It seems like it was only two weeks ago we heard how Iraq was the “central front in the war on terrorism”. Oh wait – it was! That’s what John McCain and Sarah Palin told us, while trying to paint Obama as dangerous threat who didn’t understand the wars we are in.
Well now we got the chief spook saying the same thing:
CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday that al-Qaeda remains the single greatest threat to the United States but that Iraq is no longer the central front in the broader war on terrorism.
“Today, the flow of money, weapons and foreign fighters into Iraq is greatly diminished and al-Qaeda senior leaders no longer point to it as the central battlefield,” Hayden told an audience at the Atlantic Council, a bipartisan group that deals with international affairs. But he warned that al-Qaeda remains “a determined, adaptive enemy” that is resilient and operating “from its safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas.”
“If there is a major strike on this country, it will bear the fingerprints of al-Qaeda,” he said. While law enforcement and diplomacy have their place, Hayden said, “this war — and no one should mistake it as anything else — is far from over.
Our side has been saying this for the past few years now and we were always chastised for it. Perhaps Hayden is saying it just so he can maybe keep his job, but there’s also the chance he had been lying and is now speaking the truth. That’s why we need new eyes and minds in the intelligence sector.