Regime Change: National Security in the Age of Terrorism

By Arnold Schuchter

Regime Change provides in-depth insights into President Bush's handling of national security and terrorism issues pre- and post-9/11 and guidelines for the Democratic presidential candidate's strategic "war on terrorism" that includes: restructuring the Intelligence Community and national security decision-making in the White House; rejuvenating the trans-Atlantic alliance and expanding global collaboration; nation-building in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan; fostering the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; democratization in the Middle East; defusing antagonisms with Muslim nations; nuclear disarmament in Iran and North Korea; dismantling Pakistan's nuclear black market operation; developing economic and security relationships with China in Central Asia; and more.

Regime Change gives voters across the political spectrum valuable background for evaluating national security and terrorism positions of both candidates while making a strong case for removal of commander-in-chief Bush along with his White House and Pentagon advisors as a critical step in launching a new multilateral strategy in 2005 for dealing with the root causes and threats of terrorism worldwide.

Speeches and papers in Regime Change underscore how Bush's pre- and post-9/11 mindset and predispositions led him to unrealistically use military power to root out "evil" and promote democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of providing multinational leadership in the war on terrorism. The Bush White House overcommitted U.S. military and fiscal resources and underfunded homeland security by selecting the wrong targets in the "war on terrorism" and launching preventive, unilateral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Anticipating findings by the 9/11 Commission and several independent commissions and Congressional investigations, Regime Change suggests that 9/11 was preventable and exposes similar failures of the U.S. Intelligence Community in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and Pakistan's international nuclear black market.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 15, 2004
• ISBN: 9780595763030

Arnold Schuchter

Arnold Schuchter, former chief intelligence analyst with the Chief in Command of Pacific Forces (CINCPAC), international consultant, city planner, author and Internet pioneer has consulted with US, other national, state and local governments on strategies and plans to improve transportation, infrastructure and services, resolve racial and ethnic conflicts, and use information technology to effectively manage their decision-making.

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Regime Change National Security in the Age of Terrorism

All Rights Reserved © 2004 by Arnold Schuchter

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Contents

Disclaimer

Preface

One Year after 9/11

Connecting the Dots

Counterterrorism and the Intelligence Community

Intelligence, Terrorism and National Security Issues

Restructuring the Intelligence Community

Dumping George Bush

The Battle for Veteran’s Rights

A New Perspective in the White House

Pakistan and Afghanistan Dilemmas

The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth

National Security in the Era of Stateless Terrorism

Strategies Against Terrorism

North Korea and Nuclear Proliferation

The George W. Bush World

Preemptive War in Iraq

Strategic National Security Vision

Recommending Reading List

Arnold Schuchter

Disclaimer

It will not take much guesswork or imagination to realize that Senator John Kerry, soon to be crowned Democratic candidate for president, is the unnamed Senator or speaker delivering speeches in Regime Change and using his Congressional prerogative to insert various statements or papers in into the Congressional Record. Don’t waste your time looking in http://www.gpoaccess.gov/crecord/index.html because none of these statements or papers actually was submitted to the Congressional Record on the date indicated.

Yes, this is a fictional work of non-fiction that drives editors and librarians crazy. Judging by best sellers lists, I’m not the first aberration of this type and certainly not the last. Hopefully this disclaimer will suffice to keep overzealous lawyers from my doorstep and satisfy critics looking for references to quotes from Kerry’s speeches that failed to get quotation marks.

The author wants to make it very clear at the outset that Senator John Kerry never made any of these speeches or issued any of these statements. This book doesn’t even quote John Kerry, not even one catchy phrase before or after hitting the presidential campaign trail.

Senator Kerry had no idea that Regime Change was being written. The book was not written for the Kerry campaign. In fact I’ve never meet Presidential candidate Kerry or anyone on his campaign staff. I’ve seen him on television and I have to admit that his voice and cadence ebbed and flowed through my mind while writing his unauthorized speeches.

The author selected various university and other venues for speeches presented by the guess-who Democratic presidential candidate just to add a touch of reality to these events. I resisted the temptation to allow genial hosts at these forums to introduce Senator John Kerry, Democratic Presidential Candidate, here again to avoid legal hassles and flack from Kerry’s campaign organization and fund-raisers.

So far as I know, as a presidential candidate John Kerry has not appeared at any of these forums, even the Yale Political Union, an irresistible location for one of his faux national security speeches.

After the Yale speech, a speech at the Harvard Law School in Kerry’s home state was a must for the Senator from Massachusetts. As a Harvard alumnus and the author, I took the liberty of making Harvard, rather than Yale, the candidate’s forum for a wrap-up speech.

Regime Change tries to be as factual as possible for a book about history, politics and controversial issues like 9/11, national security, terrorism, nuclear black market proliferation, intelligence and the Intelligence Community, U.S. invasions and postwar situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israeli-Palestine’s road map to peace, relationships with traditional European allies and also antagonists like Iran, North Korea and even Saudi Arabia.

Speeches and papers in Regime Change try to provide intelligible, relevant context and perspective to enable voters to better understand national security campaign issues and, not least of all, the reasons why George W. Bush and his top advisors need to be removed from the White House in November 2004.

Preface

In the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth, Kristen Breitweiser was singled out as a member of the Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission, but there are other World Trade Center widows like Patty Casazza, Lorie Van Auken and Mindy Kleinberg that are part of the Jersey girls, as the four politically active women are known in Washington, who prodded and hammered with finesse on Congress and the White House to create the 9/11 panel, monitored the proceedings and relentlessly asked some of the sharpest questions. Without them, the 9/11 Commission, the most important government study in America’s history, would never have been done.

Regime Change is dedicated to these women who started with little political education, no political agenda and simply wanted to know why our husbands were killed, Mrs. Breitweiser said, why they went to work one day and didn’t come back. The Jersey girls used the Internet and corridors of Washington bureaucracy to get their education. They made it difficult or impossible for officials in the Bush administration or members of Congress to say no. This book would not have been written without their inspiration and efforts.

When the 9/11 Commission report is published, it will be a sad victory without any real satisfaction. Even as causes and accountability for that terrible day are spelled out, there will be no assurances that the Commission’s recommendations will be carried out to the fullest extent possible.

After regime change in Washington, John Kerry will inherit responsibility and accountability, as presidential executor of the 9/11 Commission report, to prove his worth to the widows and other family members and friends of those who died needlessly in the World Trade Center. The end of the 9/11 Commission battle for the Jersey girls will be just the beginning of a long, often frustrating war in Washington and elsewhere to ensure security for this nation and the world.

For many American voters, the main issue in the November 2004 election understandably is the economy and especially jobs. Read the record on pre-and post-9/11, however, and the real issue is which candidate can you entrust with the safety of America for the next four years. The bottomline election issue is the candidate’s truthfulness and trustworthiness. Based on this issue, it’s time to change leadership in the White House.

Regime Change makes the case that President and Commander-in-Chief Bush has mishandled decisions on terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan’s nuclear black market, the Israeli-Palestine peace process, Iran and North Korea, revamping the Intelligence Community, relationships with America’s traditional allies and the rest of the world, selective use and misuse of intelligence and, not least of all, placing men and women in our military service in harms way while failing to appropriately support veterans’ needs. It is definitely time for regime change in Washington.

On July 5, 2001 threats of an impending terrorist attack against the United States cascaded into Washington. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Andrew H. Card Jr., the president’s chief of staff, called together the Bush administration’s counterterrorism office and top agency officials for a meeting in the White House Situation Room.

Terrorist warnings reviewed by these officials focused mostly on threats overseas. However, warnings included an increased risk of air hijackings intended to free terrorists imprisoned in the United States. The idea that terrorists might use airplanes as weapons was not new. At least a dozen such reports arrived in Washington over the 1990s. The FBI, FAA, INS, Customs Service and other agencies were put on alert. Richard A. Clarke, the White House counterterrorism coordinator, ran the day-to-day operation.

After July 5, with dire and specific terrorist warnings still mounting, not much else of significance pertaining to terrorism happened in the Bush White House until Sept. 11. The Bush administration continued developing what was supposed to be a comprehensive strategy for combating Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The amazingly protracted bureaucratic struggle, over eight months, to produce such a counterterrorism plan in itself clearly signals the Bush administration’s incapacity to act competently when faced with urgent threats. And the resulting plan was neither comprehensive nor would its implementation make a dent of any significance in the most urgent national security problems facing the nation and the world.

George Tenet continued to do his job dutifully briefing the president. But the CIA really didn’t know what was going on amongst Al Qaeda and other terrorists. What did Tenet tell the president? That terrorism information flowing into Washington about Al Qaeda indicated interest in using commercial aircraft to carry out attacks? That extremist groups were enrolled in pilot training around the U.S.? Not likely. Whatever Tenet told President Bush, the Commander-and-chief launched no specific new military or other initiatives for defending against or attacking Al Qaeda in the U.S. or in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile Sec. Rumsfeld and the Pentagon were busy that summer of 2001 developing a national missile defense plan, military reorganization and redeployment, and working on a budget review. Counterterrorism wasn’t a high priority in either Rumsfeld’s mind or budget. In fact Rumsfeld actively opposed transfer of funds from missile defense to counterterrorism just weeks before 9/11. Apparently Rumsfeld was waiting for a clear signal from his Commander-in-Chief to gear up any new counterterrorism initiatives. That signal did not arrive before 9/

11.

The vast U.S. defense establishment simply wasn’t paying much attention to terrorism. Already across the U.S. government’s budget, more than $10 billion was being spent on items classified as counterterrorism. No one in Washington had any idea of what all of this money was buying or the short-or long-term benefits.

Starting in March 2001 the CIA had information that a group of bin Laden operatives was planning an attack in the United States. National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping picked up dozens of messages from around the world about a possible imminent terrorist attack. Tenet apparently delivered many of these warnings to President Bush. President Bush was briefed dozens of times during the summer of 2001, including warnings that terrorists would hijack airplanes, supposedly to obtain the release of prisoners. We don’t know what Bush did with these warnings.

Certainly none of these warnings speeded up preparation of Dr. Rice’s comprehensive counterterrorism plan or caused the CIA to initiate any new covert actions. Several agencies, including the FBI and CIA, were told to develop detailed response plans to terrorist attacks and a flurry of new warnings were issued. Most top Bush officials believed that any attack would occur overseas, in Saudi Arabia or Israel. The real problems facing the Bush counterterrorism team were that neither the FBI nor CIA knew that 19 hijackers had spent the previous three years making plans and that most of them already were in the U.S. waiting to strike.

The 9/11 Commission will publish its final report at the end of July 2004. For any reasonable person and voter, the Commission’s report will establish more or less conclusively what happened, didn’t happen and should have happened to connect-the-dots and prevent the tragedy of September 11, 2001, or minimize its horrific impact on life and property.

Based on information already available in September 2002, included in Connecting the Dots—A Pre-9/11 History, in Regime Change, and additional insights and testimony that most of us already know about in April 2004, we can draw the conclusion that September 11 could have been prevented—if, faced with serious terrorist threats and warnings, and soon after inauguration, the Bush administration had initiated an all-out assault on the Intelligence Community and FBI to restructure their operations, especially to break down barriers to sharing information and coordinated follow-up.

As for post-9/11 intelligence and other issues, including the invasion of Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, capture or kill Osama bin Laden, the preemptive strike against Saddam Hussein and Iraq, and the black market proliferation of nuclear weapons technology, the next presidentially-appointed commission will not report its findings and conclusions until some time in 2005. By then, hopefully, George W. Bush and his top officials no longer will occupy the White House.

My own findings, incorporated in many of the Democratic presidential candidate’s speeches and statements for the Congressional Record, clearly indicate that gross post-9/11 intelligence failures and misjudgments in planning and executing President Bush’s so-called war on terrorism more than justify regime change in the White House.

The bright, articulate and forceful Condoleezza Rice was miscast as National Security Advisor and manager of President Bush’s foreign policy in the era of terrorism. Sorry, Dr. Rice, George W. Bush was the right president as a close friend and confidant, but it was the wrong era for your perspective on foreign policy, management talents and style. By government experience and academic background, Dr. Rice was better equipped to advise presidents during the Cold War era than to provide advice on terrorism strategy and planning in the 21st century.

Donald Rumsfeld probably was not much help clarifying President Bush’s vision for a war on terrorism. And his brusque, foot-in-mouth tendencies exacerbated problems caused by White House unilateralism and rejection of America’s traditional allies. Clueless about terrorism, it’s unclear what the Secretary of Defense did to prevent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from becoming more of a deadly mess than they have been and will be continue to be in the future.

Treasury Secretary Snow lost all of his meager accumulation of points in the Bush administration’s war on terrorism when he allowed the White House to turn down a $12 million request in the IRS budget for 80 more Treasury Department investigators to track and disrupt the global financial networks of terrorist groups.

George Tenet turned out to be a compliant White House intelligence pawn, chaffing somewhat under the strain of not being able to tell the truth, like I really don’t know the answer, and occasionally forced to lie in public. As head of a $30 billion intelligence enterprise, one is reminded more of the chairman of the board at Enron than at GE.

Workaholic, secretive Dick Cheney shored up back room White House operations and, other than loyally reinforcing President Bush’s unilateralism and worst foreign policy instincts and proclivities, his contribution to the president’s misjudgments over the last four years will be left to patient and resourceful historians after regime change.

Instead of fronting for the President at home, at the UN and abroad as Mr. Integrity, and frequently playing the role of Mr. Diplomatic Damage Control, Sec. of State Colin Powell should have been president—especially if he truly heeded urgent warnings early in 2001 about the threat of terrorism and wrapped his persona, mind and arms around the Intelligence Community and FBI fiascos. As an experienced military leader, with a superb mind and judgment, I believe that he would not have launched invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq. With the benefit of Vietnam experience, Powell knows really bad quagmires when he sees them.

The central issue in the 2004 presidential election is confidence in the judgment of this nation’s leaders to handle issues of war, national security and keeping the peace. Intelligence information leading to the war in Iraq was fundamentally flawed but, even worse, the judgment of top Bush officials was consistently faulty and unreliable.

Even more disappointing than Condoleezza Rice’s performance as National Security Advisor, Secretary of State Powell, the most respected member of Bush’s cabinet, now claims that he was mislead by the CIA regarding the facts in his dramatic Feb. 5, 2003, speech before the UN Security Council in which he provided extensive descriptions of Iraq’s biological weapons labs. Powell confesses to misplaced confidence in the CIA. But even before Powell’s presentation, one of the multiple, supposedly verified sources of his information had been cited by CIA officials as unreliable.

What are we to think of Powell’s veracity? Did the CIA dupe even the perspicacious Powell? Ironically, Powell, the pivotal person in the Bush administration’s case before the American people and the world for war in Iraq has urged the president’s newly appointed commission investigating prewar intelligence to examine how data on mobile germ labs was gathered that he and others used to justify the war.

Weapons inspectors in Iraq have found no evidence of such labs other than two trucks that may have been used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons. As recently as January 2004, however, Vice President Cheney cited discovery of these trucks as conclusive evidence of the mobile labs described by Powell. CIA Director George J. Tenet later told Congress he warned the vice president not to be so categorical about the discovery. Cheney obviously wanted to sound as categorical and definitive as possible in defense of his administration, without regard for the truth.

Powell’s eyewitness source for the description of the labs actually had never been interviewed by U.S. intelligence. Perhaps Powell never asked the CIA whether they had ever talked to the source of the information and verified what he actually had seen. Perhaps Powell can be excused for not asking that question, but the CIA’s negligence and incompetence on a matter of such importance is astounding, undermining our confidence in all of the other intelligence that they produce and its sources.

The source of the mobile germ lab information turns out to be the brother of Ahmad Chalabi, the exile leader in Iraq on the Bush administration’s payroll who pushed for the U.S.-led invasion and is responsible for many of the lies and distortions about Iraq’s suspected arms programs used by the White House and the British. Chalabi, as a U.S. appointee to the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), is not likely to inspire Iraqi confidence in the U.S. since it is well known among IGC members that Chalabi passed lies on the Bush White House.

Up until Election Day, the Bush administration and the Democratic candidate will spend considerable time, effort and money trying to discredit each other. Past mistakes, inconsistencies and other glitches in public life will fill the news. Dealing with issues of national security and terrorism, however, will require more than punchy one-liners to differentiate the candidates. Thus far neither candidate has issued a strategy for a war on terrorism, nor has Clinton or any previous administration for that matter. Nor does Richard Clarke in Against All Enemies. A list of related anti-terrorist actions doesn’t constitute a strategy.

A war on terrorism strategy has to start with changing the way that national security and counterterrorism decisions get made in the U.S. at the highest level—the National Security Council (NSC). The NSC has to become the single place where significant dots are connected, planning information from multi-agency sources is synthesized, decisions on national security priorities and allocation of domestic and international resources are made, and inter-agency coordination and cooperation is mandated, fostered and guaranteed.

The President, as Commander-in-chief and elected national leader, will make all final strategic action decisions based on NSC recommendations. Summaries of the NSC decision-making process and outcomes should be shared with Senate and House intelligence committees, including recommendations for various roles that these committees can play to improve and expedite projected activities and results, including legislation as required.

As a critical part of their reorganization, the U.S. Intelligence Community and its CIA have to improve the acquisition and analysis of reliable intelligence from all domestic and foreign sources, including the FBI and Homeland Security, and provide timely and relevant information to the NSC together with prioritized recommendations for action.

Leadership of the NSC, the President and cabinet members, have to reach out to appropriate ministries in European foreign governments and elsewhere to share with them, as appropriate, NSC’s intelligence, law enforcement and other national security restructuring plans and timetable, preparing the way for NSC staff follow-up to open and develop productive lines of communication and coordination among U.S. and international intelligence and law enforcement communities.

International terrorist watchlist development and systematic terrorist follow-up activities have to be completely compatible and coordinated amongst U.S. and international intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The NSC should offer any assistance and resources necessary to get the job done by international counterparts. One person in the NSC should be responsible for management and oversight of all international cooperative activities.

In other words, and this is no huge surprise, the front lines in any war on terrorism strategy is: making sure that, under one extremely capable NSC leader, key U.S. national security decision-makers, at the highest level, in one room, are provided with succinct strategies, plans and ample backup information to make decisions; the President is presented with clear options to make final decisions, lists of relevant questions, pros and cons, and makes these decisions on a timely basis, in consultation with members of Congress as appropriate; U.S. intelligence and law enforcement operate as virtually one entity, accountable to the NSC, completely coordinated with foreign counterparts, and with one person in the NSC responsible for international oversight in this effort; and finally, when decisions by the president are made, the NSC’s czar in the war on terrorism makes sure that NSC members are given specific responsibilities to shake all of the relevant trees in the U.S. government to ensure timely action.

On a parallel basis, the job of the next president, his secretary of state and other top officials is to work with the UN, EU, NATO and leaders in other countries, including the Middle East, China, India and Russia, to focus multilateral assistance, pressure and relationship-building on: resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; governance and nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan; development of the next generation of Nuclear Proliferation Treaty; assisting Iran, North Korea and Pakistan to deal with nuclear development and proliferation, economic development and other issues; human rights issues and Muslim religious persecution in Central Asia; and to work on as many fronts as possible to develop strategies and plans for economic and social development benefiting countries with high rates of poverty and unemployment.

The Democratic presidential candidate in his various speeches and statements in the Congressional Record discusses all of these issues. My apologies for a certain amount of repetition in this material which is inherent in the process of campaign speech-making.

In the statements made on and before November 9, 2002, all of the facts and background consist of data available at that time. Starting with January 11 and extending to April 20, 2004, the Democratic candidate presents a series of speeches and statements containing data and background known on or before those dates. Consequently some speeches and statements contain somewhat outdated information that has been superceded. Suggested national security strategies in the era of terrorism, however, should remain viable for some time to come.

What the President and his or her advisors know at any time, without the benefit of hindsight or a crystal ball is critical to decision-making. Any strategies and plans broadly for a war on terrorism have to be based on a clear set of assumptions that can be tested in the process of implementation and altered when reality changes. All of that can and should happen in real-time in the President’s NSC war room. Occasionally the words we were wrong, along with some appropriate explicatives, will be heard in the war room, as corrections in course are discussed, defined and duly noted for future reference and posterity. Perhaps Bob Woodward or David Halberstam will be invited to hang around and watch the process of history getting made transparently.

There is no cure for stateless terrorism and no handy manual for counterterrorism practitioners. First thick-skinned professionals with a great deal of knowledge, skill and awareness fill obvious holes, gaps and dysfunctions in intelligence and law enforcement systems while reaching out selectively to counterparts in foreign countries to do likewise on a collaborative basis.

Sounds easy? It isn’t. That’s not enough. And to make the challenges even more difficult, at the same time the White House has to organize an effective, sustainable, multilateral effort worldwide on a dozen or more complex sources of international threats and problems that feed terrorism.

While always keeping the big picture clearly in mind, at every moment the devil lurks in the details. One of the main reasons for considerable detail in Regime Change is not to provide history as much as relevant insight into the paradoxes, ironies and contradictions that fill the big picture of the Bush administration’s dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and other countries, situations and events.

My aim is not finger-pointing but to point out the kinds of strategic and tactical mistakes that can be avoided in the future by the next occupants of the White House and the Oval Office who will have at their disposal an NSC and Intelligence Community that can process information and insights effectively and make corrective national security and other decisions in real-time.

For encouragement, beside photos of wife, kids and frisky dog, I suggest that the NSC’s czar have on her or his desk a framed photo of Prime Minister Tony Blair and Colonel Gadhafi, President Reagan’s former mad dog of the Middle East, shaking hands in Tripoli on Libya’s dismantling of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. In addition, for inspiration download from the Web, record and listen to one of Gadhafi’s latest statements telling the U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan and the rest of the world to disarm, fight against extremism, terrorism and Al Qaeda, and live in peace, following Libya’s example.

I can’t get overwrought about inconsistencies between Richard Clarke’s testimony and his book, whether he was harder on Bush than on Clinton, and even various factual flaws in his book. No doubt this book has factual flaws as well. A more important point of Clarke’s book, and Regime Change, is that Bush and his top officials repeatedly ignored warnings about Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001, and then diverted resources from a broader war on terrorism to an attack on Iraq. Most important of all, the Bush White House did not have a comprehensive plan for a war on terrorism.

For a while the White House attacked former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, with less vengeance, for revelations in his book, The Price of Loyalty, that the Bush Administration began laying plans for an invasion of Iraq within days of President Bush’s inauguration in January of 2001, not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks. O’Neill’s forthrightness is harder to dispute than Clarke’s. O’Neill can’t be accused of planning to join the Kerry administration or trying to line his pockets with royalties.

O’Neill’s The Price of Loyalty, authored by Ron Suskind, says that O’Neill and other White House insiders gave him documents showing that, in the first three months of 2001, the administration was looking at military options for removing Saddam Hussein from power and planning for the aftermath of Saddam’s downfall, including post-war contingencies like peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals and the future of Iraq’s oil.

These allegations go to the heart of the President’s strength—the way that tough commander-in-chief Bush handled his war on terrorism, the bedrock of his case for reelection. Clarke’s and other testimony before the 9/11 Commission actually went much deeper than questioning the wartime president’s leadership qualities. His personal honesty and credibility were challenged.

The 9/11 Commission report released on July 26 will reveal that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center probably could have been prevented and the counterterrorism plan developed by Dr. Rice and other top Bush officials over a period of eight months before 9/11, that became the Sept. 4 national security directive, lacked strategic value both as a response to 9/11 and global terrorism. Moreover preexisting plans to attack Iraq quickly superseded it.

Leadership in European countries has been challenging President Bush’s leadership qualities and integrity for some time. When Bush recently called for a cease-fire in the conflict between the United States and some of its longtime allies over the U.S.-led war in Iraq, the response made it clear that it will take more than hard work and time to bring European allies and the United States back together. It will require regime change in Washington.

The breach is much more than what the president called, at a ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, disagreements…among old and valued friends. President Bush claims Those differences belong to the past. Actually those conflicts and differences with longtime U.S. allies, aggressively fostered by George W. Bush and his senior officials, are deeply imbedded in the fabric of international relations today.

After the March 11 Madrid bombing, the issue in Spain’s election became manipulation of the truth by Prime Minister JoséMaria Aznar’s government. Three days later Aznar’s ruling party was ousted. After it became clear to Americans and the world that Iraq contained no weapons of mass destruction, the issue in America’s presidential election became manipulation of the truth. The outcome in the November 2004 election will be essentially the same as in Spain—regime change in Washington.

Spain’s newly elected Socialist leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, denounced the invasion of Iraq as an error based on lies. He announced his intention to withdraw his country’s troops unless several conditions were met. The first condition would be hearing the truth from President Bush, followed by passage of an acceptable new Security Council resolution.

Poland’s president complained that he felt misled about weapons of mass destruction but his criticism was shut down by a quick phone call from the White House. France’s foreign minister marked the first anniversary of the war in Iraq with a blunt declaration that the war did not make the world more stable.

From the beginning an outspoken critic of the U.S. preemptive war in Iraq, Dominique de Villepin’s remark to Le Monde was no surprise. But he also expressed another view that undercuts a quick cure for shredded relations with leaders throughout Europe. Terrorism didn’t exist in Iraq before the war. Today, the country is one of the world’s principal sources of world terrorism.

America’s trans-Atlantic relationships are more than strained and extend well beyond disagreements on Iraq. The Bush administration has undermined America’s relationships with its traditional allies. As former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger points out, Europe and America no longer share common Cold War defense interests. With the Soviet threat gone, the glue in the U.S.-European relationship has melted.

But the divergence between the U.S and its traditional allies is much deeper and more serious than the fact that Iraq has not served as a new source of trans-Atlantic glue. Even the seemingly common threat of terrorism is not sufficient to paper over the fact that George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly informed our former allies that Europe has become irrelevant to America’s national interests.

George Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice are still in total denial that they have alienated other countries by making major foreign policy decisions without consultation. In a series of stunningly obtuse comments, the President, Dr. Rice and other senior U.S. officials continue to deny that disagreements with allies have been more than trivial.

Only one of the White House’s many delusions over the past four years, President Bush and Dr. Rice are convinced that relationships with the world’s other great powers have never been better. Regime change rather than reeducation is the only way to remove these counterproductive delusions from the White House.

It is too late for hasty, last minute efforts by the Bush administration to work more closely with European diplomats and actually begin to listen to them about, for example, nuclear talks with Iran and nuclear-disarmament negotiations with North Korea that include Russia, China, Japan and South Korea.

After bluntly dismissing the idea that the UN could play a helpful role in Iraq, in order to avoid an even greater postwar fiasco the Bush administration now appears willing to give the UN a greater part in overseeing the transfer of power from U.S. forces to an Iraqi interim government. As the U.S.’s credibility and legitimacy have sunk to a new international low, the UN emerges from the postwar Iraq fiasco as much more credible than the United States.

It’s too late for the Bush Team to feign a newfound appreciation for multilateral diplomacy. European and Asian leaders know better. The next test of reborn Bush multilateralism comes during the U.N. debate over the terms of a mandate for the interim government in Iraq.

U. S. officials will say that they want a greater UN role overseeing the transition in Iraq, but not at the price of giving the U.N. hands-on control of the American effort to stabilize Iraq. This position will move the U.S. back to Bush square one in international relations—token multilateralism.

The Bush Vulcans still are obsessed with retaining control in Iraq even though American control is perceived in Iraq as nothing more than colonialism. Regime change in Washington is the only cure for persistent intransigence and the failure of the Bush administration to effectively act on realities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and other global hotspots.

Even as the Bush administration supposedly attempts to mend fences with and placate former allies, the president continues to insult and outrage government leaders in Europe who have criticized his decision to invade Iraq. Who would prefer that Saddam’s torture chambers still be open? he asks. Even as Europe’s leaders unanimously reject Bush’s link between the struggle in Iraq and the global war on terrorism, he says, There is no neutral ground—no neutral ground—in the fight between civilization and terror.

In Bush’s simplistic black-and-white mantras on international relations and the war on terrorism, opposing or critical views are summarily rejected as sympathizing with terrorism. One is reminded of Senator Joe McCarthy and the days of labeling critics as commie sympathizers.

Feeling very much on the defensive, President Bush has only tough talk as his way of mending transatlantic relationships that are in a shambles. The assertive President, VP Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld specialize in blunt talk and unilateral preemptive action, not persuasion. Even after March 11 in Madrid, for Europeans the most ominous dangers to their security and well-being come from the Bush White House in Washington, not terrorism.

The good news is that President George W. Bush gave Congress, the American people, the world and posterity only one memorable National Security Strategy (NSS). Starting with a June 2002 speech at West Point, President Bush enunciated his now infamous preemption doctrine, formally defined in the NSS issued September 20, 2002. Bush took preemption, defined as use force in anticipation of an imminent attack, and broadened its meaning to include the use of force even without evidence of an imminent attack, a preventive war.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, convinced President Bush of the need to prevent catastrophic threats before the country is attacked. Bush argued that the spread of weapons of mass destruction to rogue states creates an unacceptable level of risk for the United States and a compelling case for taking anticipatory actions to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack.

The bad news is that this broad-based doctrine of preemption and prevention carried with it very serious risks of causing irreversible harm. Case in point, Iraq. Fortunately the Bush White House did not apply the doctrine to countries such as Iran, Libya, Syria and North Korea that qualified even more based than Iraq on threats of WMD. Bush expounding his doctrine further damaged the image of the United States around the world. He told the world that the U.S. would use military force when and where it decided to do so outside the bounds of international law and legitimacy. He undermined the nation’s efforts to fight terrorism.

Bush’s doctrine encouraged rogue states to hide their WMD or risk preemptive U.S. action. He gave a license to other countries to justify attacks on their enemies as preemptive in nature, including the U.S. What in the world were the President, Dr. Rice and any others responsible for this doctrine thinking? And if they were thinking seriously about preemption, why didn’t they keep it to themselves rather than unnecessarily announcing it to the world. The President and Dr. Rice also made it clear that they did not understand stateless terrorism and were still fighting a Cold War version of counterterrorism.

The substance and tone of White House policies and pronouncements virtually guarantee that the interests of Europe and the U.S. will continue to diverge. Regime change is the only solution to immediate and longer-term relationship problems between the U.S., Europe and other countries in the world.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, much of the focus of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism has been on capturing or killing Al Qaeda’s leadership. Except for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, that mission has been successful. As of this writing, both bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are being hunted along the southeastern border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their capture or death would have mainly symbolic, justice and retribution value.

It’s important for the American people to understand that, in real terms, the loss of these two terrorist leaders will mean little to the remnants of Al Qaeda and the network of terrorists that sprang from training camps in Afghanistan and others that have spread like cancer in cells across almost all continents. The jihadist movement spawned by Osama bin Laden two decades ago will draw enormous sustenance from the martyred death of bin Laden, who is likely to become larger, more mythic and powerful in death than in life.

The war on terror will not be won with the death of legendary terrorists. Global terrorism is based on ideas not individuals. Like Guevara, the 1960’s communist revolutionary tracked down and killed in Bolivia in 1967, the revolutionary leader’s myth lives on and inspires followers everywhere.

Al Qaeda does not maintain central control over the countless clusters of jihadists seeking to confront America around the globe. As an ideological and spiritual movement led by bin Laden, his death will merely spur America’s jihadist enemies to make even greater efforts to harm the United States and its allies.

The Al Qaeda ideology lives on even if key members of the movement have been captured or killed. Fervent opposition to Western policies in the Middle East combines explosively with passionate commitment to the rule of Islamic law across the Muslim world. The Internet plays an important part in the widespread dissemination of anti-Westernism, Osama bin Laden’s statements, Al Qaeda’s ideas and instructions for conducting terrorism.

The war with Al Qaeda has barely begun. Tens of thousands of underemployed, disaffected Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia will embrace bin Laden’s violent anti-Western doctrines long after he is gone. Plotting goes on for attacks at a time and place of terrorists’ choosing, like 9/11 and 3/11 Madrid, the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and others that can cause the largest number of fatalities and create the greatest psychological impact.

Terrorists operate within and between an ever-changing constellation of cells, moving from country to country and place to place, getting lost between jurisdictional and bureaucratic boundaries across which intelligence is infrequently shared, communication breaks down, and law enforcement cooperation and coordination is hit-and-miss.

Over decades Europe has been transformed into a refuge for Arab radicals and a staging ground for terrorist attacks. It was only a matter of time before European countries and especially symbolic edifices comparable to the World Trade Center would become targets for Islamic terrorists.

In response to investigative pressure, Muslim extremists have become more elusive, known groups have morphed into smaller ones better able to exploit the weaknesses of Europe’s fragmented intelligence system that, like the United States, still lacks a central watchlist and repository for information about terrorist groups.

President Bush has been fighting the wrong unilateral war on terrorism from the beginning. Over the past two decades Al Qaeda has become a jihadist movement with new alliances, new tactics, new forms and activities.

We can assume that George W. Bush had never heard of Al Qaeda when he was elected President. It’s more surprising and disconcerting that, according to Richard A. Clarke, Dr. Rice looked skeptical when she was warned early in 2001 about the threat from Al Qaeda and it appeared that she never had heard of the terrorist organization.

Let’s give Dr. Rice the benefit of the doubt—she had heard of Al Qaeda but simply had not realized the seriously of the threat to America. A more serious problem, however, is that the seriousness of Al Qaeda’s threat did not produce a commensurate response in terms of Dr. Rice’s follow-up as the nation’s top post-Cold War national security strategist and planner. Like the President, Dr. Rice did not make terrorism an urgent priority until after 9/11. Bush and Rice are in this together and on the run together from deeper public scrutiny.

Plenty of evidence is undeniably available that Bush’s Vulcan team of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Wolfowitz arrived in the White House determined to attack Iraq and with little knowledge of or interest in Al Qaeda. They share the failure of the Bush administration to recognize the risk of an attack by Al Qaeda in the months leading to Sept. 11, 2001.

Clarke says that within one week of the Bush inauguration he urgently sought a meeting of senior Cabinet leaders to discuss the imminent Al Qaeda threat. Months later, in April, Clarke met with deputy secretaries. During that meeting, he wrote, the Defense Department’s Paul Wolfowitz told Clarke, You give bin Laden too much credit, and he said Wolfowitz sought to steer the discussion to Iraq.

Bush asked Clarke almost immediately after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to find out whether Iraq was involved in the suicide hijackings. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urged President Bush to consider bombing Iraq right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington, says Clarke. Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq, Clarke said. We all said, ‘But no, no, Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. Clarke said Rumsfeld complained in the meeting there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq. From the leader of the nation’s Department of Defense, that comment is stunningly stupid.

The Associated Press reported in June 2002 that Bush’s national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions. The last of those two meetings occurred Sept. 4 as the National Security Council finished a proposed national security policy review for the president. Finished Sept. 10 and awaiting Bush’s approval, the National Security Policy had not been reviewed by the President when the first plane struck the World Trade Center.

The terrorist story that emerges from carnage and rubble in the Spanish capital will confirm the new shape of terrorism. As the dots are connected between terrorists in Madrid, Tangier, Casablanca, Hamburg and the 9/11 attacks, investigators will reveal to the