Hooray for Democracy

The FBI has defined terrorism for us:

FBI anti-terrorism agents raided the Queens home of a self-described anarchist charged with tweeting protesters with instructions on how to evade police at the G-20 summit.

The charges? "Hindering prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possessing criminal instruments." Those criminal instruments were gas masks (though presumably this is for olfactory protection from riot police), mercury, a bag of hammers and *gasp* anarchist literature.

Anyone who still likes to laud this country as "land of the free," need only read this article. For much of what passes for public discussion in this country, observable reality is not an integral part of the equation. When a man can be arrested and have his house raided for a charge of Tweeting the position of police officers to protesters, one cannot wax poetic about freedom.

What's more, nowhere to be found are all those right-wing pundits who so profess their love for the Constitution. You see, the protesters were protesting the neo-liberal financial policies of the G20 in Pittsburgh, and therefore expendable. Right to Assemble? Fuck 'em. Where are all the tea-baggers worried about the loss of their freedom now?

I should expect this from the Post, but nowhere does it seem to compare the level of violence involved in Tweeting to that of firing weapons into crowds of defenseless people.

Sphere: Related Content

The BioPort Connection

The latest government plant in the Ivins case is that the scientist was motivated by opposition to mandatory anthrax inoculation of the military, knowing that an attack would eliminate skepticism and most likely lead to a large government purchase of the controversial anthrax vaccine. While the premise overall is believable, surely there were people who stood to benefit much more than Ivins if that was indeed the impetus for the attacks.

Enter BioPort, the sole government supplier of the anthrax vaccine, and the direct beneficiary of the anthrax attacks. BioPort was in serious trouble, having been cited several times for health violations and contamination, which combined with the campaign against forced vaccinations was threatening to bankrupt the company. Despite its obvious problems, BioPort remained the sole government supplier, raising questions as to just who its friends were in the government.

A 2000 report by Defense Department Assistant Inspector General for Auditing, Robert Lieberman, details some peculiarities.

On August 13, 1999, the Office of the Inspector General, DoD, received a request from Congressman Walter B. Jones for a review of the financial and contractual relationship between the Department of Defense and BioPort Corporation, the sole U.S. domestic source of Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed (AVA). In his request letter, Congressman Jones noted that the General Accounting Office and Defense Contract Audit Agency had reported that BioPort was experiencing financial problems and having difficulty performing against Army contracts for AVA production. Congressman Jones expressed concern that "despite these serious questions regarding the overall viability of BioPort, the Federal government has chosen to more than double the value of the existing contract."

The report also notes that the facility's license was revoked in 1996, shut down from 1997 to 1998, and strapped for cash. BioPort asked the Army to supply it with a cash infusion to cover their lack of funds, and the request was duly granted. BioPort remained the sole contract holder with the government despite these problems and the fact that the FDA had not yet approved its only product, the anthrax vaccine.

Bioport was formed in 1998 by Ibrahim and Fuad el-Hibri, Lebanese businessmen, with the sole purpose of buying Michigan's state-run laboratory which only output was the anthrax vaccine. Fuad el-Hibri, not surprisingly, has contacts with Booz-Allen Hamilton and serves as CEO of the Carlyle Group, founded in part by George H. W. Bush, where he has immense dealings with the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family. The Carlyle Group's interdependence on the Sauds and the the revolving door with right-wing politicians in several countries is legendary.

Also on the board of Carlyle was Admiral William Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan. Crowe invested heavily in Bioport prior to the 2001 attacks, despite the signals to outside observers that the company was in dire straits due to the issues already mentioned, which raises serious questions about what assurances el-Hibri was able to give to Crowe to compel him to invest in a failing company. After the anthrax mailings, the government predictably ordered significant amounts of the vaccine from its only distributor, Bioport, practically begging to pay three times the going rate.

Bioport continued its PR campaign into 2002, utilizing the administration's favorite surrogate journalist, Judith Miller.

The nation's sole producer of anthrax vaccine says it is in financial jeopardy because the Bush administration has failed to say how much vaccine it intends to buy, preventing it from selling vaccine to foreign and private customers at much higher prices.

Robert Kramer, president of the producer, the BioPort Corporation, said that although foreign and private parties -- which outsiders characterized as foreign governments and even large multinational corporations -- were pleading to buy vaccine for more than $100 a dose, the company could not sell to them until it had fulfilled its contract with the military to supply what one administration official estimated was about 3.4 million doses.

Despite the government providing a lifeline for a flailing and failing company based on no visible signs of viability, BioPort was still planting stories into 2002 hoping to further push the government along to buy even more vaccines, preferably at the boosted price (triple the cost). Miller even finds a way to work in her favorite hobby horse:

The impasse comes at a time when the Bush administration is vowing to oust Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who is believed to be storing thousands of gallons of anthrax that could be used as weapons in war or terrorism.

Again, the article designed purely as a PR campaign for BioPort, hoping to push larger contracts and ridiculous prices for its only product.

Beyond the speculation as to motive I mentioned at the outset of this piece, the FBI has offered no indication of just what Ivins stood to gain financially or otherwise by prompting the purchase of BioPort's product. BioPort's relationship to the anthrax attacks raises serious questions and presents serious irregularities, all of which would lead one to believe that its officials stood to gain much, much more than Ivins ever did by domestic anthrax attacks.

As with every theory advance by the FBI thus far, the latest suggestion about Ivins raises more questions than it answers.

Sphere: Related Content

The Ivins Case Revisited

***Update Appended 8/10 @ 1134 CDT***

Tuesday, I made the case that the failure on the part of the FBI to present a viable case against Bruce Ivins and likewise of American journalists to be sufficiently skeptical of that proposition was independent of the eventual resolution to the scenario. Indeed, there will likely be no resolution, as there is no longer anyone to prosecute and closing the case precludes further investigation proving someone other than Ivins is responsible (if he, in fact, is not).

Under enormous pressure, the FBI has since outlined its case, which shapes to be exactly as I suspected it was from the start, a collection of circumstantial evidence lacking anything remotely definitive which will avoid serious scrutiny for lack of a living suspect. The government released a substantial stack of documents which prove to be nothing more than a series of warrant applications and findings. In other words, as Ivins lawyer states, "it was an explanation of why Bruce Ivins was a suspect," but offers nothing in the way of conclusions.

The FBI, of course, assures the skeptical among us that they "could prove his guilt to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt," a task surely far easier when the jury is purely hypothetical. Again, of Ivins' guilt are innocence I am not sure, but what remains clear is that he provided the FBI with the perfect fall guy, a suspect who acted strangely enough to present himself as a plausible suspect with the added bonus of never forcing the government to test its hand in court. Once the media predictably forget about the case in a week's time, seven years of bumbling ineptitude will be safely down the memory hole.

And that, really, is all the government is after. For all the time given to assuring us that the government is in good hands and providing safety against foreign terror, the only tangible proof in that direction is their inability to protect the country from domestic attack, much less foreign, failure to ascertain the responsible party for those attacks, and a wildly-expanding bureaucracy no more capable of preventing testers passing weapons by TSA screeners. By posthumously prosecuting Ivins in the court of public opinion, the government can point to success in the national security arena without the threat as in previous instances of facts painting a different picture down the road.

The Ivins case, though predicated on the flimsiest of evidence, provides a salve for an ailing government which, though given seven years, is no closer to closing the gaps which stood wide open in 2001. Here, the FBI is aided immensely by the lack of an accused able to stand trial and a complicit media more than willing to play their role without question.

Throughout, there has been scant mention of Steven Hatfill, as any mention of the previous suspect in the case may beg the question: "If you were so wrong on Hatfill, are we now to believe that you've nailed it on Ivins?" Pleasing enough to the FBI, no one seems to have been so impolite as to ask such an impropriety.

The script for the two individual accusations could not be more similar: the FBI launching a baseless allegation built upon scant evidence and a media more than willing to spit it out to a credulous public without digestion or investigation. Yet no one seems the least bit apprehensive about performing an encore, even if the last act closed with the government forced to pay Hatfill $5 million for destroying his reputation and career. Fortunately for Hatfill, he still has his life.

The Ivins suicide is, in some respects, a self-fulfilling prophecy. The FBI exerts ever-growing pressure on the scientist, accuses him of murdering American citizens in cold blood, Ivins becomes paranoid as a result, folds under pressure, and presto he opens the door for the government to point and say, "See. Would an innocent man do that?" We see the same tact in foreign policy, where we perform unprovoked attacks on countries meant to provoke a response, and if it comes we say, "See they're a danger to their neighbors."

I claim no omniscient knowledge of Ivins' guilt or innocence, but I can lay claim to historical literacy, something that is sorely lacking on the American scene. Americans have long lacked even basic competency in linking events together through time, viewing each occurrence as a separate instance completely disconnected to everything that happened before. Clearly this is a deficiency, as holding such a talent might allow gullible observers to see the public prosecutions of Hatfill and Ivins as two sides of the same coin. If the memory of the American public was longer than 48 hours, questions beneficial to the search for the truth might be broached, and lives might be saved in future acts of the tired play. But I'm not holding my breath.


***Appended 8/10 @ 1134 CDT***

Apparently, the FBI agrees with me:

FBI official John Miller said that "what we have seen over the past few days has been a mix of improper disclosures of partial information mixed with inaccurate information and then drawn into unfounded conclusions. None of that serves the victims, their families or the public."

Sphere: Related Content

Nothing to See Here, Move Along

After lying dormant for six or seven years, the topic of Anthrax has assumed the role of Lazarus and again forced itself into the national discourse, though most likely for just as brief a stay as the first. To understand just why it has been away for so long is not difficult, as one need only recognize that the perpetrator of the 2001 attacks is most likely home-grown, and therefore of no use to an administration in dire need of a them.

That is not to say they didn't try, of course.

When the anthrax attacks occurred, Iraq was immediately fingered by some experts and many neoconservative hawks as a possible source; ABC News quoted three unnamed government sources as saying the powder in the letters matched the type produced in Iraq.

Even though most serious analysts were highly skeptical that the tainted letters came from Hussein, the mere possibility that Iraq could have maintained a stockpile of anthrax was enough to convince many people that it was a looming threat.

ABC's ineptitude in this case is par-for-the-course in American journalism, where the government leaks things to the media it thinks will help its cause and the media dutifully act as stenographers for those in power. Totalitarianism has its bludgeons and gulags. America has its complicit press.

Afghanistan, though by this time was assuredly the source of the WTC attacks, was simply not sexy enough a target. One of the most backward and poorest countries in the world, the pot at the end of the rainbow would surely not be filled with gold. Most of Bush's top aides had been praying for a disaster to link to Iraq since the late 90s under the umbrella of the PNAC, and thought for sure they could manufacture one in the Anthrax attacks, helpfully guided by gullible journalists with an unquenchable thirst for access to government sources.

Unfortunately for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, facts presented at least a fleeting obstacle, though one in its waning days of influence. Once the attacks were believed to be of US origin, they were duly forgotten and discarded, as though domestic terror is not in fact terror at all, at least not terror that can be used to propagate fallacies about foreign nemeses. The people that died, however, remain dead to this day, comforted little by the lack of utility found in their deaths.

Seven years later, 'unnamed government sources' are back, slowly sowing the seeds for another disappearance of the topic, this time in the form of a dead scientist. Completely ignoring their previous credulity in the public prosecution of Steven Hatfill, the media bandwagon is once again taking passengers, destination to be determined by the US government. Journalistic timing couldn't be more impeccable, as it was only late June of this year that the government settled with Hatfill for its propagation of lies about him in the initial phase of the story. No bother, all the more reason to blindly jump after the next government target without question.

I don't pretend to know the guilt or innocence of Bruce Ivins, no one does, but the story reads to me like so many we've read before, with endings well known. There was Hatfill. Richard Jewell in the Atlanta Olympics bombings. The constant rehashing of the Jon Benet case. And of course, the story of the pretty, affluent, blond girl in Aruba that insists on keeping Nancy Grace compelling me to throw a blunt object at my television on a nightly basis. Aesop was no more proficient in providing ample guides on how to proceed, but reason-be-damned, sensationalism must rule the day.

Others have examined the details of the FBI's shaky case in much more detail than I wish to, and they are worth reading, but in doing so, they seem to be placing the verdict in the hands of the outcome. The final fate of the case, however, has no bearing on the lack of integrity involved all around.

Journalists are widely being used as tools of the FBI in the case, waiting patiently to write unquestioningly the next tidbit of information passed onto them by the government, and in that way are no better than journalists used to perform their patriotic duty a century ago by printing stories of bombed American ships in order to instigate war with Spain, though the ships were done in by the US itself for precisely that function. The tale, though the players are different, is well-worn and remains transparent.

The argument over the state of journalism in America shouldn't be over liberal versus conservative, but rather over competency versus sheer ineptitude, the latter a defining characteristic of all but a select few American journalists. Whether Ivins is proven in some way guilty at the end of this parody is unimportant. It will do nothing to obfuscate the fact that there has been no actual reporting on the case at all, merely rote repetition of unnamed government sources weaving the tale most beneficial to their cause.

Sphere: Related Content

Fumbling in the Dark

Much as a sixteen year old would fumble and grope in the dark when presented with his first potential catch, the overwhelming legacy of the Bush administration's newfound legal and logistical toys is one of incoherency and incompetence. Although the government has had more tools at its disposal, and less incursions from the Constitution, than any previous administration, it has parlayed those advantages into a bumbling policy which invariably fails to heed the reality of world affairs, is prone to distractions, and has accomplished next to nothing, if not in fact overseeing a growth in the virility of terrorism around the world.

Nothing exemplifies this reality more than the thorny relationship with Pakistan, the earliest and most enduring of the international relationships forged after the WTC attacks in 2001, a relationship which brings into clear focus the inability of the Bush administration to perceive any specifics in foreign affairs and its propensity to rely instead on a worldview consisting only of good versus evil, us versus them. This worldview become prohibitive in practice, all but eliminating the ability to discern the difference between the population and leaders of Pakistan and its intelligence apparatus, the ISI.

A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan’s most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials.

The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.

[...]

The C.I.A. assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

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.

It defies credulity to infer that the CIA is just now getting wind of this relationship, but it is not hard to believe that any concerns among the US intelligence structure may well have been downplayed by the Bush administration. Although polarization is a prevailing curse of American politics, it tends to ebb in the area of foreign policy, but the current power structure has seen a reluctance to rely on the career bureaucrats in agencies like the CIA and seek the substitution of analysts and advisers with loyalties closer to Bush's wishes than realities dictate.

The Iraq war cannot be divorced from the American policy toward Pakistan. In order to push for the distraction to the West, the administration needed to portray Afghanistan as under control, and a significant part of that policy was misguided reliance on the efforts of Pakistan and the ISI. Having forced the Taliban and al Qaeda to seek refuge in Pakistan, the US talked up the Pakistanis, assuring the world that the Taliban were sure to find the border region less than hospitable. For all intents and purposes, the policy worked, as the public remained largely unobtrusive on the topic for the better part of 5 years.

The ISI has long associated itself with anti-American militants, whom they utilized to advance their shared aims on targets in Afghanistan and India. Now, the ISI is drunk with American funds and free to pursue those long-standing policies with even greater fervor, and the US as usual is surprised to find that not everyone who accepts funding is necessarily as dedicated to orthodoxy as we would like. To that end, the ISI is believed to have played a significant role in last month's bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.

Aside from using American money to pursue enmity with India, the ISI has been playing both sides of the fence, warning militants in the border region of impending US attacks and "in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas."

Although this reality is sure to place a strain on US-Pakistani relations, there is of course no expectation that the tap will be turned off. Barbs will be traded for a short period, to be sure, but the situation will soon return to normal, with American funds and arms flowing into Pakistan only to find their way back at the point of an RPG. Throwing money at problems, though, is all the US really attempts to solve them. Examining the underlying causes might require a but of introspection, of self-criticism which in American foreign policy is sacrilege. Thus the wheel continues to roll unabated, America throwing out money and then throwing up its hands when it comes back at it, never sure just what to make of it all, never willing to truly investigate the core of international relations.

All the US is left with for its efforts, half-hearted as they were, is a narco-state in no better shape than it was in 2001. The per-capita, post-war investment in Afghanistan pales in comparison to all other such situations, significantly less than that for post-conflict and post-natural-disaster rebuilding in every other part of the world. Left alone to reconstitute in Pakistan, the Taliban has renewed its assault on Kabul, forcing even more investors to flee along with any Afghans of any intellectual import or promise.

Although it has not happened, even had the Taliban been eliminated the situation would scarcely be different. The specific propagator of violence is of less importance than the arena of economic devastation left in the wake of destruction followed by inattention. Until the US learns to fight the root causes of terrorism in addition to its contemporary perpetrators, it is doomed to remain tied to merry-go-round, with little hope of getting off.

Related:

Surge II: Afghanistan, July 15
Afghanistan: Right War or No, It's Still War, July 21

Sphere: Related Content

Robert Gates: A Beacon of Reason in a Sea of Madness

**Update Appended 7/17 @ 1900**

Though statements like the ones Secretary of Defense Gates made recently warning of "creeping militarism" in American foreign policy would have set off a Cat-5 storm and resulted in collective gnashing of teeth if Barack Obama had uttered them, they are worth noting simply for their imposition of a rare, even if fleeting, incursion of reason on the body politic. Gates, in the process, has just earned himself a new nickname from his boss: Fredo.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned yesterday against the risk of a "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy, saying the State Department should lead U.S. engagement with other countries, with the military playing a supporting role.

"We cannot kill or capture our way to victory" in the long-term campaign against terrorism, Gates said, arguing that military action should be subordinate to political and economic efforts to undermine extremism.

This of course is obvious to plenty of people with a resume less impressive than Gates, but still remains almost entirely absent from the foreign policy discussion. What Gates understands is that in fighting 'terrorism,' the US is not fighting a definite enemy. Terrorism is a tactic, not a foe. It's easy to pin terms like 'Islamofascism' on it, but those do nothing to address the core cause of terrorism itself. No matter how many 'enemy combatants' the US detains and/or tortures, the root causes of militancy remain. Truly, "we cannot kill or capture our way to victory."

The root causes are not difficult to ascertain, with that ever-present 'militarism' of American foreign policy having a share in it, as well as the economic devastation in many regions of the world. Though the US may capture thousands of 'enemy combatants,' the economic and nationalistic reasons for terrorism remain, and until our leaders begin to address that core, terrorism will survive.

"America's civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long -- relative to what we traditionally spend on the military, and more importantly, relative to the responsibilities and challenges our nation has around the world," Gates said at a dinner organized by the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign, according to prepared remarks of his speech.

Over the next 20 years, Gates predicted, "the most persistent and potentially dangerous threats will come less from emerging ambitious states, than from failing ones that cannot meet the basic needs -- much less the aspirations -- of their people."

In my estimation, a significant effort on the part of the Western World to lift up the economies of the Middle East and elsewhere would go much further toward achieving the goals of the War on Terror than a thousand bunker busters or cluster bombs ever will. Given an outlet other than poverty, the reasons for militancy will begin to fade away.

History is full of examples of economic devastation leading to militancy, as it is far from a new phenomenon. When populations face economic devastation, natural instinct causes them to seek out a scapegoat, and nationalism grows exponentially. The rise of Hitler in the 30s cannot be divorced from the obscene levels of inflation in Weimar Germany.

When I speak of economic aid, it's important to stress that it must differ from the aid we've offered in the past. Typically, loans to foreign countries come with stipulations that they privatize their entire system, gut their government, and allow multinational companies to take nearly all of the profits back home. In other words, the aid never gets to, and often worsens the prospects of, the people it's meant to help. The West must provide the populations at large in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan an opportunity for economic success, on their own terms and with the proceeds benefiting the target country.

Obviously this only begins to scratch the surface, but until more leaders like Gates are willing to accept that terrorism is a tactic that has root causes and stems from a discernible set of circumstances, there is no possibility of stemming the tide.


Update:

My mistake, Obama has said something similar. Commence the gnashing of teeth.

Sphere: Related Content

Racial Profiling: The FBI Gives Up on Pretense

Feeling it's safely out of the light of scrutiny for the time being, the Justice Department is considering allowing the FBI to use race or ethnicity as traits which could trigger a national security investigation. Henceforth, it seems, the burden of proof will be on all people of Middle Eastern decent to show that they're not a terrorist.

Here's the money shot.

Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons — such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate U.S. citizens and legal residents.

How quaint and antiquated.

One official, while defending the proposed guidelines, raised concerns about criticism during the presidential election year over what he called "the P word" — profiling.

The "P word?" Has journalism fallen so far as to grant credence to such inanity? Careful, unnamed official, you don't want to give people the impression that the rule would allow the FBI to target people from Yemen for no reason other than they are people from Yemen. The public might be mistaken and think Justice was engaged in some sort of profiling.

Of course, we're assured that the FBI would not be allowed to wiretap without a warrant, but we know where that goes.

Independence Day brings out the lauding of freedom in everyone, not the least of which our humble leader, but when it comes down to protecting those freedoms, the government invariably comes down on the side of obliterating such profanities.

Sphere: Related Content

Phil Gramm and Undercutting the War on Terror

Given the predictable nature of American politics and its false sense of ideological diversity, it is guaranteed that a central theme of the coming general election will be that Barack Obama, and by extension all Democrats, are soft on national security and that only John McCain is capable of protecting the country. While a tired theme, consistently dispelled by all available evidence, it still has legs as conventional wisdom.

While any assessment of the last 8 eight years of the 'strong' foreign policy will see the strengthening of al Qaeda (in the FATA), Hamas (in Gaza), Hezbollah (in Lebanon), and Iran (by its proxies and in Iraq), the media narrative remains intact. In addition, the last 8 years have seen Iran continue its nuclear ambitions unabated--despite the furrowed brows and promises not to converse--and North Korea on the verge of achieving a working weapons program with nary a notice by the Bush administration.

In light of the obvious failure of the policy by any available criteria, John McCain will run on much the same platform. He often holds up his disagreement over the Iraq war as a significant divergence, but McCain's only complaint was that the US didn't send enough troops. Never did he question the wisdom of ignoring al Qaeda in favor of deposing an impotent white whale. Following that path to the nomination is fraught with potholes for McCain, however, as his team of lobbyists has a long history of shilling for brutal dictatorships--Myanmar, Zambia, Qaddafi to name but a few.

While those relationships may be in extremely bad taste, McCain's relationship with former Senator Phil Gramm illustrates a much more nefarious portent for US security and the War on Terror.

Gramm, as campaign co-chair, is "a valued voice on economic policy," according to McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker. Gramm's day job is vice president of US division of Swiss bank, UBS, a position which saw him lobby for the banking industry in the run-up to the sub-prime bubble burst as late as this past December. Now, UBS is under investigation for tax havens:

NEWSWEEK has learned that UBS is also currently the focus of congressional and Justice Department investigations into schemes that allegedly enabled wealthy Americans to evade income taxes by stashing their money in overseas havens.

McCain's campaign is already distancing itself from some of Gramm's other work for UBS: his involvement in attempts to sell financial products known as "death bonds," which BusinessWeek described last summer as one of "the most macabre investment scheme[s] ever devised by Wall Street."

Again, perhaps in bad taste, but its Gramm's lack of commitment to national security that should have McCain running for cover.

A six-year struggle to uncover Osama bin Laden's financial network failed because American officials did not skillfully use the legal tools they had, did not realize they needed stronger weapons, and faced resistance at home and abroad, officials involved in the effort say.

Federal officials say they have not persuaded foreign banks to open their books to investigators and that in this country, a law that would have allowed the United States to penalize foreign banks that did not cooperate was blocked last year by a single United States senator.

That single senator was Phil Gramm, then a member of the Senate Banking Committee. Given that al Qaeda could not have launched an operation on the scale of the World Trade Center attacks deprived of finances, tracking down and putting a stop to money laundering by terrorist organizations should have been and should be today a priority in any national security effort. Efforts to put the screws on foreign banks prior to 2001 met with resistance in the Bush White House, but it quickly reversed course after the attacks. Phil Gramm, though single-handedly responsible for blocking the bill, felt no such inkling.

"I was right then and I am right now" in opposing the bill, Mr. Gramm said yesterday..."The way to deal with terrorists is to hunt them down and kill them."

That anyone still believes that is a reliable and practically-feasible method is incredible, but to suggest using force to the exclusion of all other tools is ludicrous.

"We could have starved the organization if we put our minds to it," said Richard Palmer, who gained experience in money laundering as the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Moscow during the 1990's. "The government has had the ability to track these accounts for some time."

Clearly there were many moving parts in the failure of American intelligence which led to the attacks, and any attempt to place that blame on Gramm is erroneous, but the fact remains that Gramm placed the financial interests of the banking industry above that of national security. He was willing to sacrifice the ability to track dirty money before and (somehow) after the WTC attacks, yet has teamed with John McCain as the latter tours the country proclaiming to be strong on national security.

It is the reigning narrative that Democrats are weak on national security and Republicans strong, but the facts simply don't bear that out. There is no tangible evidence of an improvement of American or Israeli security over the past 8 years, though there is ample proof of al Qaeda's reconstitution, Hamas' control of Gaza, and Iran's new-found playground handed to them on a silver platter.

Now, on top of that, McCain employs the economic advice of a man who fought to keep American law enforcement from tracking and freezing money laundering by terrorist organizations. This contradiction may be of little concern, however, as the media is loathe to make any adjustments to its reigning narratives, lest they have to do some mental leg work.

Sphere: Related Content

On Diversion

Two weeks ago, the GAO released a report detailing the ability of al Qaeda to reconstitute in the tribal areas of Pakistan (FATA region) and the failure of the government to prevent regression in the War on Terror.

Today, it was the State Department's turn, releasing its annual terrorism assessment. As usual, Iran is declared the largest state sponsor of terrorism. Warren Strobel, writing for McClatchy, discusses the report's application to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border:

Terror attacks in Pakistan doubled last year, and casualties from terrorism quadrupled, as extremists reasserted their hold in tribal areas and attempted to extend their reach deep into the country, the State Department said in its annual report Wednesday.

There was also a 16 percent increase in terrorist attacks in neighboring Afghanistan in 2007, the report on global terrorism trends said.

It said that al Qaida has proved "adaptable and resilient" and used a cease-fire agreement along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier to reconstitute its capabilities.

Taken together, the findings appear to confirm that the struggle against terrorism in the troubled Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, which many specialists consider the central battleground in the fight against al Qaida and its affiliates, was set back last year.

While the report seems loathe to mention the Iraqi occupation and its concomitant diversion of resources, it does speak to our reliance on the Pakistani government to police the tribal regions on its western border with Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have long criticized the deal struck in September 2006 between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and militants in the North Waziristan tribal agency.

Under the agreement, which collapsed last year, the Pakistani military stopped attacks on the militants, and the militants were supposed to evict foreign jihadists and stop cross-border infiltration into Afghanistan.

Senior U.S. officials say that the deal in fact allowed al Qaida and the Taliban to reconstitute and led to an increase in attacks against U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The newly-elected leaders of Pakistan of course suggest that their approach will be more effective, but it remains fact that our past reliance on the Musharraf-led government to deal effectively with the region was misguided at the least. Combined with a diversion of both attention and resources to Iraq, the ineffectiveness of Pakistan has worsened the situation and created a safe haven from which al Qaeda has reconstituted and is free to launch attacks into Afghanistan virtually unmolested.

In addition, al Qaeda has continued its expansion by "making greater use of regional groups, particularly the Algeria-based al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which once focused its attacks exclusively on the Algerian government."

The State Department's report shows in yet more light that the US policy towards terrorism, despite all of its rhetorical flourish, has done nothing to codify the nexus of terror that spawned the World Trade Center attacks, which were the impetus for the counter-terrorism effort in the first place.

To say that the occupation of Iraq has decimated our ability to root out the terrorist stockpiles from whence the attacks came is no longer an opinion or a show of partisanship. It is a statement of fact, borne out again and again by the government's own reports.

Sphere: Related Content