Apparently, putting Rumsfeld in charge was the first mistake.
WASHINGTON, July 7 — A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.
The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.
But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning....
Some of the military and intelligence officials familiar with the 2005 events say it showed a rift between operators in the field and a military bureaucracy that has still not effectively adapted to hunt for global terrorists, moving too cautiously to use Special Operations troops against terrorist targets.
That criticism has echoes of the risk aversion that the officials said pervaded efforts against Al Qaeda during the Clinton administration, when missions to use American troops to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan were never executed because they were considered too perilous, risked killing civilians or were based on inadequate intelligence. Rather than sending in ground troops, the Clinton White House instead chose to fire cruise missiles in what became failed attempts to kill Mr. bin Laden and his deputies — a tactic Mr. Bush criticized shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
It seems that America's fight against al Qaeda requires authorization from Pakistan's government. It is this approach that makes this story from last week less surprising:
This week, we learn that Khan is "virtually a free citizen," and has been for "several months." What's more, Spencer Ackerman noted, "Musharraf refused to allow U.S. intelligence officials to question Khan, and Congress has raised questions over whether the proliferation network Khan created is truly out of business."
...And now, Khan is basically free. Policy towards Pakistan sure can be tricky, can't it?
All the rhetoric surrounding the "war on terror" rings more and more hollow as it becomes increasingly apparent that the only al Qaeda members this administration cares about are the ones they say are in Iraq. Iraqi insurgents aren't going to be following anybody home. But al Qaeda operating out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, with A.Q. Khan possibly back in business, is something to worry about. It's time to bring our troops out of Iraq, and rethink this mission. We should be conducting a refocused and targeted mission against the real al Qaeda.
(H/T a gnostic.)