Osama: Surprise support

Washington, June 25: A serving CIA officer with 22 years’ experience in the espionage agency has alleged that the US support for India is helping Osama bin Laden to get new recruits and enable al Qaida to step up its war against the US.

In a new book due for publication on July 4, America’s Independence Day, the officer, who headed the CIA station devoted to Osama from its inception in 1996 until recently, has argued that Osama is capitalising on the US support for Israel, American presence on the Arabian peninsula, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US support for India, China, Russia and Afghanistan, “governments that Muslims believe oppress Muslims”.

The 309-page book, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, is being published anonymously since the author is still with the CIA, which does not want him to be identified because he could be4 a target of terrorists.

But the spy agency, which has given permission for the book’s publication and vetted its contents for classified information, has made the author available for television and newspaper interviews without showing his face or identifying him by name.

The book’s contents and the author’s comments in interviews have dominated American TV headlines since Wednesday and edged out former Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, who have held the centrestage of American media in the last fortnight.

According to US media outlets which have obtained advance copies of the book, the author, who uses the pen name “Anonymous”, describes George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq as “an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat, but whose defeat did offer economic advantage”.

In an interview with Andrea Mitchell, NBC Television’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, on Wednesday, he argued that Osama and al Qaida saw the invasion as “a Christmas gift they always wanted and never expected to get... It made us the occupiers of the second holiest place for Muslims in the world. In fact, now we are occupying, in the eyes of our opponents, we are occupying the two holiest places, Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq, and the Israelis are occupying the third, in Jerusalem...

“It is in every way predictably, if you will, a godsend for those Muslims who believe as bin Laden does... It is a dream come true” for Osama.

“Anonymous” has challenged the constant name-calling of Osama as a “terrorist” or a “thug” or a “cold-blooded killer” by Bush and other administration officials since September 11.

Instead, he is of the view that Osama is “probably the only heroic figure, the only leadership figure that exists in the Islamic world today, and he does so because he is defending Muslims, Islamic lands, Islamic resources...

“And the genius that lies behind it, because he is not a man who rants against our freedoms, our liberties, our voting, our — the fact that our women go to school. He is not the Ayatollah Khomeini; he really doesn’t care about all those things. To think that he is trying to rob us of our liberties and freedom is, I think, a gross mistake.

“What he has done, his genius, is identify particular American foreign policies that are offensive to Muslims”.

Describing both the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as “half-failed wars”, the author has a dire warning of another terrorist attack against the US. He told The Guardian that the attack may even take place during the ongoing presidential campaign with the intention of keeping Bush in the White House.

“I am very sure they (al Qaida) can’t have a better administration for them than the one they have now. One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the President.”

And he believes that if al Qaida does not already have weapons of mass destruction, they will inevitably acquire them.

“I tend to think bin Laden will attack us when he wants to,” the author told Mitchell. “He is an individual who has been very unmoved by external events. If there is a man who marches to his own drummer in terms of timing, it is certainly bin Laden and al Qaida.”