to fight the foreign terrorists there--the 
     strategy used successfully in Anbar and elsewhere in Iraq. We 
     must convince Pakistanis that this is their war as much as it 
     is ours. And we must empower the new civilian government of 
     Pakistan to defeat radicalism with greater support for 
     development, health, and education. Senator Obama has spoken 
     in public about taking unilateral military action in 
     Pakistan. In trying to sound tough, he has made it harder for 
     the people whose support we most need to provide it. I will 
     not bluster, and I will not make idle threats. But understand 
     this: when I am commander-in-chief, there will be nowhere the 
     terrorists can run, and nowhere they can hide.''
       My ranting and raving on this issue seems to have caught 
     the attention of the national campaigns. In June 2008, the 
     Obama campaign used my praise of the candidate to supplement 
     their fact check section of the website on the Senator's 
     quest to catch bin Laden.
       It became apparent that the Obama campaign wasn't the only 
     one to take notice; the interview I had done with Senator 
     McCain in June 2008, and general ire with the Republican 
     establishment on this issue, had obviously raised some red 
     flags over at the campaign. On July 24, 2008, former Mayor 
     Rudy Giuliani appeared on the program at his own request. 
     Though I was thrilled to have Rudy back to the show, as he 
     was my first choice out of the Republican presidential 
     candidates, it was clear that he was sent as a surrogate of 
     the McCain camp. Realizing this, I told Rudy exactly what was 
     keeping me from enthusiastically supporting McCain. 
     Specifically, I referenced a story that had run in The New 
     York Times that morning, describing the Bush Administration's 
     plan to divert $230 billion dollars in aid to Pakistan, which 
     was intended to be used for a variety of military purposes. 
     According to the Times, the money would be used for 
     everything, ``from counterterrorism programs to upgrading 
     that country's aging F-16 attack planes, which Pakistan 
     prizes more for their contribution to its military rivalry 
     with India than for fighting insurgents along its Afghan 
     border.'' In my opinion, it looked like we were continuing to 
     fund a country that had already grossly mismanaged the effort 
     to find bin Laden, and doing so while knowing that the funds 
     would be used to embolden the Pakistani army with regard to 
     the age-old conflict with India. When I asked the former 
     Mayor how he, the leader most defined by the 9/11 attacks, 
     could tolerate this sort of negligence, I ended my question 
     by telling him that I thought we were getting ``rolled.'' He 
     agreed with my analysis at story's face value, but qualified 
     his comments, ``I don't know what the background of this one 
     is. On the face of it, it makes no sense. Pakistan does not 
     face an imminent threat from India. India is becoming a 
     closer and closer ally. I think one of the good things the 
     Bush Administration has done is really turned it to a very 
     positive one, particularly with this deal regarding the use 
     of fuel that can be used for nuclear reactors, but the only 
     was this would make sense, is if it's part of an overall deal 
     to get them to allow us the leeway [to get bin Laden] we were 
     just talking about.''
       I agreed with his analysis of this one instance, but after 
     a long train of abuses involving Pakistan, it's difficult to 
     keep an open mind. No campaign will ever be able to convince 
     me that we haven't dropped the ball in Pakistan, and have 
     disgraced the memories of the 9/11 victims in doing so.
       While candidates talk, the dismaying story continues. A 
     recent report from The New York Times in July 2008 suggested 
     that the C.I.A. might not even be receiving proper 
     intelligence on the al Qaeda problem in Pakistan: ``The 
     C.I.A. has depended heavily on the ISI for information about 
     militants in Pakistan, despite longstanding concerns about 
     divided loyalties within the Pakistani spy service, which had 
     close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan before the 
     Sept. 11 attacks. That ISI officers have maintained important 
     ties to anti-American militants has been the subject of 
     previous reports in The New York Times. But the C.I.A. and 
     the Bush administration have generally sought to avoid 
     criticism of Pakistan, which they regard as a crucial ally in 
     the fight against terrorism.'' It was reported two days later 
     that officers from this same intelligence service played a 
     role in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, 
     Afghanistan on July 7, 2008, which left fifty-four people 
     dead.
       Still not convinced that Pakistan is knowingly harboring 
     the people working full-time to attack us? On August 12, 
     2008, Abu Saeed al-Masri, a senior al Qaeda commander was 
     killed in an American air strike. Where? The border between 
     Afghanistan and Pakistan, of course.
       When President Musharaff resigned in August 2008 due to 
     political pressure from lingering doubts as to his legitimacy 
     from the previous election, President Bush offered undue 
     praise for the former President. A statement said, 
     ``President Bush appreciates President Musharraf's efforts in 
     the democratic transition of Pakistan as well as his 
     commitment to fighting al Qaeda and extremist groups.'' 
     Commitment? What a farce.
       I say that because the weeks following Musharraf's 
     resignation have already brought incremental changes in 
     policy and faint reasons for optimism. The Pakistani military 
     spent most of August launching airstrikes against the Taliban 
     militants attacking American forces from the fence straddling 
     the Afghan-Pakistan border--an effort that resulted in more 
     than 400 Taliban casualties and a shallow retreat by the 
     terrorists. It's ``shallow'' because the Pakistani government 
     followed up those airstrikes by declaring a ceasefire to 
     coincide with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Legislators 
     from the tribal areas promised political support for the top 
     candidate in Pakistan's presidential election in exchange for 
     the truce, which was announced in the days leading up to the 
     country's vote.
       Less than a week later, though, American forces finally 
     showed signs of taking the matter of the central front of the 
     war on terror into their own hands. A New York Times report 
     indicated that U.S. special ops forces attacked al-Qaeda 
     militants gathered in a Pakistani village called Jalal Khel. 
     U.S. officials said the move might represent the early stages 
     of a more dedicated and aggressive American presence in 
     Pakistan in the wake of General Musharraf's resignation.
       Don't get me wrong, a more sustained United States assault 
     against the terrorists squatting in Pakistan is welcome news, 
     and it signifies a more urgent effort to hunt down and snuff 
     out the greatest threat to Americans' safety on our own 
     shores.
       But it's about 2,555 days late and $11 billion short. Seven 
     years after 9/11, the country is stoking what was supposed to 
     be a complete and consuming ``war on terror'' with faint 
     signs of a sustained operation in the country where the bad 
     guys have been hiding for years.
       How appalling. I doubt the families of the 3,000 innocents 
     murdered on 9/11--and the 4,000 that followed them in Iraq--
     are content with it. After all, it's seven years, thousands 
     of troops and billions of dollars later, and our country has 
     failed to deliver on what we really owe them: Justice.
       Nor have we answered the most important question pertaining 
     to our nation's future: Can we really win this war with 
     Islamic extremism? Because if we don't have the fire in our 
     belly to defend the American troops stonewalled by the 
     Afghan-Pakistani border; to hunt down and destroy the Taliban 
     and al-Qaeda militants camping out on the other side of that 
     border; and do everything we possibly can to capture and kill 
     Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, I fear we'll be

[[Page 20761]]

     left to deal with another fire--one raging in another 
     building, burning a hole in another American city.

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