Testimony undercuts Bush claims

WASHINGTON – Undercutting new assertions by President Bush, a top U.S. intelligence official testified Wednesday that al-Qaida’s organization in Iraq is overwhelmingly composed of fighters from that country, and that the terrorist network’s ability to operate in Pakistan poses the greater danger to the United States.

The testimony came a day after Bush forcefully argued that al-Qaida in Iraq is substantially controlled by foreign operatives, and that most of them would be trying to kill Americans if it were not for the ongoing war there.

The competing characterizations of al-Qaida’s affiliate in Iraq – and the extent to which the issue dominated a congressional hearing Wednesday – again underscored the role of intelligence assessments in shaping the political debate over the war.

Testifying before the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, Edward Gistaro, the nation’s top analyst for transnational threats, said the U.S. intelligence community’s “primary concern” is al-Qaida in South Asia, which he said is “organizing its own plots” against the United States.

Gistaro, who was the principal author of a recent national intelligence study on threats to America, noted that al-Qaida in Iraq – or “AQI” as the group is known in U.S. intelligence circles – has “expressed an interest” in launching attacks against the United States.

But he said 90 percent of the members of the group are Iraqis who joined al-Qaida’s organization there subsequent to the U.S. invasion. He estimated the group’s strength at “several thousand” members and said “the bulk of AQI’s resources are focused on the battle inside of Iraq.”

In recent weeks, Bush has repeatedly drawn connections between the al-Qaida organization in Iraq and the core of the terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. He has also ratcheted up his argument that pulling out U.S. troops would lead not only to chaos in the country he sought to remake as a democracy, but also to a heightened risk of terrorist attacks inside U.S. borders.

That case has been complicated, however, by National Intelligence Estimates warning that the war in Iraq has become a “cause celebre” for Islamic extremism around the world, even while Osama bin Laden and other leaders have used their haven in Pakistan to reassert control over the broader organization.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the latest assessments make clear that “the al-Qaida threat emanates from Afghanistan and Pakistan and not Iraq, and that the United States has missed critical opportunities to address that threat.”

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the panel, shot back that critics of the Bush administration “have ignored or misrepresented” recent intelligence reports for political purposes.

Wednesday’s testimony offered some new insights into the U.S. intelligence community’s efforts to track bin Laden’s movements in Pakistan.

Gistaro said the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan flushed much of al-Qaida’s presence there into urban areas in Pakistan.

“Working with the Pakistanis, we pushed them out of the urban areas,” first into south Waziristan, and then into north Waziristan, a remote and rugged territory along the Afghanistan border.

“They used that safe haven to regenerate the operational leadership that is involved in developing and executing external operations,” Gistaro said.