Ayman al-Zawahri and Nasser al-Wuhayshi Talk

Dear Mr. President,

I can’t be the only one who’s skeptical about the timing of the world-wide terror alert and closing of 2 dozen embassies over the weekend—extended through the rest of the week. Just in the nick of time, the NSA intercepts “chatter” and an electronic communication from Ayman al-Zawahri in Pakistan ordering his Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula guy, Nasser al-Wuhayshi in Yemen, to carry out an attack (today’s NYT, “Order By Qaeda For Attack Led To Terror Alert” p. A1). Here’s the top Al Qaeda guy, Zawahri, who the CIA claimed was killed in an air strike in 2006 but reappears in 2008, takes over Al Qaeda after bin Laden is assassinated in 2011 and is barely heard from since, a guy who knows all his electronic communications are intercepted, who knows drones are circling overhead looking for him, suddenly has a case of the stupids and dials up his 2^nd in command? Really? It had nothing to do with all the NSA’s bad publicity lately? How convenient that just as Congress is starting to come out of its long snooze and rebel, threatening to cut off funding and rein them in, the NSA comes up with intercepted communications revealing a plot to “attack.” According to your intelligence guys, there’s only about 75 Al Qaeda people left in Afghanistan and all the ones in the mountains of Pakistan are deep in hiding. There’s some contradictions here, Mr. President. You said a few weeks ago that we’ve almost reduced Al-Qaeda to where they can never threaten the U.S. again. Well, that was premature. So was the official line on al-Zawahri, “whom administration officials portrayed as greatly diminished and hindered in running a global terror network…” In spite of all the official pronouncements, Al Qaeda just succeeded in closing a dozen U.S. embassies and causing a world-wide terror alert. I’m not the only one who sees contradictions. The Times article also quotes Gregory Johnson, a Yemeni scholar at Princeton: “The question I have is, If the Obama administration is confident that its strategy in Yemen is correct, then why is Al Qaeda growing in Yemen and why is the group still capable of forcing the United States to shut down embassies in more than a dozen countries?” Presidential arm-twisting and the NSA’s assurances to Congress that their surveillance programs are legal and tightly controlled don’t seem to be working so let’s show America how valuable the NSA really is and have an old-fashioned Bush-era terror alert. Sorry, Mr. President, I don’t buy it.