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June
Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press! Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary
The Morning Murmur – Thursday, June 15, 2006
SPECIAL EDITION: GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM
1. Coalition forces launch huge anti-Taliban push in Afghanistan - USA Today
Military forces are "moving forward with large-scale operations" in four
southern provinces of Afghanistan, the U.S. military said in a statement. It
is the largest offensive since the 2001 invasion that toppled the Taliban
regime.
2. Iraq Using 'Treasure' of al-Zarqawi Info - Washington Post
Iraq's national security adviser said Thursday a "huge treasure" of
documents and computer records was seized after the raid on terror leader
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's hideout, giving the Iraqi government the upper hand
in its fight against al-Qaida in Iraq.
3. Don't give up - Newsday
President Bush, clearly buoyed by positive developments in Iraq and his
lightning-fast trip to Baghdad, gave an impassioned defense of his policy to
stay the course there in his Rose Garden press conference yesterday. It was
one of his most articulate, rational arguments for not withdrawing troops
from Iraq at this point.
4. Kerry's change of heart - Boston Globe Op-ed
The Massachusetts senator is finally taking the antiwar position that people
who know him well expected him to embrace long ago. Kerry's painful
repositioning on Iraq raises some tough political questions: Is this too
little, too late -- or better late than never? But the toughest question
Kerry faces isn't about war, it's about credibility.
5. Zarqawi's Final Atrocities - Human Events
The legacy of Abu Musab al
Zarqawi can be found in a pile of boxes along the side of the road in Hadid.
There, the severed heads of Zarqawi's final victims remind us of the monster
who will never commit such atrocities again.
For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov
FULL ARTICLES BELOW:
1. Coalition forces launch huge
anti-Taliban push in Afghanistan - USA Today
MUSA QALA, Afghanistan (AP) - More than 10,000 Afghan and
U.S.-led coalition forces began a massive anti-Taliban operation across
southern Afghanistan on Thursday, while a bomb killed seven people riding a
bus to a coalition base for work.
Military forces are "moving forward with large-scale operations" in four
southern provinces, Uruzgan, Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul, the U.S. military
said in a statement. It is the largest offensive since the 2001 invasion
that toppled the Taliban regime.
As the offensive began, however, suspected militants continued their
attacks.
A bomb hidden in a bus headed to a coalition base in southern Kandahar city
exploded during morning rush hour, killing seven people and injuring 17,
coalition officials and the Interior Ministry said. Afghan police initially
said 10 people were killed.
Coalition spokesman Maj. Quentin Innis blamed the attack on Taliban
militants and said it clearly targeted Afghans working for the coalition.
Among the dead were interpreters and workers for the air base, Afghan
officials said.
"It's the first time Afghans working here have been deliberately targeted by
the Taliban. These are local guys trying to support their families," he
said.
The military offensive, dubbed "Operation Mountain Thrust," is part of a
major push to squeeze Taliban fighters responsible for a spate of ambushes
and suicide attacks against coalition forces and Afghan authorities in
recent months.
The operation was also timed to coincide with the upcoming transfer this
summer of command in the south from the U.S.-led coalition to the NATO-led
International Security Assistance Force.
"There is no scheduled end date to Mountain Thrust. The Coalition will
continue operations well into the summer and until objectives are met," the
statement said.
The offensive is focused on southern Uruzgan and northeastern Helmand
provinces, where the military says most of the militant forces have
gathered. Operations also will be conducted in the former Taliban stronghold
of Kandahar and Zabul.
Troops on Wednesday built sand barriers and guard outposts around a small
forward operating base in the Helmand district of Musa Qala, while others
fired rounds from 119-millimeter howitzers deployed to the base's perimeter
into the vast desert expanse.
"We do it so they know it's here and they know it could be pretty bad for
them," said Lt. Col. Chris Toner, commanding officer at the base located 180
miles from the nearest permanent base in Kandahar. "This terrain up here
favors the defender. I'm sure they know how many vehicles we have here, that
we have artillery here, but that's OK - I know what they know."
Limited operations began May 15 with attacks on Taliban command and control
and support networks. According to U.S. military and Afghan figures, about
550 people, mostly militants, have been killed since mid-May, along with at
least nine coalition troops.
The operation will involve 2,300 U.S. conventional and special forces, 3,300
Britons, 2,200 Canadians, 3,500 Afghans and coalition air support, said Maj.
Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, U.S. operational commander in Afghanistan, who
briefed The Associated Press on the offensive last week.
The operation is the largest launched since 2001. But U.S.-led troops have
conducted large-scale operations elsewhere in Afghanistan involving several
thousand soldiers, particularly in the east near the Pakistani border where
Taliban forces routinely attack U.S.-led troops from towering mountain
ranges.
On Wednesday, coalition and Afghan forces killed 26 suspected Taliban
fighters in an attack on mountain positions in the eastern Paktika province,
said provincial Gov. Akram Khelwak. Helicopter gunships and artillery fire
supported ground troops and one Afghan police officer was wounded.
Afghanistan has been wracked by its bloodiest violence since the U.S.-led
coalition invaded after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and toppled the
Taliban government for harboring Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda
supporters.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-15-afghanistan-offensive_x.htm
2. Iraq Using 'Treasure' of al-Zarqawi
Info - Washington Post
By KIM GAMEL
Thursday, June 15, 2006; 7:54 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's national security adviser said Thursday a "huge
treasure" of documents and computer records was seized after the raid on
terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's hideout, giving the Iraqi government
the upper hand in its fight against al-Qaida in Iraq.
National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie also said he believed the
security situation in the country would improve enough to allow a large
number of U.S.-led forces to leave Iraq by the end of this year, and a
majority to depart by the end of next year. "And maybe the last soldier will
leave Iraq by mid-2008," he said.
Al-Rubaie said a laptop, flashdrive and other documents were found in the
debris after the airstrike that killed the al-Qaida in Iraq leader last week
outside Baqouba, and more information has been uncovered in raids of other
insurgent hideouts since then.
He called it a "huge treasure ... a huge amount of information."
When asked how he could be sure the information was authentic, al-Rubaie
said "there is nothing more authentic than finding a thumbdrive in his
pocket."
"We believe that this is the beginning of the end of al-Qaida in Iraq," al-Rubaie
said, adding that the documents showed al-Qaida is in "pretty bad shape,"
politically and in terms of training, weapons and media.
"Now we have the upper hand," he said at a news conference in Baghdad. "We
feel that we know their locations, the names of their leaders, their
whereabouts, their movements, through the documents we found during the last
few days."
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, pressed forward with his
initiative to crack down on violence in Baghdad. Government forces fanned
out across Baghdad for a second day, setting up checkpoints and frisking
motorists.
Al-Maliki has promised the crackdown would not target any ethnic or
sectarian group.
Gunmen killed an engineer and kidnapped another, and a detergent factory
worker was shot to death as he was headed to work elsewhere in western
Baghdad, police said, but no major violence was reported in the capital, a
day after al-Maliki's major security operation was launched.
Elsewhere, however, gunmen stormed a Sunni mosque near Tikrit, killing four
people and wounding 15, including a fundamentalist Sunni cleric who has
spoken out against the killing of Iraqis as part of the insurgency.
In addition to announcing the security crackdown, al-Maliki opened the door
Wednesday for talks with insurgents opposed to the country's political
process as part of a national reconciliation initiative, but he said any
negotiations would exclude terrorist groups. The plan could include a pardon
for some prisoners.
A senior White House official said the Iraqis have indicated that they are
looking for "models" in national reconciliation. Another official said al-Maliki
had inquired whether Bosnians or South Africans might be able to provide
expertise.
"There is also a space for dialogue with insurgents who opposed the
political process and now want to join the political process after offering
guarantees," al-Maliki said. "But on the other hand we are not going to
negotiate with the criminals who have killed the innocent."
A top al-Maliki adviser told The Washington Post the plan could include
pardons for those who had attacked U.S. troops. Adnan Ali al-Kadhimi told
the Post "there is a patriotic feeling among the Iraqi youth and the belief
that those attacks are legitimate acts of resistance and defending their
homeland. These people will be pardoned definitely, I believe."
The security crackdown in Baghdad includes a curfew extended by 4 1/2 hours
_ from 8:30 p.m. until dawn _ and a weapons ban. The government did not say
how long the crackdown would last and declined to give precise numbers about
checkpoints and troops.
Operation Forward Together, involving 75,000 Iraqi army and police forces
backed by U.S. troops, began Wednesday at a crucial time _ one day after
Bush visited Baghdad to reassure Iraqis of Washington's continued support
and exactly a week after al-Zarqawi's death in a U.S. airstrike.
During Bush's visit, Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi asked him
for a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq, the
president's office said.
"I supported him in this," President Jalal Talabani said in a statement
released Wednesday. Al-Hashimi's representatives could not immediately be
reached for comment Thursday.
Bush made it clear that a U.S. military presence _ now at about 132,000
troops _ would continue, although he stressed the fate of the Iraqis was in
their own hands.
Al-Hashimi also said there were "promises to free about 3,500 detainees" by
June 26, the statement from Talabani's office said. That number that would
be above the 2,500 to be freed as part of a bid by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
to soothe Sunni Arabs over allegations of random detentions and maltreatment
at the hands of the Shiite-led government.
More than 450 detainees were being released Thursday as part of al-Maliki's
national reconciliation efforts, according to the U.S. military.
Many Baghdad residents were hopeful about al-Maliki's efforts, although some
were clearly impatient as they waited for 15 minutes or more to get through
the checkpoints.
"The reconciliation plan should exclude those responsible for bloodshed of
the Iraqi people," resident Abdul-Sada Ali told AP Television News. "It is a
very good step by Mr. Nouri al-Maliki."
The security operation was al-Maliki's first major action since his new
government of national unity was sworn in on May 20, and a week after he
gained the consensus he needed from Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups to
fill three key posts _ defense, interior and national security.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/15/AR2006061500295.html
3. Don't give up - Newsday
Bush issues his strongest statement yet to defend staying in Iraq
June 15, 2006
President George W. Bush, clearly buoyed by positive developments in Iraq
and his lightning-fast trip to Baghdad, gave an impassioned defense of his
policy to stay the course there in his Rose Garden press conference
yesterday. It was one of his most articulate, rational arguments for not
withdrawing troops from Iraq at this point.
There is good reason for Bush to feel better about what is happening after
months of unrelenting bad news. The formation of a full government following
months of infighting, indicating that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is
tougher than many had believed, and the elimination of terrorist leader Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi are all positive developments.
No doubt Bush and his political advisers are tying to reverse his political
fortunes with the trip, the weekend Camp David retreat on future Iraq policy
and now this upbeat press conference. The political picture for Bush and the
Republicans has been bleak heading into November's mid-term elections, and
Iraq was the force driving down his and the party's poll numbers.
But there is more to Bush's performance yesterday than party politics. His
presidency, his place in history and the role of the United States in the
world are riding on how Iraq turns out. The Democrats can bash Bush all they
want, but a positive - or less than disastrous - outcome in Iraq is still
very much in this nation's interest.
What was important about yesterday's press conference is that Bush gave the
best argument to date for not giving up the battle to turn Iraq into a
relatively stable, possibly even democratic nation. There are enough signs
of progress that it's too soon to throw in the towel.
"I understand how tough it is for the American people to reconcile death on
their TV screens when the president's saying we're making incremental
progress. ... But what I hope they understand is how important it is we
succeed in Iraq, that the country is more dangerous - the world is more
dangerous - if we don't succeed," he said.
While Bush's critics, including this page, have repeatedly pointed out the
colossal mistakes his administration has made in Iraq, the issue now is
whether there's still a chance to achieve the goals Bush talked about
yesterday: a nation that can provide security and the other fundamentals of
a civilized life for its citizens. Clearly, the administration has learned
from its early errors, even if the president has been loath to admit
mistakes. Military tactics have evolved. And there is now a fully elected
government with a constitution in place.
Bush is right. It is not time to give up.
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpbus154781463jun15,0,2063775.story?coll=ny-editorials-headlines
4. Kerry's change of heart - Boston Globe
Op-ed
By Joan Vennochi, Globe Columnist | June 15, 2006
WHY IS IT so hard to believe John Kerry?
The Massachusetts senator is finally taking the antiwar position that people
who know him well expected him to embrace long ago. The position is welcome,
if long overdue; unfortunately, it doesn't dispel doubts about the thinking
that got him to this place.
Kerry now labels his 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq invasion a mistake and
is calling for US troop withdrawal by the end of the year. His position --
for now -- is as crisp today as it was meandering during the last
presidential campaign.
Had he taken such a clear stand in 2004, he might be in the White House.
Remember, George W. Bush's convictions on war and miscellaneous matters
ended up as an advantage on Election Day. Kerry's penchant to finesse
everything, especially war, helped create the flip-flopping caricature
depicted in the Bush campaign ads.
As he moves toward a second presidential bid, Kerry continues to pay a price
for the straddles, calculations, and parsings of 2004. It's going to take
time and a lot of plain talking to overcome the excruciating equivocations
from his previous performance as presidential nominee.
Overcoming skepticism about Kerry's change of heart on Iraq will be
especially challenging. For one thing, it tracks nicely with the general
public's change of heart and coincides conveniently with the liberals'
search for an antiwar champion. In addition, the antiwar fervor that Kerry
displayed this week also coincides with an early poll from Iowa that puts
John Edwards in first place with Democrats in that presidential caucus
state.
The two former running mates now seem to be vying for the antiwar political
left. Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, flatly labeled his
vote for war ``a mistake" in a November 2005 opinion piece for The
Washington Post. In October 2005, Kerry expressed regret about the vote,
telling an audience at Georgetown University, ``I understand that as much as
we might wish it, we can't rewind the tape of history." In that Georgetown
speech, Kerry also opted for a middle ground between advocating an immediate
drawdown of troops and the Bush administration's refusal to set a timetable:
``The way forward in Iraq is not to pull out precipitously or merely promise
to stay `as long as it takes.' We must instead simultaneously pursue both a
political settlement and the withdrawal of American combat forces," he said
then.
Kerry has moved further left since that time, along with one wing of the
Democratic Party. At the ``Take Back America" conference in Washington this
week, liberal activists cheered him for setting a deadline for troop
withdrawal. They booed Senator Hillary Clinton of New York for arguing
against it.
American voters once accepted the concept of a ``new Nixon," sending Richard
M. Nixon to the White House in 1968 after rejecting him narrowly in 1960. So
it's possible that voters could embrace a ``new Kerry," although the memory
of the old one is still fresh enough to raise questions in a voter's mind.
The new Kerry's problem isn't a change of heart on the Iraq invasion. Public
sentiment reflects a similar shift and a desire to focus on ending the
conflict, not endlessly second-guessing the decision to start it.
The new Kerry's problem is the need to overcome skepticism about his motives
from the very start.
Did he vote to authorize the Iraq invasion in the first place because he did
not want to run for president in 2004 as an antiwar candidate? Is he
repudiating the vote and war now because he wants to run as an antiwar
candidate in 2008?
On one hand, you want to believe in the Vietnam veteran who testified
famously in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asking,
``How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" On the
other hand, it's hard to imagine that veteran taking so long to call the
current war a mistake. What was he thinking back in 2002 when he cast a vote
to send American troops to die, again, for a mistake? Did he forget about
them because he was thinking only of himself and what he believed the voters
wanted to hear? Hillary Clinton faces a version of the same question.
Kerry's painful repositioning on Iraq raises some tough political questions:
Is this too little, too late -- or better late than never?
But the toughest question Kerry faces isn't about war, it's about
credibility.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/06/15/kerrys_change_of_heart/
5. Zarqawi's Final Atrocities - Human
Events
by Richard Miniter
Posted Jun 08, 2006
If you are looking for the legacy of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, do not look in
the concrete rubble of so-called safe house in Baqubah that became his final
resting place.
Instead, look less than 10 miles to the west, on the side of the road in the
desert town of Hadid, for a pile of cardboard banana boxes.
Inside those boxes were nine human heads.
Some of the heads still had their blindfolds on. Iraqi police are still
attempting to identify the murdered men.
Days earlier, in Baquba, Iraqi police found another eight severed heads. One
of those heads belonged to a prominent Sunni Muslim imam, who preached peace
and tolerance.
For the past few weeks, U.S. military intelligence analysts had seen a spike
in beheadings-a specialty of the Zarqawi network.
Of course, Zarqawi will be remembered chiefly as a beheader. He apparently
enjoyed wielding the knife and slowly hacking off the head of Nicholas Berg
of West Chester, Pa. In a video that Zarqawi's followers proudly posted on
the Internet, Berg screams in pain in seven long minutes as Zarqawi saws
through his neck.
Zarqawi also is believed to have beheaded Eugene Armstrong of Hillsdale,
Mich.
Zarqawi is also believed to have beheaded Ken Bigley, the Liverpool,
U.K.-based engineer who came to Iraq "to help people," in October 2004.
Now it is Zarqawi's own head that is capturing the world's attention.
Displaying his head has several immediate benefits: it boosts the morale of
Iraqi police and military officers, who have been taking increased
casualties in the past few weeks and were spooked by the Zarqawi video
released last month. In that video, Zarqawi made a point of firing an M-4
and an M-249-two automatic weapons that are only used by U.S. forces. If he
can take guns from the hands of Americans he killed and turn those weapons
against the world's sole remaining superpower, maybe Zarqawi is invincible
after all. Yesterday's air strike has already reversed the downward spiral
of Iraqi police morale, one source told me.
Nor can Zarqawi be easily replaced. He had a kind of rogue-ish charisma that
resonated in the Arab world. He was featured in Arabic-language pop songs
and feted on Arabic soap operas. His persona drew hundreds of Saudis,
Syrians and other foreigners to fight alongside him in Iraq. There is simply
no one else in the organization who has his aura.
At the very least, the beheadings and suicide attacks will decline sharply.
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15453
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