Who's leveraging AQI?

This is a spectacular example of wingnuttia, courtesy of Sailor boy Ed.

The NIE specifies that the main threat from AQ comes from Iraq. It calls AQI the most visible and capable unit of AQ, and the intel community believes it will expand its operations as soon as it is able. The other units of AQ have been hamstrung by global cooperation in the war on terror, but the report frets that AQ can outlast that cooperation.

This will put some pressure on Congress this summer to consider its Iraq operations carefully. It makes the likelihood of a complete withdrawal less likely; the US has to keep pressure on AQI to prevent them from gaining enough strength to launch attacks here. It could, though, allow Congress to press for an AQI-only policy in Iraq, where the American military presence in Iraq gets reduced and redeployed to the Sunni areas only to fight AQI. That would probably not satisfy the anti-war wing of the Democrats and certainly would not please those who see Iraq as an opportunity to establish democracy in the Middle East, but might allow the current Salazar amendment to gain the middle ground.

In fact...

Al-Qaeda's participation in the Iraqi violence has figured particularly heavily in recent administration arguments for a continued U.S. troop presence there, because White House strategists regard it as a politically salable reason for staying and continuing to fight.

Some terrorism analysts say Bush has used inflated rhetoric to depict al-Qaeda in Iraq as part of the same group of extremists that attacked the United States on Sept. 11 -- noting that the group did not exist until after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. These analysts say Bush also has overlooked the contribution that U.S. actions have made to the growth of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has been described as kind of a franchise of the main al-Qaeda network headed by bin Laden.

Paul R. Pillar, a former CIA analyst who has been involved in previous intelligence estimates, said that the administration has correctly identified the danger posed by al-Qaeda in Iraq and that there are indeed links between the Iraq group and the larger international terrorist network. But he said the White House is drawing the wrong conclusion, and argued instead that it is the U.S. presence in Iraq that is fueling the terrorists' cause.

"Iraq matters because it has become a cause celebre and because groups like al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda central exploit the image of the United States being out to occupy Muslim lands," Pillar said.

Of course, Ed the Talking Horse would probably respond, the facts are biased.

WASHINGTON, July 17 — President Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged Tuesday that the strategy for fighting Osama bin Laden’s leadership of Al Qaeda in Pakistan had failed, as the White House released a grim new intelligence assessment that has forced the administration to consider more aggressive measures inside Pakistan.

The intelligence report, the most formal assessment since the Sept. 11 attacks about the terrorist threat facing the United States, concludes that the United States is losing ground on a number of fronts in the fight against Al Qaeda, and describes the terrorist organization as having significantly strengthened over the past two years.

It's as if the wingnuts -- and the Right, in general -- need the threat from al Qaeda to justify their rhetoric and their very existence. They have whipped up fears while doing everything they can -- bolstering Musharraf, invading an Islamic country, threating yet another -- to (using their own words) embolden al Qaeda and those who seek to join it.