Political Crossfire Forums

[Afgan]

Sep 24, 2006 9:01 am US/Pacific

Report: Iraq War Made Terror 'Worse'

Terrorism Has Spread Since U.S. Invasion, National Intelligence Estimate Finds

CBS News Interactive: Postwar Iraq

(CBS News) The U.S. invasion of Iraq has heightened the threat of terrorism and increased the number of terrorist groups, according to a new report compiled by U.S. intelligence agencies since the Iraq war started.

The report, the classified National Intelligence Estimate, "says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," one American intelligence official told The New York Times.

Completed in April, the intelligence estimate reflects the views of 16 different spy agencies within the U.S. government. Instead of weakening Islamic radicalism, the report titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," says the jihad ideology has spread worldwide since the Iraq war.

The report ends by saying the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of al Qaeda operatives and related groups and now includes a class of "self-generating" cells inspired by al Qaeda's leadership, yet has no direct connection with Osama bin Laden or his top officers, The New York Times reported.

In other developments:

At least 20 people were killed and 37 injured Sunday in scattered violence around Iraq, including a mortar attack on the Health Ministry followed by a car bombing targeting a police patrol. Police also discovered another 13 bodies, the apparent victims of sectarian death squads.


Baghdad police on Sunday raised the confirmed casualty toll in the deadly bombing of a kerosene truck on a crowded street Saturday to 38 killed and 42 injured. A Sunni group claiming responsibility for the attack in Baghdad's Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum, said it was in revenge for a Friday attack by a suspected Shiite death squad on Sunni Arab homes and mosques that killed four people in the capital.


Iraq's fractious ethinic and religious parliamentary groups agreed Sunday to open debate on a contentious Shiite-proposed draft legislation that will allow the creation of federal regions in Iraq, politicians from all groups said. The agreement came after a compromise was reached with Sunni Arabs on setting up a parliamentary committee to amend Iraq's constitution, a key demand by the minority.


U.S. military authorities are reporting the deaths of three American soldiers in Iraq Saturday. They say one died in a roadside bombing in Baghdad. Two other troops were killed after a bomb exploded near their patrol in a town 150 miles north of Baghdad. The U.S. command says three other soldiers were injured. No further details have been released.


An al Qaeda-linked group posted a Web video Saturday purporting to show the bodies of two American soldiers being dragged behind a truck, then set on fire in apparent retaliation for the rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman by U.S. troops from the same unit.

While threats came in a blizzard around the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks - a series of sophisticated videos from al Qaeda's No. 2 warning that the group is still vital and plans to strike - U.S. intelligence agencies and many private security analysts doubt that al Qaeda or its elusive leader, Osama bin Laden, still maintain much if any operational control over far-flung terror cells.

They see no sign of a direct al Qaeda hand in a flurry of recent attacks, such as the assault on the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria or the fatal shooting of a British tourist in Jordan. And a recent French intelligence report that bin Laden may have died last month of typhoid fever merely highlights the uncertainty the West now has about any role he plays in the terror network.

All that means those frightening videos may have been just that -designed to frighten the West and inspire followers - with little real punch behind them.

Bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are now "less like generals and more like talking heads, disseminating their violent ideology via satellite television in hopes of inspiring others to do their bidding," says Eben Kaplan of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York.

Not everyone agrees with that controversial idea. There also are ominous signs in Afghanistan that al Qaeda is trying to make an operational comback as attacks, especially suicide missions, against U.S. and coalition forces increase.

Some experts also fear the absence of a major, Sept. 11-style attack simply means that al Qaeda is taking its time to plan a next spectacular strike.

Yet, five years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, many analysts believe the day-to-day threat from al Qaeda itself has dropped.

Paradoxically, however, the threat from Islamic extremist terrorists overall may have grown - and become broader, more diverse and more complex, and thus harder to combat.

"The absence of a formal, single organizational structure has contributed to making the fight against this brand of terrorism more elusive and difficult," the British think-tank Chatham House said in a report this month as the videos were airing.

After the U.S. and its allies ousted the Taliban in 2001, al Qaeda apparently transformed itself into an ideological movement of self-sustaining cells that operate with little or no central direction, many analysts and intelligence officials believe. That makes them difficult to track - until they strike or make a mistake that leads the authorities to them.

But the goals, methods and targets of those far-flung radicals now vary widely. And not all extremist groups share al Qaeda's vision of global struggle against the West, preferring in some cases to fight instead for some specific national political agenda.

Across the world, that means the threat is fractured into many parts - with the need to tailor defenses accordingly.

In Iraq, the fight has mostly morphed into a sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites for control of Iraq's future, although some foreign fighters inspired by al Qaeda seem to still be involved.

In Britain, mostly homegrown militants of Pakistani descent seem intent on waging the kind of big, spectacular attack that bin Laden used on Sept. 11.

Elsewhere, however, militants have diverged sharply from bin Laden. The Sept. 12 assault on the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria which came just a day after al-Zawahiri's warning tapes were aired serves as a prime example.

In Syria, militants have focused on getting rid of President Bashar Assad and there is no sign they receive any operational direction from al Qaeda.

In places like Sudan and Somalia, Muslim militants are fighting for local power and control. They may have links to bin Laden from the past - but their only real connection seems to be when they invoke his name to resist the West.

http://cbs5.com/topstories/topstories_story_267103153.html

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There are many (including me) who have said that Bush's war on Iraq has done nothing to further the advance against terrorism; that in fact it has created more terrorists. Apparently a National Intelligence Estimate agrees with this assessment.

Hopefully, every time Bush mentions his war in Iraq with the war on terrorism (in much the same way he mentioned Iraq and 9/11 again and again in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq), people will take note of the deliberately misleading statements, and register their opinions in this fall's elections.

More intelligence that was ignored by Bush.

So we have more terrorism and a greater chance of terrorist attacks than we had prior to 9/11. Terrorism has increased, not decreased, during Bush's time in office, and one of the major reasons it has increased is Bush's war on Iraq.

And yet, we're safer??? Why does Bush continue to mislead?

Once again i have to ask you fine folks, why do you people still support your governments foreign policy ?

[Angelicus]

Let me make sure I read this right, some unknown, unnamed source told CBS news about this report?

I am not so sure I'd rely that we are getting the whole story based upon that.

The report itself is classified thus the public has no way of knowing what the report actually says or does not say.

"The White House Sunday said a New York Times report on the National Intelligence Estimate document "is not representative of the complete document."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/24/iraq.main/index.html

On a related matter though, that no one seems to care about, yet again the N.Y. Times etc.....is printing classified materials,

I think its about time these reporters and their editors at the N.Y. Times and co, who keep putting classified documents and materials out there for the world to see, got put in jail.

Simply because the N.Y. Times as an institution, and many of its editors and reporters, do not like this administration, or do not agree politically with someone, that does not give them the right to break our national security laws, and print what they clearly, and blatantly admit they know to be classified materials.

[drobforever]

Angelicus wrote: Since this report is a classified report, this so called "intelligence" official who spoke too CBS (supposedly) about it should be identified and punished for leaking classified materials.

There is a very serious national security reason we have classified materials/documents.

Yeap, very serious. If national security means the security of Bush's job.

[Angelicus]

drobforever wrote: Angelicus wrote: Since this report is a classified report, this so called "intelligence" official who spoke too CBS (supposedly) about it should be identified and punished for leaking classified materials.

There is a very serious national security reason we have classified materials/documents.

Yeap, very serious. If national security means the security of Bush's job.


Who the President is, or what their party affiliation is, is not germain to this issue whatsoever.


This is not a partisan issue its a national security issue.

I am glad to see you put our national security first, and a partisan politics second.

[Alizard]

It will be interesting to see if Bush still has the gall to spew his pack of lies about how his Iraq Disaster is winning the war on terror.

Quote: Leaked intelligence report rocks Bush election stance

The intelligence document on Sunday rocked a central pillar of the Republican Party's campaign platform ahead of November elections: that the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the ouster of
Saddam Hussein made America safer, not weaker.

With opinion polls showing
President George W. Bush's party possibly losing control of both houses of Congress in the the mid-term polls, in large part due to unhappiness over the war in Iraq, the report stating categorically the opposite will make for painful reading at the White House.

Bush has argued repeatedly in pre-election speeches that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism and that demands for a US troop withdrawal from the country by the opposition Democrats underscores why the center-left party should not be trusted with the nation's security.

"The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq," Bush said in one speech on August 31.

Such assertions were looking decidedly shaky Sunday after The New York Times and The Washington Post released details of the classified National Intelligence Estimate, the most comprehensive assessment yet of the war, based on analyses of all 16 of America's intelligence agencies.

The report, Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, says "the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," an official familiar with the document told The Times.

The Washington Post said the report described the Iraq conflict as the primary recruiting vehicle for violent Islamic extremists.

"While the US has seriously damaged Al-Qaeda and disrupted its ability to carry out major operations since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, it noted, radical Islamic networks have spread and decentralized.

Democratic leaders were quick to jump on the report's conclusions as clear evidence of the failure of Bush's policies.

"This intelligence document should put the final nail in the coffin for
President Bush's phony argument about the Iraq war," Senator Edward Kennedy said in a statement Sunday.

"The fact that we need a new direction in Iraq to really win the war on terror and make Americans safer could not be clearer or more urgent -- yet this administration stubbornly clings to a failed 'stay-the-course' strategy," he said.

The White House, while reiterating its traditional stance of not commenting on classified reports, said The New York Times story "isn't representative of the complete document."

"We've always said that the terrorists are determined. Keeping the pressure on and staying on the offense is the best way to win the war on terror," a White House spokesman added.

But the leaked intelligence report is hardly good news for Bush and the Republicans, coming on top of a messy revolt by top Republican senators against a Bush plan for legitimizing how the US interrogates and prosecutes terrorist suspects.

The Senate rebels, who included possible candidates to succeed Bush in 2008, reached a compromise agreement with the White House late this week.

But the unseemly row already diverted attention away from Republican efforts to present a unified front on the issue of national security during the final stretch of the election campaign.

Republican leaders tried to brush aside the intelligence document, which they said they had not yet seen.

"If it wasn't Iraq it would be Afghanistan; if it wasn't
Afghanistan it would be other (issues) that they would use as a method of continuing their recruitment," Senator John McCain, a leading potential presidential contender, said on CBS's Face The Nation.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist expressed confidence US voters would not be swayed by the intelligence report.

"I think the American people, when they read an article like that ... say, 'Listen, just keep me safe -- I just want to be safe in Nashville, Tennessee, I want to be safe in Memphis, New York City, Washington, DC,' that's what they want."

http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/09/24/leaked-intelligence-report-rocks-bush-election-stance/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.yahoo.com%2Fs%2Fafp%2F20060924%2Fpl_afp%2Fusattackiraq_060924170844%3B_ylt%3DAsAKksOTcVpWp8sVkfrufLvJ76Mv%3B_ylu%3DX3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl&frame=true