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Monday August 25, 2003
Agence France-Presse lead: "The US administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, said that hundreds of "international terrorists" have entered the country and that Iraq was now a frontline in the US war on terrorism."
Also according to the AFP story, Bremer told CNN, "It's pretty clear that we do have problems with foreign terrorists coming across some of the borders that Iraq, shares with its neighbors."
Ok. That's the bad news.
Here's the good news. The good news, according to a guy named Wayne Simmons, a former CIA officer who appeared on Tony Snow's Fox News Channel show yesterday, is this: Finding small groups of terrorists in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and the other neighboring countries is almost impossible.
Simmons echoed Ambassador Bremer saying, with "Signal intelligence and human intelligence - including growing 'HumInt' we're getting from Iraqis - these guys will be easier to find and easier to wipe out when they clump together in Iraq."
Ambassador Paul Bremer said earlier on Snow's Fox News Sunday program, "We are getting information from Iraqis now in a way we were not, even a month ago."
This is an important concept because a Newsweek poll released over the weekend showed there is a growing dissatisfaction with progress in Iraq. According to the MSNBC/Newsweek website:
Sixty-nine percent of Americans polled say they are very concerned (40 percent) or somewhat concerned (29 percent) that the United States will be bogged down for many years in Iraq without making much progress in achieving its goals. Just 18 percent say they're confident that a stable, democratic form of government can take shape in Iraq over the long term; 37 percent are somewhat confident.
For the record, note that Newsweek combined "very concerned" with "somewhat concerned" to be able to lead with the 69 percent number.
But, (and we've pointed out this kind of editorial trickery before) Newsweek chose to separate (and start the sentence with) "just 18 percent" for the confidence question. The editors did NOT combine the "confident" with the "somewhat confident" percentages for readers which totals to a somewhat positive 55 percent believing Iraq will stabilize over the long term.
A quick reading would lead you to believe the numbers were 69-18. When, in fact, the comparative numbers are 69-55. Not great, but certainly better than what Newsweek tried to imply.
Six grafs into the piece we are told that "Sixty-one percent still believe that the United States was right to take military action against Iraq in March; 33 percent do not."
No one outside the editors of My Weekly Reader would have expected the Newsweek headline to be: "61% Back Bush on Iraq War," but it might not have caused mass resignations at Newsweek for the opening paragraph to have included that number as well.
The Newsweek poll also said that the President's re-elect (will you vote for President Bush for re-election) had gone underwater at 44 - 49.
However, a month earlier, in actual head-to-head comparisons Bush led all Democrats by margins ranging from 17 points (Hillary) to 28 points (Dean).
It is difficult to believe that in the month of August with fairly good news on the economy, and the political news being dominated by California that the President's numbers would have dropped dramatically but, there are the Newsweek numbers.
Be prepared for an onslaught of Democratic (and some Republican) complaints about how post-war Iraq is being handled. While the Newsweek poll indicates people already think we are spending too much in Iraq, a chorus of critics hit the Sunday shows calling for even more troops - this in the face of the commanders on the ground telling anyone who will listen that they've got the troop levels they need.
This is because the number of troops necessary to fully control terrorist attacks might number in the millions.
Unless the terrorists begin to clump together.
Then as Newt Gingrich once said, they will become what the military - in their highly specialized, highly technical jargon - call:
Targets.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the Newsweek poll, the transcript of Ambassador Bremer's appearance on Fox News Sunday, a nice note from Tony Snow and a pretty good Mullfoto.
--END --
Copyright © 2003 Richard A. Galen
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