Bush's Osama Problem

Scott Shane writes in the New York Times: "Nearly six years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives expended in the name of the war on terror pose a single, insistent question: Are we safer?

"On Tuesday, in a dark and strikingly candid two pages, the nation's intelligence agencies offered an implicit answer, and it was not encouraging. In many respects, the National Intelligence Estimate suggests, the threat of terrorist violence against the United States is growing worse, fueled by the Iraq war and spreading Islamic extremism."

Shane writes that "the stark declassified summary contrasted sharply with the more positive emphasis of President Bush and his top aides for years: that two-thirds of Al Qaeda's leadership had been killed or captured; that the Iraq invasion would reduce the terrorist menace; and that the United States had its enemies 'on the run,' as Mr. Bush has frequently put it. . . .

"The headline on the intelligence estimate, said Daniel L. Byman, a former intelligence officer and the director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, might just as well have been the same as on the now famous presidential brief of Aug. 6, 2001: 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.'"

Mark Mazzetti and David E. Sanger write in the New York Times: "At the White House, [Frances Townsend, Bush's homeland security adviser,] found herself in the uncomfortable position of explaining why American military action was focused in Iraq when the report concluded that main threat of terror attacks that could be carried out in the United States emanated from the tribal areas of Pakistan."

About the Timing

Mark Silva writes in the Chicago Tribune: "The release of limited findings from the latest consensus of the nation's intelligence community, arriving at a critical moment in President Bush's battle with the Democratic-led Congress over an unpopular war in Iraq, follows a pattern of White House releases of select intelligence findings at critical junctures in the war debate.

"The White House maintained that nothing in the assessment, titled 'The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland,' points to an imminent attack. But the sum of it warns of a 'persistent and evolving threat over the next three years' posed especially by Al Qaeda, 'driven by their undiminished intent to attack the homeland.' . . .

"Democrats said the document showed mostly that the administration has failed to weaken Al Qaeda. And other critics suggested that stirring a renewed fear of terrorism served the White House's political purposes in the midst of the heated Iraq debate."

Rallying the GOP?

John Bresnahan writes for Politico: "The Republican establishment is rallying to the defense of President Bush and his controversial war strategy, with some GOP members of Congress cherry-picking intelligence about a resurgent Al Qaeda to buy at least two more months for Bush's Iraq strategy.

"Republican leaders on Tuesday pounced on a newly released National Intelligence Estimate to argue that the increasingly powerful and ominous Al Qaeda presence justifies current troop levels in Iraq at least until September."

... Or the Democrats?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a statement: "The unclassified summary of the National Intelligence Estimate released today leads me to two conclusions: one, the Bush Administration's national security strategy has failed in its most basic responsibility -- to capture or kill Usama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, the men who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, and eliminate Al Qaeda as a threat to the homeland; and two, there is even greater urgency to the need to change course in Iraq. . . .

"Changing our strategy in Iraq and narrowing our military mission to countering Al Qaeda terrorism -- as a bipartisan majority in the Senate now favors -- would be the single greatest thing we could do to undermine Al Qaeda's ability to use Iraq as a recruiting and propaganda tool fueling the growth of regional terrorist groups."