-By Warner Todd Huston
For years liberals, and even some on the right, claimed that George W. Bush caused more evil jihadists to join al Qaeda with his quick and strong response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. But now the mastermind behind those attacks is admitting that W’s response to that terrible day is exactly what put a quick end to al Qaeda’s plans for further attacks and W wrecked mayhem among the terror group’s networks.
These revelations have at last leaked out from among the interviews Khalid Sheik Mohammed — often known as KSM — gave to the CIA in the months and years after the brutal terror attacks in 2001. Mohammad was an evil mastermind and one of the key al Qaeda operatives who planned and executed the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Towers as well as the attack that sent United Airlines Flight 93 crashing into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. The attacks killed over 3,000 Americans in only a few hours on that terrible day.
The new information comes from a new book by CIA operative James E. Mitchell whose new memoir details some of the testimony given by the terrorist. The book, entitled, “Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying To Destroy America,” details the CIA’s trials under fire and the interrogation program Mitchell helped design during George W. Bush’s first term in office as his administration struggled to deal with the massive and unprecedented threat of al Qaeda after 9/11.
In the book Mitchell relates how happily Mohammed bragged about personally murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and how he even “preened” while describing his horrible deed. Mohammad even laughed that severing Pearl’s head was “Just like slaughtering sheep.”
And when the CIA confirmed that Mohammed was telling the truth about personally murdering the journalist, Mohammed crowed, “See, I told you. I cut Daniel’s throat with these blessed hands.”
But even more illuminating was what KSM said about why al Qaeda never launched a second major series of attacks inside the U.S. despite its constant bragging and threats that it was just on the verge of doing so.
According to a review of the book by Marc A. Thiessen, Mohammed told Mitchell that al Qaeda was totally shocked and thrown off track by George W. Bush’s quick and massive attack on their Iraqi and Afghani operations.
KSM insisted that al Qaeda had an entire series of attacks both large and small planned for the U.S. but they were all based on being allowed a wider range of operation that Bush’s actions denied them. Apparently al Qaeda expected the U.S. to reply weakly and treat the 9/11 attacks as a mere police action thereby leaving the terror group to operate freely in their foreign bases of operation.
In discussing Bush’s response to 9/11 Mitchell asked Mohammed why al Qaeda never made any follow up attacks.
“How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?” the terror chief told Mitchell.
Mitchell’s book continues: “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.”
Mitchell adds that Mohammed also said something that Americans who have spent the last 15 years raising alarm bells about terrorism have also said. “We will win because Americans don’t realize … we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”
This echoes loudly as liberals run around braying about “hate crimes” against Muslims and moving to excuse every terror attack as mere “extremism” instead of the existential threat it really is.
Indeed, we just got a prime example of this foolish liberal attitude with a reaction by the so-called “Diversity Officer” from Oho State University to an incident where nearly a dozen students were attacked on campus by a jihadi from Somalia. This liberal ninny whined that no one should blame Muslims for this Muslim’s attack. In a disgusting Facebook message, OSU official Stephanie Clemons Thompson implored OSU students to “think of his pain” as Adbul Razak Ali Artan was trying to murder innocent students.
Notice how this loony leftist also instructed Facebook friends to defeat transparency in the university administration by helping her hide her horribly un-American message from others by demanding that friends “DO NOT SHARE THIS POST” (her caps).
This is exactly the sort of empty headed, self destructive reaction that KSM and al Qaeda are counting on to help them destroy us all. And liberals are acting the useful idiot, once again.
KSM also predicted that like-minded jihadis will sneak into this country, hide among us, and wait their time to strike — just like Artan just did in Ohio. KSM said that “jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate to the United States” and take advantage of America’s rights and laws and use them as cover until they are ready to strike.
“He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people would eventually become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end,” Mitchell writes in the book.
“Eventually,” KSM told Mitchell, “America will expose her neck for us to slaughter.”
But this foolish OSU “diversity officer” is hardly alone. Despite the facts staring them in the face — and even with KSM’s confirmation — liberals have been attacking George W. Bush for years saying he didn’t stop any terror attacks but on the contrary has helped groups like al Qaeda thrive.
In 2006, for instance, then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, insisted that Bush had failed in the face of terrorism saying, “The fact is this White House has committed a series of national security mistakes that have made America less secure.”
A year later in 2007 Reid blurted out what became a common theme for liberals: “Intelligence analysts concluded long ago that Iraq has indeed become a training ground and recruiting poster for a new generation of terrorists.,” he said making the claim that Bush’s actions actually helped al Qaeda to thrive and grow more dangerous.
Reid’s counterpart in the House of Representatives, Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi agreed with Reid’s uninformed conclusion. When she was Speaker of the House in 2009 Pelosi slammed Bush saying that the President “did not have a plan to get the job done” against al Qaeda.
Liberals outside elected offices also echoed the charges that Bush was an aide to al Qaeda instead of a hindrance. To name just a few, extremist, left-wing Mother Jones magazine told Pelosi to “bash Bush” for helping al Qaeda.
It became common for liberals to push the claim that Bush’s policies and military actions were “one of the greatest aids to terrorist recruitment in the modern world.”
Even as late as last year, left-wing Huffington Post insisted that Bush’s failed policies against al Qaeda not only helped that terror group but also gave rise to ISIS.
But now we find out straight from the mouth of one of al Qaeda’s most successful and dangerous operatives that the liberals were all wrong. George W. Bush put a major hurt on al Qaeda. So much so that the group’s follow up terror plans never came to fruition.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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