President Bush on Thursday compared the war on terror to the struggle against communism and said Islamic extremists are determined to use Iraq as a staging ground to topple moderate governments in the region and “establish a radical Islamic empire.”
Speaking just days after ground commanders in Iraq told lawmakers that the presence of U.S. troops was energizing terrorists across the Mideast, Bush declared the U.S.-led war was part of a worldwide anti-terrorism strategy initiated after the Sept. 11 attacks.
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He also said the U.S. and its allies had disrupted at least 10 Al Qaeda terrorist plots since the 2001 attacks, including three planned attacks on U.S. soil.
The White House later issued a list of the foiled plots, citing potential attacks on the East Coast and West Coast, a plan to blow up apartment buildings, and surveillance of gas stations, bridges and tourist sites.
However, several senior law-enforcement officials questioned whether many of the plots on the White House list ever constituted an imminent threat and said authorities have not disrupted any operational terrorist plot within the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks.
Although the arguments he used were not new, Bush described the war on terror and its link to Iraq in grander terms than he has in the past, equating it to the Cold War.
“Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism,” Bush said in remarks to the National Endowment for Democracy, a non-governmental advocacy group in Washington.
Pulling out of Iraq, Bush said, would not cause the anger of terrorists to subside.
“I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001, and Al Qaeda attacked us anyway,” he said. “The hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse.”
Democrats countered that the president was perpetuating what they called a false linkage between the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war.
“The president went into Iraq on the basis of a false premise, without a plan, and has totally mismanaged the war,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, (D-Calif.). “Now he’s trying to justify his actions with a series of excuses that are not reasons for us to be there.”
The reaction in some foreign capitals was also skeptical. Ahmad Versi, editor of the Muslim News in London, said Bush was exaggerating the power and influence of Al Qaeda and disregarding U.S. foreign policy.
“It is so glaringly obvious to most of the Muslim world that it is the American policies that are the problem,” Versi said.
After Bush’s speech, the White House described the 10 worldwide terrorist plots Bush mentioned, including three Al Qaeda “plots to attack within the United States.”
One of the three U.S. plots was the case of Chicago native Jose Padilla, who has been accused of being an enemy combatant and is being held by the U.S. military. The White House said Thursday that U.S. authorities disrupted a plan by Padilla and others to blow up apartment buildings and that Padilla had discussed the possible detonation of a radiological bomb.
However, senior federal law-enforcement officials said Thursday that while Padilla is believed to have discussed attacks in the U.S. with senior Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, they have not found any evidence of co-conspirators on U.S. soil or any indication the plot had reached an operational plan.
The two other U.S.-based plots cited by the White House involved plans to use hijacked airplanes to attack targets on the West Coast in 2002 and the East Coast in 2003.
Senior law-enforcement officials said that while they know of no instance in which such a terrorist plot was disrupted, the White House mention of the 2002 apparently was a reference to the so-called second wave of suicide hijackings that was first disclosed last year by a commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
However, the second wave attacks apparently never rose to the level of a coordinated plan.