Why Is Homeland Security Helping Bin Laden and Zarqawi?

By DHinMI

OK, this just seems bogus:

New intelligence indicates that Osama bin Laden is enlisting Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his top operative in Iraq, to plan potential attacks on the United States, federal officials said Monday.

Al-Zarqawi has been involved in attacks in the Middle East. He has not been known to have set his sights on America.

The Homeland Security Department issued a classified bulletin to officials over the weekend about the intelligence, which spokesman Brian Roehrkasse described as "credible but not specific." The intelligence was obtained over the past several weeks, the officials said.

The government has no immediate plans to raise its national terror alert level, Roehrkasse said. But, he said, the intelligence "reiterates the desire by al-Qaida and its associates to target the homeland." [Emphasis added]

The suggestion that Zarqawi presents a real threat of terrorism inside the United States is either pure propaganda or the people at Homeland Security are complete incompetents. If it were a serious threat, it would be cause to raise the national terror alert level. Therefore, I find it hard to believe it’s an actual threat.

Now, that’s not to say that Zarqawi isn’t a threat to spread terror outside of Iraq. The key piece of evidence in support of that theory is buried deep in the AP article:

Bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding on the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, is thought to communicate with his deputies by courier, taped messages and other means. In January 2004, Kurdish forces in northern Iraq detained one courier, Hassan Ghul, who was carrying a letter written by al-Zarqawi to bin Laden. In it, al-Zarqawi proposed starting a civil war between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Muslim populations.

In that context, it’s far more likely that Zarqawi—who’s credited with terrorist acts in several Middle Eastern countries—could be taking his campaign of attacks against Shia beyond the Iraqi border. (Kuwait?  Maybe Lebanon?)

But here’s the real question with this story: why is Homeland Security letting bin Laden know that his communications lines have been compromised? Don’t these guys remember the stories about how bin Laden stopped using his satellite phone after it was used to target him in the cruise missile attacks? Is it really so important to do a little fear mongering right now that they waste the opportunity to try to monitor whatever communication lines have apparently been cracked and see what more they might discover?

After this announcement, any trust bin Laden and Zarqawi had in that communications line is gone. Like his satellite phone, bin Laden will abandon that system, and we’ll have to try to crack his new line of communications. In the meantime, what intelligence will we miss out on? Will we have lost the opportunity to prevent further attacks? How many lives might we have saved? What opportunities to capture bin Laden or Zarqawi are being squandered?

And will anyone in the press ask why we just revealed to bin Laden that, should he want to keep secrets from the U.S., he should find a more secure way to communicate with one of his most powerful and dangerous allies?

Comments

[Mel]

You can rest assured that the terror alert would have been raised before the election. Now, there's no need to keep the populace in a frenzy.

[Trapper John]

My favorite part is that they aren't raising the threat level. As late as November 1, all it took to get Ridge to up the threat level was the discovery of a trash bin laden with pictures of Zarqawi. We've developed an institutional sang froid in no time. Progress, I guess.

[Kagro X]

Gosh, if I didn't know any better, I'd say bin Laden was determined to attack within the United States.

[Trapper John]

Jinx.

[DHinMI]

Kagro:

You should write that up and give it to the President to read.

[Kagro X]

The Jinx is coming.

[Mike in MI]

Oh, come on. This information on Zarqawi is only a few weeks old. That means that it hasn't been thoroughly analyzed yet. The last time that the threat level was moved up to orange was when the information was two years old. Now that's info worth acting upon; it's stood the test of time and still sounds scary.

[pixie]

IMO this is propaganda. Zarqawi is still dead, he's been that way since he got taken out in Afghanistan a few years back. When Al Queda issued their statement on the capture of top Zarqawi aides late last week, they made no claims that Zarqawi is alive and well:

"And who knows which aide was arrested and what lies they made up. This is a hopeless attempt on their part to raise morale," said the statement by Al Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq, posted on Islamist Web sites.

"We give our brothers the good news that our leaders are absolutely fine, thank God, and leading the ranks of the faithful in battle," it said.

If Zarqawi was still alive, wouldn't the capture of his top aides deal a serious blow to plans to cause strife in the US?

That said, if they did make some good arrests last week they might have very well found information worth raising concerns. But to take this administration point blank at its word?

They haven't done anything to prove to me that they're particularly trustworthy.

[doghouse riley]

You mean they're still getting mileage out of the Zarqawi letter story? Public Enemy 1.5 writes a letter to bin Laden which says (and I'm paraphrasing) "By God, who is Merciful and Compassionate, this Bush is a Lion who will never retract his claws. Please send 50,000 Islamofascists and we'll be ready in case Howard Dean is elected by stupid, media duped Americans. Your friend, Abu PS, I'm not dead." The letter is transferred to a floppy disk,and handed to a courier who decides the best route to Pakistan runs through Kurdistan, whereupon he's captured by US forces. No, the Kurds. No, wait, US forces.

And they didn't raise the Terror Alert. The surprising thing there is, I didn't know the AP had any reporters who could remember that far back.

[doghouse riley]

You mean they're still getting mileage out of the Zarqawi letter story? Public Enemy 1.5 writes a letter to bin Laden which says (and I'm paraphrasing) "By God, who is Merciful and Compassionate, this Bush is a Lion who will never retract his claws. Please send 50,000 Islamofascists and we'll be ready in case Howard Dean is elected by stupid, media duped Americans. Your friend, Abu PS, I'm not dead." The letter is transferred to a floppy disk,and handed to a courier who decides the best route to Pakistan runs through Kurdistan, whereupon he's captured by US forces. No, the Kurds. No, wait, US forces.

And they didn't raise the Terror Alert. The surprising thing there is, I didn't know the AP had any reporters who could remember that far back.

[aloyisius]

i thought the whole point of the article was that al zarquawi (or whoever) was finding it difficult to plan outside Iraq because of the pressure on him there- in other words, drilling in the "we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here motif)