Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Bush vuole davvero prendere Bin Laden?

From The Guardian, 7/8/06:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1815728,00.html
Agent who led Bin Laden hunt criticises CIA
· Closure of unit 'wasted 10 years' experience'
· Al-Qaida reasserting its influence, says ex-chief
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
The Guardian
The man who led America's hunt for Osama bin Laden has said the CIA
was wrong to disband the only unit devoted entirely to the terrorist
leader's pursuit - just at a time when al-Qaida is reasserting its
influence over global jihad.
Shutting down the Bin Laden unit squandered 10 years of expertise in
the war on terror, said Michael Scheuer, who founded the unit in 1995
and arguably knows more about Bin Laden than any other western
intelligence official.
He believes the unit was dismantled because of bureaucratic jealousies
within the CIA, and that the closure delivers a further setback to a
pursuit that has been squeezed for resources for the past two years.
"What it robs you of is a critical mass of officers who have been
working on this together for a decade," he told the Guardian.
"We had a breed of specialists rare in an intelligence community that
prides itself on generalists. It provided a base from which to build a
cadre of people specialising in attacking Sunni extremist operations,
who sacrificed promotions and other emoluments in their employment in
the clandestine service, where specialists were looked on as nerds."
A 22-year CIA veteran, Mr Scheuer became aware of Bin Laden in the
1980s when the Saudi-born militant was on the fringes of the US-backed
mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
In 1995, when western intelligence agencies knew little about Bin
Laden, Mr Scheuer was charged with setting up a unit that would track
what support he was giving to Islamist groups, and determine whether
he was a threat.
Mr Scheuer left the agency in 2004 after writing a scathing book about
its counter-terrorism efforts, called Imperial Hubris.
He is now a consultant on terrorism.
CIA officials disclosed this week that the Alec unit - named after Mr
Scheuer's now teenage son - had been disbanded, and its agents
reassigned.
The agency described the shakeup as a necessary adaptation to the
changing nature of the US war on terror.
"The reorganisation just reflects the understanding that the Islamic
jihadist movement continues to diversify," a US intelligence official
said.
Mr Scheuer said he disagreed with the argument it was making that Bin
Laden was isolated, the organisation was broken and that he was now
just a symbol.
"How do you explain the fact that he is able to dominate international
media whenever he wants to?"
Yesterday, the FBI said it had foiled a plot to blow up the railway
tunnels which run beneath the Hudson river into Manhattan, and send a
torrent of water gushing towards Wall Street.
The leader of the cell, Assem Hammoud, 31, amember of al-Qaida, and
two other plotters were arrested in Beirut.
None of the conspirators had ever entered the US.
In video footage released on the internet on Thursday and yesterday,
Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, claimed to have directly
masterminded last year's London bombings.
He said two of the bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer,
had received explosives training at al-Qaida camps, and the
organisation had helped to choose the targets.
In recent weeks authorities have made arrests of alleged al-Qaida
activists in Manchester, London, Toronto and Miami.
"Bin Laden has always said the main activity of al-Qaida is the
instigation ... of Muslims to jihad," Mr Scheuer said.
"All of the people who have been picked up have said they were
inspired by Bin Laden, that they trained in their own countries and
used information picked up on the internet.
"So the fire that Bin Laden was trying to set is what we are beginning
to see around the world and, unfortunately, nowhere more than in the
west."
He said the dismantling of the unit reflected a myopia in an
intelligence community uncomfortable with the independence of the CIA
agents who championed Bin Laden's pursuit.
"From the very beginning, Alec was an anomaly in that it was not
subordinated to any area division, and it was given the authority to
communicate with overseas stations - with or without the permission of
area divisions. That caused a great deal of heartburn among very
senior leaders at the agency," he said.
The infighting went on for years.
In 1998, a few months before car bombs blew up US embassies in
Tanzania and Kenya, Mr Scheuer was told to be ready to disband - only
to see the unit saved by the then agency director, George Tenet.
But it was only a temporary reprieve.
The staff was reduced from 25 to eight.
More recently, the unit became a repository for inexperienced
officers, who were rotated in for 60- or 90-day stints.
During the past two years the hunt for Bin Laden came second to
fighting the insurgency in Iraq.
With the worsening security situation in Afghanistan, more
intelligence resources are being diverted towards propping up the
government of Hamid Karzai in Kabul than to tracking down leads on Bin
Laden.
The Bush administration continues to claim success in the fight
against al-Qaida, noting that it has killed off two-thirds of its
known leadership at the time of the September 11 2001 terror attacks.
But as Mr Scheuer notes, al-Qaida seems to have no difficulty in
replacing its senior leaders.
A decade after he first began keeping tabs on Bin Laden, he continues
to be surprised by al-Qaida's resilience.
"I don't think anyone could have expected to see the success of such
an organisation," he said.
For observers familiar with the disunity of the Palestinians and other
Arab causes, al-Qaida was a departure from the known.
"One of the things that really slowed down the western response to
Sunni extremists, but al-Qaida specifically, is that when intelligence
agents looked at a group made up of Yemenis, Egyptians, Saudis,
Algerians and converts, the natural response was to say, 'That is not
going to last 10 minutes. They can't get along together.' It took a
long time for people to realise we were seeing an animal of a very
unique nature. We haven't even begun to understand where our enemy is
coming from."

 The Guardian
Parlando da cinico direi che è l'ultima cosa che può volere, Bin Laden è 
il Nemico perfetto e non se ne trovano molti in giro. Gli è già valsa la 
rielezione, non dimentichiamolo.
Riot, l'elitista ademocratico