Read Online Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda by Eric Schmitt, Thom Shanker - Free Book Online
Authors: Eric Schmitt, Thom Shanker
Tags: United States, General, History, Military, Political Science, Terrorism, Intelligence & Espionage, bought-and-paid-for, 21st Century, Security (National & International), War on Terrorism; 2001-2009, Prevention, Qaida (Organization), United States - Military Policy - 21st Century, Terrorism - United States - Prevention
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radical Islamic extremism.” Abizaid told the lawmakers that the Pentagon recognized that the spreading war was not against Islam. “It is not a war against religion,” he said. “It is a war against irreligious murderers.”
The gloomy message was sinking in. On October 16, 2003, Rumsfeld sent a two-page memo to Wolfowitz, Feith, Myers, and General Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against them?” Rumsfeld asked in the note. “Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The U.S. is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists’ costs of millions. It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.”
Two years after 9/11, the U.S. government’s counterterrorism efforts had made great strides. Teams of Special Operations forces and CIA paramilitary officers were coordinating more closely in the field than ever before. The FBI had scored several successes with allied law enforcement agencies, including Pakistani authorities, to kill or capture top Al Qaeda leaders. Treasury Department analysts were cracking terrorists’ financial networks. Slowly, barriers to intelligence sharing were crumbling. But two years into the fight, it was dawning on Rumsfeld and Myers at the highest levels of government as well as on people like Jeff Schloesser, Juan Zarate, and Art Cummings on the front lines just how little the U.S. government knew about Al Qaeda and other militant organizations, and how they attracted a growing following in the Muslim world. Bush remained the self-declared “war-on-terror president.” But military commanders, senior intelligence officers, and law enforcement officials squared off every day against violent extremists while they also confronted unresolved questions within their own government about competing interests, competing strategies, and a competition for financial resources, personnel, and information. It left many of them wondering who was really in charge of the war on terror.
2
THE NEW DETERRENCE
It was the late summer of 2005, and the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was fast approaching. The invasion in Afghanistan had drifted into a forgotten war, becoming what the military called an economy-of-force mission, where the military did just what it was able to. Only in Iraq was the military doing everything it had to, but still things were not going well. The strategy and focus of the war against terrorism was about to undergo a significant rethinking.
Donald Rumsfeld was en route to Crawford, Texas, for his annual summer sojourn and sharing of private concerns with President Bush at his ranch. Rumsfeld carried in his battered leather briefcase a series of briefing papers, actual hard copies of PowerPoint slides, on a half-dozen critically pressing national security themes. Each of those briefings for the president was spare. Rumsfeld was known to scold officers who showed up with rainbow-hued printouts of the slides full of tridents and spiderwebs and coiled ropes to depict the complex mix of threats to the nation. And knowing he was about to sit with the commander in chief, Rumsfeld had demanded this time that his staff “really neck down the number of words,” recalled one aide who helped in the preparation. Rumsfeld ordered that these slides for the president be conceived as a briskly paced visual guide to a verbal presentation and a follow-up discussion. No Technicolor. No fabric design. Brief. Blunt. Black-and-white bullet points.
The staff had paid particular attention to preparing an
The gloomy message was sinking in. On October 16, 2003, Rumsfeld sent a two-page memo to Wolfowitz, Feith, Myers, and General Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against them?” Rumsfeld asked in the note. “Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The U.S. is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists’ costs of millions. It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.”
Two years after 9/11, the U.S. government’s counterterrorism efforts had made great strides. Teams of Special Operations forces and CIA paramilitary officers were coordinating more closely in the field than ever before. The FBI had scored several successes with allied law enforcement agencies, including Pakistani authorities, to kill or capture top Al Qaeda leaders. Treasury Department analysts were cracking terrorists’ financial networks. Slowly, barriers to intelligence sharing were crumbling. But two years into the fight, it was dawning on Rumsfeld and Myers at the highest levels of government as well as on people like Jeff Schloesser, Juan Zarate, and Art Cummings on the front lines just how little the U.S. government knew about Al Qaeda and other militant organizations, and how they attracted a growing following in the Muslim world. Bush remained the self-declared “war-on-terror president.” But military commanders, senior intelligence officers, and law enforcement officials squared off every day against violent extremists while they also confronted unresolved questions within their own government about competing interests, competing strategies, and a competition for financial resources, personnel, and information. It left many of them wondering who was really in charge of the war on terror.
2
THE NEW DETERRENCE
It was the late summer of 2005, and the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was fast approaching. The invasion in Afghanistan had drifted into a forgotten war, becoming what the military called an economy-of-force mission, where the military did just what it was able to. Only in Iraq was the military doing everything it had to, but still things were not going well. The strategy and focus of the war against terrorism was about to undergo a significant rethinking.
Donald Rumsfeld was en route to Crawford, Texas, for his annual summer sojourn and sharing of private concerns with President Bush at his ranch. Rumsfeld carried in his battered leather briefcase a series of briefing papers, actual hard copies of PowerPoint slides, on a half-dozen critically pressing national security themes. Each of those briefings for the president was spare. Rumsfeld was known to scold officers who showed up with rainbow-hued printouts of the slides full of tridents and spiderwebs and coiled ropes to depict the complex mix of threats to the nation. And knowing he was about to sit with the commander in chief, Rumsfeld had demanded this time that his staff “really neck down the number of words,” recalled one aide who helped in the preparation. Rumsfeld ordered that these slides for the president be conceived as a briskly paced visual guide to a verbal presentation and a follow-up discussion. No Technicolor. No fabric design. Brief. Blunt. Black-and-white bullet points.
The staff had paid particular attention to preparing an
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