Andrew Hagen

In a recent blockbuster article in the New Republic, John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman and Massoud Ansari reported that the Bush Administration has implored Pakistan to help catch Al Qaeda’s high leadership by the date of the November 2nd national elections. This plan is met with a cynical, cold reception by TNR.

This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban’s Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan.…

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar.

(*) (emphasis in original) This sensational revelation was heatedly debated by the Washington elites this past week.

Meanwhile, CNN reported that

A plot to carry out a large-scale terror attack against the United States in the near future is being directed by Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda members, senior intelligence officials said Thursday.

Bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are overseeing the attack plans from their remote hideouts somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, according to senior intelligence officials.

“This type of plotting, this type of operational activity, is being done with the direct direction and authorization of that senior leadership,” said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A Democratic senator who attended Thursday’s CIA and FBI briefing said, “It is the most worrisome situation since 9/11″ without elaborating specifically.…

“They are focusing on what they perceive to have been successful attacks in Madrid as far as the impact on the electoral process there and the outcome of that election,” the official said. “The reporting that we are seeing, the information that we have, is tied to the different types of democratic processes here.”

(†) In other words, Al Qaeda wants to launch an attack on the US that would disrupt the election. That means attacking the Democratic National Convention in Boston, the Republican National Convention in New York, or hitting some US target to produce mass casualties just before Americans go to the polls.

So perhaps the conspiracy theory of TNR is entirely wrong. Perhaps there is a very good reason, after all, why it is in the national interest to capture Al Qaeda’s high leadership by November 2nd. If we do so, we would be much better able to stop any planned attack.

The New Republic should apologize to its readership for its unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.

Update: 12 July 2004. Andrew C McCarthy’s take is that TNR’s charge is laughable. (‡)

McCarthy notes TNR’s charge that the Bush Administration wants these HVTs captured by the time of the Democratic National Convention. Even if this is true—and even if we forget, as McCarthy wryly observes, that this should be considered a good idea—capturing the HVTs before the Democratic National Convention may very well prevent an attack that those HVTs could be planning for the Democratic National Convention.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 10th, 2004 at 19:45 and is filed under USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.