I read everything the Intelligence Community, or even the administration, spoon-feeds to David Ignatius with a giant shaker of salt. Ignatius is too credulous and, as a consequence, he serves as little more than a stenographer. When he speaks, it’s because the Intelligence Community wants him to send a particular message at a particular time. Still, the information in his latest column (which is sourced to the administration) doesn’t exactly come off as sounding completely self-serving. Consider the following:
Before his death, Osama bin Laden boldly commanded his network to organize special cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack the aircraft of President Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus.
“The reason for concentrating on them,” the al-Qaeda leader explained to his top lieutenant, “is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make (Vice President Joe) Biden take over the presidency. … Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour … and killing him would alter the war’s path” in Afghanistan.
The documents will be declassified. Anyone who reads Arabic will be able to verify what they say, if not their provenance. However, I wonder about the wisdom of declassifying documents that make the following recommendations:
The terrorist leader urged in a 48-page directive to Atiyah [Abd al-Rahman] to focus “every effort that could be spent on attacks in America,” instead of operations within Muslim nations. He told Atiyah to “ask the brothers in all regions if they have a brother … who can operate in the U.S. [He should be able to] live there, or it should be easy for him to travel there.”
Why amplify that particular message? To remind people of how important it was to kill both bin-Laden and Atiyah? To maintain some support for our efforts in Afghanistan? Because letting every aspiring jihadist in the world read bin-Laden’s directives seems like a lousy idea to me.
I guess I’m a little jaded after all these years of being lied to by my government. Next time, maybe a less compromised source than David Ignatius would help the information go down easier.
