Here is the title of a report from the Government Accountability Office on combating terrorism released today:
The United States Lacks a Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
That is not some line buried in the report. That is the title. Wow.
This GAO report may be the most damning condemnation of the Bush administration's counter-terrorism efforts. The report goes on to say that the Bush administration has failed to develop any plan to address the Al Qaeda threat. Worse, the report finds that Al Qaeda is now able to attack the United States and represents the "most serious" threat to this country.
The report's opinion of the Bush administration efforts speaks for itself:
The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan...
Not only have we not met our goals but we have no plan to meet our goals:
No comprehensive plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in the FATA has been developed, as stipulated by the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (2003), called for by an independent commission (2004), and mandated by congressional legislation (2007). Furthermore, Congress created the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in 2004 specifically to develop comprehensive plans to combat terrorism. However, neither the National Security Council (NSC), NCTC, nor other executive branch departments have developed a comprehensive plan that includes all elements of national power--diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic, and law enforcement support--called for by the various national security strategies and Congress.
Al Qaeda can now attack the United States:
"we found broad agreement, as documented in the unclassified 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), State and embassy documents, as well as among Defense, State, and other officials, including those operating in Pakistan, that al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan"
Al Qaeda in Pakistan is the most serious threat:
al Qaeda's central leadership, based in the border area of Pakistan, is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the United States... al Qaeda is now using the Pakistani safe haven to put the last element necessary to launch another attack against America into place...
Al Qaeda is using the Pakistan tribal areas to put the finishing touches on its plans to attack the United States. A DNI assessment from earlier in 2008 reports troubling findings:
al Qaeda is now using the Pakistani safe haven to put the last element necessary to launch another attack against America into place, including the identification, training, and positioning of Western operatives for an attack. It stated that al Qaeda is most likely using the FATA to plot terrorist attacks against political, economic, and infrastructure targets in America "designed to produce mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks, and/or fear among the population."
It is really not a good thing to have incompetent people running this country.
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Please contact the Government Accountability Office ASAP. It can be found in the Federal Oxymoron building.
Feh. Condi says it's just a historical briefing.
That's funny.
"The United States Lacks a Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas."
We don't need a GAO report to tell us this.
I think everybody kinda, like, already knows.
As if the Bush administration is interested in fighting terrorism.
No need for comprehensive plans, we can solve this whole threat if we would talk to the terrorist and try to understand them. Charlie Manson is just a misunderstood person, his problems caused by Bush, and whose problems would be solved if we just sit down and talk.
Why should we have a plan to deal with the terrorists?
If BushCo were to actually neutralize the actual, bona fide terrorist threats, then they could not keep pushing fear. And if people weren't afraid, then maybe they'd think. And then what would happen to all the no-bid contracts, and the monies that come from the Iraq adventure? Can't have that.
David Walker has served as the Head of the GAO with honor and integrity for a long number of years now. He will be sadly missed as he heads to another job.
del8300
ie7
If I wear an American flag lapel pin, will that protect me from the terrorists?
And they slammed Obama for saying that he wouldn't mind conducting a strike operation in Pakistan if necessary.
Now he wants to align America with terrorist goverment in Sudan. Thats America's war on terrorism for ya. If you do as we say we wont think of you as a terrorist state even though you can continue your support of terroist actions
Carol
Did anyone read the article on Obama's roots? http://www.newsweek.com/id/131750
Maybe he can help us understand how to get the country and the world back on course.
I'm so happy that the GOA just got around to informing us that our country has done nothing to avert another disaster. How nice of them to put it in writing not that GWB will be gone in less then a year. Well unless he has another policy that puts the elections off or McBush another inside man get into office it seems they seem to be very close to wanting the same things.
Hey America.
Next time you are asked which party will protect you best against terrorism, please, please do not respond "republicans" as (we are told) 60% or more do in every poll.
This report was written by the GAO not the Democratic Party.
For the sake of our country please wake up and smell the roses (or the garbage that we have put into the white house in the past 2 elections).
Bu$h's plan: scare Americans into voting Republican. Rinse, repeat.
Another terrorist attack inside the US might play right into the Republican's chronic use of fear and panic, to influence the 08 election outcome.
How much do you want to bet there will be an attack just before the election?
Ok,ok, i'll bet ten cents that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid planned the 9/11 attacks!!
And what have they accomplished to protect us from terrorism since heading the Senate and House.....or anything else for that matter....
How much do you want to bet that it will also be an inside job. Look for intact fragile evidence to be found iplicating Iran and American Progressives to be found unscathed on top of the smoking rubble. The real masterminds of the 911 attacks understand that Americans possess a psychological inertia that renders them unable to suspect their own government of evil, and they will use this to their advantage once again. Somehow I just can't see there being any more Presidential Elections in America. A small well-placed Nuke and a little fake evidence is all that it will take to wrest control of America from the People, and to give it to the Neocons.
No political party can stop a terrorist that looks completely normal by American standards with a nuke in his possession and hell bend on setting it off on US soil. An army you can fight and win however how do you stop one man that appears to be just like you? Answer you don't.......you die!
If we had spent the years after 9/11 closing our borders and putting some kind of plan in place it would have helped, but we just had to shift gears to to take Iraq oil fields, and now they want to bomb Iran. They talk terrorists but that is not what they are doing they are going Imperialism. The New American dream the h**l with us little people. We might as well be a dictatorship, well we are really close, and Congress has to be going right along with it or they could have stopped it
It has never been about preventing another attack. Bush and company used 9/11 as a pretext to carry out global policies that would have been unthinkable prior to the attacks. Think about the fact that we have a large population of muslims in Dearborn, Mich. Regarless of what Bush may have said about Muslims being peaceful, a journalist named Steve Emerson has done countless exposes that document the same sort of radicalism that they've experienced in England. You don't see anything being done about it, do you? A nitwit like Grover Norquist actually threw a hissy fit when a fellow conservative name David Keane broached the topic of Muslims being potential terrorists. Norquist considered them to be potential republican voters. Since Bush and company claimed we fight them over there rather than over here, how do you explain the contradiction? The US has no policy on preventing an attack because our fearless leader is a doofus and his cronies are fools.
We MUST remember and pay attention to the fact that this administration is not just W, Dick and the lot. It is the entire Republican Party, which has allowed, and fostered all of this and has put people in charge of most all government agencies and departments who will hue the line.
ANYthing that allows this party to remain in power via the Presidency MUST be stopped.
It really IS that simple. It's not a matter of Obama and Clinton's distractions. It's very much a matter of not letting McCain win or steal this election and the first of those is possible, based on results, the later is probable!!
Sounds to me like we ought to follow Obama's plan in Pakistan.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said on Wednesday (Aug. 2007) the United States must be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan, adopting a tough tone after a chief rival accused him of naivete in foreign policy.
His National Security ideas seem to make more sense every day.
Cripes, how very typical, in effect, attacking the Prez for invading Iraq (known enemy of the USA) but supporting the dreadful presidential candidate Obama's possible invasion of Pakistan (somewhat allie of the USA).
Yes, I know, you yourself don't mention Iraq in your contribution, but it should be noted that it is a keystone of the Democrats daily personal attacks against President Bush.
Known enemy?!? When did Iraq attack America again? I must be forgetting something here
You seem to think Dubbya is attacked too often...how exactly did you arrive at that conclusion?
He's only the most criminal and incompetent elected official in US history--which is bad enough--but when you realize that designation is applied to the US PRESIDENCY--how is attacking 24/7 unwarranted?
You GOP shills shouldn't come around here whining; if you or your criminal party leaders had done ANYTHING to prevent the incredible CLUSTER F*CK brought on by your moronic policies, then perhaps we'd see you a bit differently, but that's not the case.
You and your ilk ran this country into the ground more quickly than anyone who has ever come before, and you were smug and condescending the entire time, constantly berating us for our lack of blind patriotism and for criticizing what any idiot should have know were fiscally irresponsible and warmongering policies that were doomed to fail.
Please, if you don't want your failures to be pointed out to you, you'd best hang your ego elsewhere.
The rebel fighters have lured the big, unwieldy, bloated, weighted down sloth into its trap. And they will kill it slowly.
Death by a thousand tiny cuts.
They have won, we just don't recognize the stench of death as our own.
Does anyone really think terrorist acts can be prevented? Some, yes. Most hopefully. But not all. Impossible. Anymore than we can prevent ordinary crime. And ordinary crime in America is far worse than foreign terrorist acts could ever be. Far, far worse.
And yet we take ordinary crime in stride, and get hsyterical over terrorism.
What a country, huh? That's because Republicans need a boogeyman to maintain power. It's just not enough to scare the dickens out of the American people with the gay threat, the Godless threat, the gun control threat and the people who don't wear flag lapel pins threat anymore. And the commie threat is just so 1950.
Not to mention that ordinary crime is nowhere near as bad as the media make out.
On the other hand, global warming, the GOP's usurpations of our Liberty, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are far, far worse than the media will deign to acknowledge.
They'd much rather swiftboat Obama with flag pins.
It must be made absolutely clear to that weasel, George W. Bush, that he will be held accountable, should he let another attack take place. We let him slide on letting that other attack happen. And yes, I do mean he "let" it happen.
I used to think that way, but I had no proof. Just conjecture. Do you have anything even remotely concrete to back up your claim?
What about Richard Clarke's book--where he tried repeatedly to interest his boss Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney and George Bush in the threat of imminent attack from Al Qaeda. In fact, she was sent a report, Terrorist Attack from Al Qaeda imminent, or a similar title, a month before the September 11 attacks, but they were too busy looking for excuses to attack Iraq to even consider a threat from Al Qaeda.. And, in fact, they did cynically turn September 11 into the justification they were looking for to attack Iraq. This is not just documented in Clarke's book but Condi herself did not dispute that she was sent the report on the threat from Al Qaeda, when she was questioned by the bipartisan Sept 11 Commission. If Clarke seems too biased for you, look at the Sept 11 Commission report. This should be "concrete" enough. The only question remaining, about which we can all conjecture, is why on earth Bush and Co have gotten a free pass for failing to perceive or do anything about the Al Queda threat--and according to the GAO (Bush's own executive branch agency), they continue to do nothing.
Because it was all set up, the bubbling so called president is not what he seems, they wanted us to think that he was a good ole boy we could have a beer with.
He didn't win the election in 2000 we know that but the so called Supreme Court made him president, the electronic voting machines illegally dropped votes wherever they needed to, and all the caging that went on behind the scene. We didn't get what we voted for we were taking for a ride and we let it drop.
You tell me how GWB "an alcoholic and will not say anything about cocaine because it isn't a problem" man who run every business he ever had into the ground and made millions doing it, become this countries president and CIC?
It was "Al Qaeda Determined to Strike America" from August 1, 2001.
Spot on.
Because Ameircan's are far more interested in know why Barack doesn't wear an American Flag lapel pin and what his pastor said 7 years ago.
It seems like they want an attack to um....um.... suspend elections or something. Now would this administration do anything like that? Naomi Klein, could you answer this question please?
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CALL MC CAIN and ask him WTF do we do now??
What does he plan on doing?? We do not have "A" brigade AVAILABLE if anything should happen, to be deployed from the USA.
Phoenix 602 952 2410 Washington 202 224 2235
OR call LIEberman and ask him why are we sh*t talkin Iran and what does he have planned?
Demand a statement from them (please)
Joe LIEberman Washington 202 224 4041 press 2 for a live person
(860) 549-8463 Voice In Hartford. Would imagine you can press 2 here also for a live person.
THIS IS SUPPORTING OUR TROOPS.
If this post included a home telephone number please be advised that there are no "live people" in the Liebershit household.
Wow! 8 years of King George and his pack of rats. We are in trouble.
If we are to be an Empire as most politicians seem to want us to be, we need to get our methods and our priorities more in line with what works and what doesn't. We need, in other words, not just battle plans but business plans.
Iraq should be our wakeup call. We had the smashing part down, but not the grabbing part. It should have been our troops looting and raping, not the ragtag mob of Iraqi opportunists. That we didn't have a corps dedicated to looting Baghdad is a mark of shameful incompetence.
And we should have an enlightened policy of sharing the booty, the fruits of conquest. If every American could have been enriched by this war, instead of only the select few, there would be no nattering about human rights and body counts. Instead, we'd be gladly preparing for the next victim of our noble warfare. We are the world's only superpower. To us belong the spoils of cultural and military superiority, which, in the final analysis, are one and the same.
One day, historians will rightly say, "My name is Bush, king of kings, Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Posted April 17, 2008 | 01:36 PM (EST)