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US General: Strong, Sophisticated Taliban Emerging    [

    US Losing War on Terrorism, Experts Say
    By Bob Deans
    Cox News Service

    Thursday 29 June 2006

Poll finds that more than 8 in 10 respondents blame the Iraq war.

    Washington - The United States is losing its fight against terrorism and the Iraq war is the biggest reason why, more than eight of 10 American terrorism and national security experts concluded in a poll released Wednesday.

    One participant in the survey, a former CIA official who described himself as a conservative Republican, said the war in Iraq has provided global terrorist groups with a recruiting bonanza, a valuable training ground and a strategic beachhead at the crossroads of the oil-rich Persian Gulf and Turkey, the traditional land bridge linking the Middle East to Europe.

    "The war in Iraq broke our back in the war on terror," said the former official, Michael Scheuer, the author of "Imperial Hubris," a popular book highly critical of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts. "It has made everything more difficult and the threat more existential."

    Scheuer, a former counterterrorism expert with the CIA, is one of more than 100 national security and terrorism analysts who were surveyed this spring for the poll by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for American Progress.

    The left-leaning think tank is headed by John Podesta, who served as White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration.

    Of the experts polled, 45 identified themselves as liberals, 40 said they were moderates and 31 called themselves conservatives. The pollsters then weighted the responses so that the percentage results reflected one-third participation by each group.

    Asked whether the United States is "winning the war on terror," 84 percent said no and 13 percent answered yes.

    Asked whether the war in Iraq is helping or hurting the global anti-terrorism campaign, 87 percent answered that it was undermining those efforts. A similar number, 86 percent, said the world is becoming "more dangerous for the United States and the American people."

    In an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken June 22-25, 57 percent of respondents said America's efforts to fight terrorism are going well; 41 percent said they are not going well.

    In the same poll, 59 percent said the country is safer from terrorism today than it was before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, while just 33 percent said the country is less safe.

    The poll surveyed 1,000 adults nationwide and has a 3 percentage point margin of error.

    The experts' poll was taken in March and April, before two significant milestones in Iraq: the formation of a new government and the killing by U.S. bombs of Abu Musab Zarqawi, who led al-Qaida in Iraq.

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    US General: Strong, Sophisticated Taliban Emerging
    Reuters

    Wednesday 28 June 2006

    Washington - Taliban forces fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan have grown stronger and more sophisticated, and are directing operations from neighboring Pakistan, a senior U.S. commander said on Wednesday.

    More than four years into the war in Afghanistan, an operation often overshadowed by the focus on Iraq, the top U.S. commander there said the Taliban has grown in the south and reconstituted itself elsewhere. It is displaying better military command and its leaders remain elusive, he said.

    "The fact remains that we're up against an enemy that is able to operate very effectively on both sides of the border," Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry said in testimony to U.S. lawmakers. "There's areas that they're able to stay within and to direct combat operations against ourselves and against the Afghan National Army."

    Despite growing violence funded, U.S. officials say, by drug money, NATO will take over military operations in southern Afghanistan in July, according to Mary Beth Long, the Defense Department's principal deputy assistant secretary for international security affairs.

    Ultimately, NATO rather than the United States will play the lead military role throughout Afghanistan. Long did not offer lawmakers a timeline, saying NATO would take full responsibility when conditions were "right."

    The planned transition to NATO's military leadership will allow the United States to bring home some of its 23,000 troops in Afghanistan, a Pentagon spokesman said.

    But in his public testimony, which preceded a closed-door classified briefing to lawmakers, Eikenberry did not discuss troop levels or offer a timeline for their drawdown.

    While the U.S. military had disclosed plans in December to cut its contingent from 19,000 to about 16,500 this spring, troop levels remain higher. Including troops from other countries, the coalition force on the ground numbers 28,000, Eikenberry said.

    Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. troop levels may continue to climb.

    "The number of troops that we have there and that other coalition countries have there are, in fact, going up," he told reporters on Wednesday. "As NATO took over the north, took over the west, is now in the process of taking over the south, they have actually increased the number of troops."

    But Democrats challenged U.S. plans and operations in the face of a re-emerging Taliban.

    "I do not see a long-term comprehensive strategy from the administration," said Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the committee. "And if one exists, it is not being clearly communicated to Congress, the American people or the people of Afghanistan."