Bush’s missing bin Laden plan

To hear the White House tell it, protecting the United States and its interests against al Qaeda is the government’s top priority. It makes revelations like these all the more alarming.

The Bush administration doesn’t have a comprehensive strategy for eliminating Osama bin Laden’s sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal region and preventing the region from being used for launching terrorist attacks on the United States, the investigative arm of Congress said Thursday.

President Bush and his senior lieutenants frequently claim that eradicating the threat that bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network poses to United States and its allies is their top national-security priority.

But in a scathing report, the Government Accountability Office said there was no plan that “includes all elements of national power — diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic and law enforcement support — called for by the various national-security strategies and Congress.”

The administration’s own counter-terrorism policy and the mission of the National Counter-Terrorism Center mandate that officials have a “comprehensive strategy for meeting U.S. national-security goals” in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. The GAO, however, found that no such strategy currently exists.

“It is appalling that there is still no comprehensive, interagency strategy concerning this critical region, and this lack of foresight is harming U.S. national security,” said Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, which requested the report.

At Democracy Arsenal, Max Bergmann added that the GAO report “may be the most damning condemnation of the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism efforts.”

The report goes on to say that the Bush administration has failed to develop any plan to address the Al Qaeda threat. Worse, the report finds that Al Qaeda is now able to attack the United States and represents the “most serious” threat to this country.

The report’s opinion of the Bush administration efforts speaks for itself: “The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan…”

The same report added: “al Qaeda is now using the Pakistani safe haven to put the last element necessary to launch another attack against America into place, including the identification, training, and positioning of Western operatives for an attack. It stated that al Qaeda is most likely using the FATA to plot terrorist attacks against political, economic, and infrastructure targets in America ‘designed to produce mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks, and/or fear among the population.'”

And the Bush administration doesn’t have a plan to address this.

It is, however, willing to throw money at the Pakistani military, which isn’t going into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

I can’t wait to hear the White House’s spin on this one.