The Real Enemy Staring Us in the Face
By BOB HERBERT

Published: July 12, 2004


Columnist Page: Bob Herbert


Justin Hunt, a young man from Wildomar, Calif., about 75 miles east of
Los Angeles, was determined to join the Marines. When recruiters
pointed out that he was grossly overweight, he spent a year losing
more than 150 pounds. Then he signed up and was promptly sent to Iraq,
where he was killed last Tuesday in an explosion. He was 22.

Three American soldiers, not yet publicly identified, were killed
yesterday in two separate attacks on military patrols north of
Baghdad. On Saturday four marines were killed in a vehicle accident
near Falluja. And five more American soldiers were killed Thursday in
a mortar attack on a base in the Sunni-dominated city of Samarra.

For what?

Even as these brave troops were dying in the cruel and bloody environs
of Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington was unfurling
its damning unanimous report about the incredibly incompetent
intelligence that the Bush administration used to justify this awful
war.

The bipartisan committee, headed by Republican Senator Pat Roberts,
declared that the key intelligence assessments trumpeted by President
Bush as the main reasons for invading Iraq were unfounded.

Nearly 900 G.I.'s and more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have already
perished, and there is no end to the war in sight. The situation is
both sorrowful and disorienting. The colossal intelligence failures
and the willful madness of the administration, which presented war as
the first and only policy option, can leave you with the terrible
feeling that you're standing at the graveside of common sense and
reasonable behavior.

A government with even a nodding acquaintance with competence and good
sense would have launched an all-out war against Al Qaeda, not Iraq,
in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. After all, it was Al Qaeda,
not Iraq, that carried out the sneak attack on American soil that
destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon and killed
3,000 people. You might think that would have been enough to provoke
an all-out response from the U.S. Instead we saved our best shot for
the demented and already checkmated dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

Bin Laden and Al Qaeda must have gotten a good laugh out of that. Now
they're planning to come at us again. On Thursday, the same day Iraqi
insurgents killed the five G.I.'s in Samarra, the Bush administration
disclosed that bin Laden and his lieutenants, believed to be operating
from hideouts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, were directing an
effort by Al Qaeda to unleash an encore attack against the United
States.

According to Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, the latest
effort may well be timed to disrupt the fall elections.

If that happens, I wonder if we'll finally get serious about the war
we should be fighting against bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Maybe not. Based
on the impenetrable logic of the president and his advisers, a new
strike by Al Qaeda might lead us to start a war with, say, Iran, or
Syria.

If we know that bin Laden and his top leadership are somewhere along
the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and that they're plotting an attack
against the United States, why are we not zeroing in on them with
overwhelming force? Why is there not a sense of emergency in the land,
with the entire country pulling together to stop another Sept. 11 from
occurring?

Why are we not more serious about this?

I don't know what the administration was thinking when it invaded Iraq
even as the direct threat from bin Laden and Al Qaeda continued to
stare us in the face. That threat has only intensified. The war in
Iraq consumed personnel and resources badly needed in the campaign
against bin Laden and his allies. And it has fanned the hatred of the
U.S. among Muslims around the world. Instead of destroying Al Qaeda,
we have played right into its hands and contributed immeasurably to
its support.

Most current intelligence analysts agree with Secretary Ridge that Al
Qaeda will try before long to strike the U.S. mainland once again.

We've trained most of our guns on the wrong foe. The real enemy is
sneaking up behind us. Again. The price to be paid for not recognizing
this could be devastating.