Author: David Morgan
Publication: AlertNet.org
Date: September 20, 2006
URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N20208046.htm
[Note from the Hindu Vivek Kendra: To blame
only the governments is a great disservice to the people. A much larger blame
should be put on the intellectuals, whose rantings make the people in the
government take irrational actions.]
Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the
Bush administration still does not fully understand the threat from al Qaeda,
a congressional report released on Wednesday said.
"(Al Qaeda) still remains the single
greatest threat ... Unfortunately, there are still gaps in our understanding
of Islamist extremist groups, which leaves America vulnerable," the report
said.
The document, "Al-Qaeda: The Many Faces
of an Islamist Extremist Threat," was part of a series of reports released
by the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
on threats facing the United States.
Democrat members distanced themselves from
them and accused the Republican majority of trying to frighten voters about
such threats in advance of elections in November.
The latest report found "significant
shortfalls" in the government's knowledge of both Islamist militancy
abroad and the potential extremist threat at home and said it had failed to
counter the rhetoric of anti-American Islamist extremists
The intelligence community has only a single
office devoted to understanding political Islam -- the CIA's Political Islam
Strategic Analysis Program, created in 2004 to study the issue, advise policymakers
and engage academics worldwide, it said.
It said the effort should be expanded, and
called on U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte to create similar operations
at other agencies.
The CIA had no immediate comment on the report.
But the CIA program's former director, Emile
Nakhleh, played down the problem and estimated only two to three percent of
the world's 1.4 billion Muslims were politically active.
"Political Islam is not a threat,"
Nakhleh, who retired from the CIA in June, said in an interview posted on
the web site of Harper's magazine. "The threat is if the people become
disenchanted with the political process and democracy, and opt for violence."
Democrats on the committee said the al Qaeda
report offered the public no new information about terrorism. "It is
merely an assemblage of press clippings," all nine Democrats on the panel
said in a minority views section.
A report by the committee on Iran in August,
which the full panel never approved, ran into criticism not only from Democrats
but from the International Atomic Energy Agency which called the document
"outrageous and dishonest."
The committee is expected to release a report
on North Korea later this week.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the panel's
Republican chairman, said Democrats agreed months ago that the committee should
produce unclassified reports to spur public debate on intelligence issues.
