Pakistan News And Discussion-10

[Guest]

Link - Pakistan involvement in terrorism in Afghanistan<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->American intelligence and counterterrorism officials possibly disagreeing with that, telling <b>“The New York Times” that top al Qaeda officials are regaining power, having opened up a new crop of training camps in Pakistan, the administration‘s days of describing Osama bin Laden and top deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri as on the run and isolated apparently over, new evidence suggesting they remain key parts of the terror organization and its supposed resurgence.</b>

<b>Even the president‘s rhetoric has changed, painted a sober picture of al Qaeda‘s current strength inside Pakistan just last week.</b>


BUSH:  <b>Taliban, al Qaeda fighters do hide in remote regions of Pakistan.  This is, this is wild country.  This is wilder than the wild West.  And these folks hide and recruit and launch attacks</b>.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN:  Let‘s get the evaluation of the former head of the CIA‘s bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer.

Thank you for some of your time tonight, sir.

MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER HEAD, CIA BIN LADEN UNIT:  You‘re welcome. 

Thank you, sir.

OLBERMANN:  First of all, the substance of this report, does it sound accurate to you that al Qaeda has regrouped, regained strength, building new training camps in Pakistan?

SCHEUER:  Sure.  We‘ve always overestimated the damage we did to al Qaeda in Afghanistan, sir.  We didn‘t close the borders there.  We won the cities, but the Taliban and al Qaeda escaped basically intact, and they‘ve been rebuilding and reequipping over the past five years.

OLBERMANN:  How did that happen?  I mean, did this administration just sort of declare they it had done all it needed to do about al Qaeda?  And last Halloween, the president was saying it was on the run.  And now, as of Valentine‘s Day, they‘re back?

SCHEUER:  Well, it‘s a—this is a very strange administration, sir, but we really don‘t take the transnational threat seriously, the terrorist threat.  We‘re pretty good at nation-states, but on the—on al Qaeda, we still have a government that doesn‘t, as a whole, both parties, don‘t take this threat very seriously.

The idea that we‘re going to try to do with 40,000 troops in Afghanistan what the Soviets couldn‘t do with 150,000 troops is a bit of madness.

OLBERMANN:  Mr. Scheuer, given how often the Republicans said during the debate last week in the House that insurgents in Iraq would follow us home if we left Iraq, which battleground is actually more central to the war against terrorists?  Is it al Qaeda starting to rebuild training camps that it had in Afghanistan or the Taliban rebuilding them in the neighboring nation of Pakistan?  Or is this the central place still the civil war in Iraq?

SCHEUER:  <b>No, the central place in terms of an attack inside the United States is Afghanistan and Pakistan.  <span style='color:red'>When the next attack occurs in America, it will be planned and orchestrated out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. </span> Al Qaeda values Iraq primarily for the entree it gives them into Jordan, into Syria, into the Arab peninsula, and into Turkey.</b>
We‘ve really signed—for example, we‘ve signed Jordan‘s death warrant by the—through the war in Iraq.  But actually, the people who will plan the next attack in the United States are those who are in Afghanistan and Pakistan, sir.

OLBERMANN:  So does this emergence of evidence that bin Laden and Zawahiri are regaining strength, individually and collectively, does it diminish, in fact, the justification for the administration now looking over at Iran?  I mean, should we be, should we be utterly shifting away from both of those countries and saying, No, al Qaeda, where they are, not where we want them to be, is where we need to look?

SCHEUER:  Well, this administration, sir, seems to be afraid of almost anything that moves.  And certainly Iraq was a containable country.  The Iranians are no threat to the United States unless we provoke them.  They may be a threat to the Israelis.  They‘re not a threat to the United States.

The threat to the United States, inside the United States, comes from al Qaeda.  Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  If you want to address the threat to America, that‘s where it is.

OLBERMANN:  So is this a very deadly serious version of the old joke about the guy who loses his watch on a dark street, (INAUDIBLE) and he‘s seen under a spotlight looking for it, under a streetlight, and the guy, the other guy comes up to him and says, Where did you lose the watch?  He said, Down in the dark.  And he said, Well, why are you looking here under the lamp?  Well, that‘s where the light is.  Is that what we‘re doing?

SCHEUER:  That‘s where we are, sir.  That‘s where we have been for the past 15 years.  <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>We don‘t treat the—this Islamist enemy as seriously as we should.  We think somehow we‘re going to arrest them, one man at a time.  These people are going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States, and we‘re going to have absolutely nothing to respond against.</span>
<b>
It‘s going to be a unique situation for a great power, and we‘re going to have no one to blame but ourselves.</b>
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->