By Terence Jeffrey
When then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte published his Annual Threat Assessment last month, he admitted a startling fact. We know where al-Qaida's leaders are hiding.
"Al-Qaeda's core elements are resilient," he wrote. "They continue to plot attacks against our homeland and other targets with the objective of inflicting mass casualties. And they continue to maintain active connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, Northern Africa and Europe."
Interestingly, no leader of either party has called for invading Pakistan to shutdown this "secure hideout" for the people who attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001. Keeping that in mind, consider something Sen. John McCain said Monday about former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement, that's the kindest word I can give you, of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war," said McCain. "I think Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history." But which is more responsible for the tough situation we face in Iraq today: Donald Rumsfeld's management of the military or the assignment of that military to an impractical political mission promoted by John McCain and President Bush?
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