Meet the Press, July 13SEN. GRAHAM: It's not getting rid of the Saddam Hussein regime. It's the fact that we've taken our focus off the major threat to the lives of Americans in terms of foreign forces, and that is al-Qaeda and the other international terrorist groups. Those are the ones who killed 3,000 Americans on September 11. Those are the ones who have the will and capacity.
We're about to issue a report, I hope, before the end of this month, if the administration will finally get through its approval process. One of the statements that they, as of today, are allowing to be in this final report, is that
over the existence of al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda has trained between 70,000 and 120,000 persons in the skills and arts of terrorism: 70,000 to 120,000. We have to assume that as those people were placed around the world,
some of them were placed inside the United States. Some of them are in the United States today. That, in my judgment, is the principal threat to the lives of the people of the United States. We lost focus. We allowed al-Qaeda to regroup and regenerate. They've conducted a series of very sophisticated operations, thus far, none of them in the United States, but seven Americans were killed in Saudi Arabia.
MR. RUSSERT: How many al-Qaeda operatives would you estimate are in the U.S.?
SEN. GRAHAM: I have an estimate of that but I can't tell you, but it is a significant number.
MR. RUSSERT: In the thousands?
SEN. GRAHAM: It is a significant number.
*******
I really don't see that his argument is undermined. He is, after all, quoting what he is allowed to quote of he knows of the 9/11 report that is about to be released. It seems difficult to say what's "hyperbole" and what's not in a case like this. I doubt that many voters are going to be saying, "Oh, I know more about al Queda numbers than the 9/11 commission, and I think that's exaggerated." (Of course that's the beauty of the admin keeping so much classified.)
But his point, as I hear it, is that we have seriously dropped the ball on our most realistic threat, and in fact have increased the threat by going after Iraq instead. While I've always thought Bush's Iraq adventure and WMD claims sounded exaggerated, these statements about al Queda seem pretty reasonable to me. Whether they trained 100k or 10k people, it only took 19 in the right place at the right time.