posted on May 23, 2007 09:59:23 AM new
2002 Press Conference:
Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of --
THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.
Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.
So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.
And there will be other battles in Afghanistan. There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly. We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy. We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.
Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.
But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That's one of the things -- part of the new phase that's becoming apparent to the American people is that we're working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money. """
posted on May 23, 2007 10:01:24 AM new
Bush: Bin Laden Tried to Start Iraq Unit
Updated 12:23 PM ET May 23, 2007
By DEB RIECHMANN
NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) - President Bush, stressing that Americans face an ongoing threat from terrorists, shared intelligence on Wednesday asserting that Osama bin Laden was working in 2005 to set up a unit inside Iraq to hit U.S. targets.
Much of the information Bush cited in a commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy described terrorism plots already revealed, but he fleshed out details and highlighted U.S. successes in foiling planned attacks.
Bush said that intelligence showed that in January 2005, bin Laden tasked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his senior operative in Iraq, to set up the cell to use Iraq as a staging ground for attacks in the United States. Al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq in June 2006 by a U.S. airstrike.
This information expanded on a classified bulletin the Homeland Security Department issued in March 2005. The bulletin, which warned that bin Laden had enlisted al-Zarqawi to plan potential strikes in the United States, was described at the time as credible but not specific. It did not prompt the administration to raise its national terror alert level.
Bush, who is battling Democrats in Congress over spending for the unpopular war in Iraq, also said that in the spring of 2005, bin Laden instructed Hamza Rabia, a senior operative, to brief al-Zarqawi on an al-Qaida plan to attack sites outside Iraq. Around the same time, Abu Fajah al-Libi, a senior al-Qaida manager, suggested that bin Laden send Rabia to Iraq to help al-Zarqawi plan the external operations, he said. It is unclear whether Rabia went to Iraq.
Bush said that another suspected al-Qaida operative, Ali Salih al-Mari, was trained in Afghanistan and dispatched to the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
"Our intelligence community believes Ali Salih was training in poisoning at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan and had been sent to the United States before 9-11 to serve as a sleeper agent ready for follow-on attacks," Bush said.
Bush also talked about how in 2003, intelligence officials uncovered and stopped an aviation plot led by another suspected senior al-Qaida operative named Abu Bakr al-Azdi.
"Our intelligence community believes this plot was to be another East Coast aviation attack, including multiple airplanes that had been hijacked and then crashed into the United States," Bush said.
Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said new details about the plots were declassified because the intelligence community has tracked all leads from the information, and that the players were either dead or in U.S. custody.
The Bush White House in the past has declassified and made public sensitive intelligence information to help rebut critics or defend programs or decisions against possibly adverse decisions in the Congress or the courts. On a few occasions, the declassified materials were intended to be proof that terrorists see Iraq as a critical staging ground for global operations.
Democrats and other critics have accused Bush of selectively declassifying intelligence, including portions of a sensitive National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, to justify the U.S.-led invasion on grounds Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. That assertion proved false.
"It would have been really helpful for the president to have been able to use this classified information earlier," Townsend said.
Using the information earlier would have allowed the president to use it to his political advantage, she said. "This is kind of late to be able to bring this to the game," she said, adding that intelligence officials
