Morning News Roundup (11 September)

9/11

• Al Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri released a videotape to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, underscoring the fact that he still has not been caught. Addressing the West, Zawahiri said, “Your leaders are hiding from you the true extent of the disaster.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• Vice President Cheney offered a veiled attack yesterday on critics of the administration's Iraq policy, saying the domestic debate over the war is emboldening adversaries who believe they can undermine the resolve of the American people.
  
  "They can't beat us in a stand-up fight -- they never have -- but they're absolutely convinced they can break our will, [that] the American people don't have the stomach for the fight," Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
  
  The vice president said U.S. allies in Afghanistan and Iraq "have doubts" the United States will finish the job there. "And those doubts are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we've had in the United States," he said. "Suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq simply feed into that whole notion, validates the strategy of the terrorists." [WaPo]
  
  
• The 9/11 Commission Report, July 2004: "The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al-Qaida in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."
  
  Senate Intelligence Committee report, September 2006: "Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi."
  
  Dick Cheney interview, Sept. 10, 2006: "You’ve got Iraq and al-Qaida, testimony from the director of CIA that there was indeed a relationship, Zarqawi in Baghdad, etc."
  
  Condoleezza Rice interview, Sept. 10, 2005: "The director of central intelligence, George Tenet, gave that very testimony, that, in fact, there were ties going on between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's regime going back for a decade. Indeed, the 9/11 Commission talked about contacts between the two. We know that Zarqawi was running a poisons network in Iraq. We know that Zarqawi ordered the killing of an American diplomat in Jordan from Iraq. There were ties between Iraq and al-Qaida." [Salon's War Room]

Middle East Sturm und Drang

• From Foreign Policy's Passport blog: Watch for the name Col. Pete Devlin. Will his classified assessment that the prospects for Iraq's Anbar province are so dim as to verge on being lost earn him vilification? An early retirement? Or kudos for speaking the truth? From Thomas Ricks's report in the WaPo:

  One Army officer summarized [the report] as arguing that in Anbar province, "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost."

• A mini bus carrying a bomb exploded outside an army recruiting center in Baghdad and killed 16 people Monday, the deadliest of a string of attacks that left 29 Iraqis dead. A U.S. soldier also died over the weekend.
  [...]
  In northern Iraq, gunmen in two cars ambushed a bus carrying oil employees from Beiji, the country's largest refinery, killing four people and wounding one, police said. Iraq's oil infrastructure is frequently targeted by insurgents who blow up pipelines and target oil workers. The country has struggled to resume oil production to prewar levels of about 2.5 million to 3 million barrels a day. [WaPo]
  
  
• A boycott by several political groups caused the legislature yesterday to put off a rancorous debate again on a federalism bill that Sunni Arabs say may split Iraq apart and that may fuel sectarian bloodshed. The federalism bill, submitted by the largest Shi'ite Muslim bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, calls for a three-part federation that would create a separate autonomous state in the Shi'ite south. Both the north and south are rich in oil, and Sunnis fear they would end up squeezed into Baghdad and Iraq's western provinces, which have few natural resources. [BoGlobe]
  
  
• Juan Cole has a lengthy piece on how things are going with the US war with al Qaeda over at his Informed Comment blog. Here's one piece that jumped out at me:

  The evidence with regard to hearts and minds is mixed. The Pew Global Attitudes Project reports on Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, with a population of 224 mn. In 2000, 70 percent of Indonesians viewed the United States favorably. (Such numbers were typical for US Muslim allies in areas not consumed by the Arab-Israeli conflict). In 2002 as a result of the Afghanistan war, the number fell to 60 percent. Then in 2003 after Bush invaded Iraq, it fell to 15 percent. After Bush sent the US Navy to help Indonesia in the aftermath of the tsunami, the numbers rebounded in 2005 to 38 percent. In 2006 they have fallen again, down to 30 percent.
  
  So since 2000, we have fallen from 70 percent approval in Indonesia to only 30 percent, and at some points we were way down. This story contains a caution and also some encouraging news. The caution is that we are losing the Indonesia public because of this Iraq occupation. It is true in Turkey, as well, and lots of other places. The good news is that it is not irreversible. Do some nice things for someone, and the numbers go up. (The numbers also went up in Pakistan after we diverted some military helicopters to help the victims of the Kashmir earthquake). If we ended our Iraq presence, there is a chance we could repair these relationships with some munificent gestures.

Climate Crisis

• A coalition of religious leaders, environmentalists and businesses are screening a new documentary -- titled "The Great Warming" -- about climate change to evangelical groups across the country. Their aim is to “turn the large and powerful conservative Christian constituency into a voting block united behind making the reduction of greenhouse gases a top priority among politicians.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  And here it is -- fronted by climate change experts Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morrisette (the graphics are a bit cheesy, especially the shot of going through Keanu's eye an on into the solar system):
  
  

And finally...

Municipal authorities in the Saudi Arabian cities of Mecca and Jeddah have banned the sale of cats and dogs as un-Islamic. Saudi's religious police, the Muttawa, have been instructed to prevent the sale of cats and dogs in order to prevent the spread of Western ideas into the highly Islamic country. [Raw Story]