This New York Times article’s description of the Bush administration’s confused attempts to deal with the Al Qaeda threat emanating from Pakistan’s tribal areas is yet more evidence against conservatives’ claims that they can more effectively manage anti-terrorism:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a “war on terrorism” and made the destruction of Mr. bin Laden’s network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.[...]

The White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.[...]

Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.

The Center for America Progress’s Brian Katulis wrote last week that “Pakistan is most likely to create the biggest headache for the next U.S. president.”

[Pakistan] is the country that U.S. intelligence officials have repeatedly cited as the most important haven and training ground for global terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. It is also the place that is the best guess among intelligence agencies for where top Al Qaeda leaders like Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri currently reside. Military and intelligence officials have warned that the next terrorist attack will most likely come from Pakistan.

In order to invade and occupy country where Al Qaeda wasn’t, President Bush diverted resources away from where Al Qaeda was, allowing Al Qaeda to regroup and reorganize and continue to plot against America. Many of the most prominent people responsible for this brilliant plan are now advising John McCain. Read more

During a press conference in Pennsylvania today, New York Times reporter John Broder asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) if he shared the concern of “senior Pentagon officials” about the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and if the U.S. has the “resources to devote to fighting those enemies there given the surge in Iraq.” “Yes and yes,” replied McCain brusquely.

McCain then began to take another question, but broke it off to “elaborate a bit” on the situation in Afghanistan. “To somehow think that it’s an either or situation, either Afghanistan or Iraq, is a fundamental misreading of the situation in the Middle East,” said McCain.

He then said “it’s not just a matter of more troops”:

MCCAIN: It’s not an either or situation. We need to succeed in Iraq and I am confident that we can succeed in Afghanistan. But it’s not just a matter of more troops. It is a matter of a whole lot of other factors, including those, and not exclusive to those ones that I just outlined.

Watch it:

McCain’s claims are at odds with the opinion of top military leaders, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen. Just last week, Mullen said that Afghanistan is “an economy-of-force campaign,” which means that “we don’t have enough forces there.” Read more

Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Just a few weeks ago, Senator John McCain endorsed President George W. Bush’s criticism that diplomatic engagement with Iran would be appeasement.

Now it seems McCain has open the door to his war cabinet to someone who has called for U.S. negotiations “without preconditions” with Iran.

Kori Schake, a research fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, former National Security Council and State Department official in the Bush administration, and former advisor to Rudy Giuliani, wrote an article last spring in the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review, that in the case of Iran and its nuclear program, “We could assist our own case significantly by agreeing to negotiations without preconditions.”

Her article outlines a persuasive case against John McCain’s stated Iran position:

Opponents of negotiations argue that opening them would give away valuable leverage, reward Iranian misbehavior, and send a signal of weakness. They are mistaken on at least two of those points. If negotiations with the U.S. were such valuable leverage, the Iranians would likely have taken last summer’s deal. Moreover, the leverage argument assumes that negotiating with the Iranians is of more value to them than to us, which is at least questionable. If the Iranians are bent on nuclear weapons development, they will be unaffected by negotiations, whereas we will solidify domestic and international backing and have a direct channel of communication that could reduce miscalculation and expand our opportunities to separate the Iranian government from its people. Even if negotiations do not constrain the Iranian nuclear program, they will strengthen our standing and could help open up Iranian society.

Engaging with the Iranian government is an idea more anathema to American policymakers than it is to Iranian dissidents; they have confidence we can conduct diplomacy, as we did with the Soviet Union, without legitimizing the regime. In refusing to negotiate we help a dictatorial government control information; through negotiations, we further our aims and reduce their ability to mischaracterize our actions. If the Iranians are not bent on nuclear-weapons development, negotiations will give us a better understanding of tradeoffs that would constrain them.

In the same piece, Schake also argued that the United States should increase its threshold for military action against Iran to the actual testing of a nuclear weapon rather than uranium enrichment.

Schake joined the McCain team sometime this year and took part in this national security conference call with reporters earlier this month. Schake was even sent out to defend McCain’s position on Iran from Congressional critics of McCain’s 2005 vote against sanctions on Iran.

Yesterday morning on Fox News, former UN Ambassador John Bolton claimed Israel has to make a decision to bomb Iran soon, partly because they need to do it with a U.S. President in office who would support the unilateral strike:

I think their calculation has to be they want the support — at least after-the-fact — from the United States, and therefore, I think doing it during President Bush’s term makes a lot of sense. I don’t think they’ll do it before our election because you can’t calculate what the impact would be, and of course after the election, they’ll know who will be President — and that would factor into their decision as well.

In the interview, Bolton also made the case for preventive war against Iran. “I don’t personally believe in just-in-time non-proliferation,” he said. “Our intelligence on Iran is far from perfect,” Bolton conceded. Yet Iran’s “strategic objective” and “rhetoric from their leadership” is enough to justify war. Watch it:

Bolton was even more explicit in an interview with Israel Insider. “Bolton said that if Senator Obama is elected in November, Israel could not afford to wait until he takes office on January 20, before taking action. ‘An Obama victory would rule out military action by the Israelis because they would fear the consequences given the approach Obama has taken to foreign policy.’” Read more