WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Bush administration is defending its military presence in Iraq by warning the US public that Al-Qaeda remains a great threat intent on striking America again, even as early as this summer.
US President George W. Bush drew a close link Tuesday between the group known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the network headed by Osama bin Laden that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.
He warned that victory was essential in Iraq to keep Al-Qaeda from delivering another blow on US soil, while insisting that bin Laden pulls the strings of the Iraq group, which did not exist before the March 2003 US-led invasion.
"Some say that Iraq is not a part of the broader war on terror," he said. "They claim that the organization called Al-Qaeda in Iraq is an Iraqi phenomenon, that it's independent of Osama bin Laden and it's not interested in attacking America. That would be news to Osama bin Laden."
Bush spoke a week after the release of a US intelligence report stating that Al-Qaeda had been reinvigorated and was plotting new attacks from a safe haven in remote tribal areas of Pakistan.
The report, a National Intelligence Estimate grouping the consensus findings of the US spy agencies, also declared that the Al-Qaeda in Iraq group (AQI) was the terrorist network's "most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the homeland," meaning the United States.
But a day after Bush spoke, one of the report's authors, CIA official Edward Gistaro, refused to categorically say whether the Iraq branch was under bin Laden's direct orders and insisted that Al-Qaeda was not a "monolithic" organization.
"Al-Qaeda in Pakistan tries to provide strategic guidance and encouragement to AQI, but it also defers to AQI to make tactical decisions on the ground with regard to its operations inside of Iraq," Gistaro told US lawmakers.
By arguing the link between the Iraq war and Al-Qaeda, Bush seeks to regain support among Americans and Congress amid mounting calls for withdrawing the 160,000 US troops from a four-year-old conflict that has killed more than 3,600 soldiers.
Analysts say Bush has exaggerated the link for political reasons, although there is no question that Al-Qaeda overall has gained strength.
"It's both politics and reality," said John Pike, director of the Globalsecurity.org, a center specialized in national security.
"I think that Mr. Bush may overstate it as usual, because while there is no doubt that this group in Iraq should be viewed as an Al-Qaeda affiliate, it probably makes a lot of its own decisions and it probably is not in most cases a major threat to the American homeland," said Michael O'Hanlon, a national security expert at the Brookings Institution think tank.
"I think it is primarily an Iraq-based group," O'Hanlon told AFP.
"But on the other hand, if they are victorious in Iraq, there is a chance that some of them will be emboldened to try to do the same sort of the things in other parts of the world," he said.
The Bush administration has warned that the summer could be a prime season for another terror strike on US soil, with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff saying this month he had a "gut feeling" the country was "in a period of increased vulnerability."
"I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk," Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune in an interview earlier this month.
Chertoff said that "in prior summers, we've had attacks against the West, which suggests that summer seems to be appealing to them."
He said his remarks were based on past patterns of attacks, recent statements by Al-Qaeda, "increased activity in South Asia," and intelligence reports.
But the Homeland Security Department did not raise the level of its terror alert and merely boosted police presence in US airports to ease travelers' concerns after the failed car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow last month.