A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks. The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
Yes, Iraq has created many more terrorists than before. The Iraq war has made us less safe as a country,
An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology. The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.
When will the chattering class of pundits finally come to grips with this? When will they finally tell the American people the truth instead of being a PSA for Bush and the Republicans--especially since it's election time and all the GOP wants to do is scare America? They should be scared with this administration in power.
We truly are ruled by cowards, both the pathetically incompetent creatures actually running the government and the guardians of our elite discourse who see punditry as their personal parlor game or a vehicle for social climbing. They failed when they thought blowjobs were more important than terrorists, and they failed when they thought that after 9/11 invading a country which had nothing to do with it would be a jolly good idea.
Meanwhile, much of our press continues to identify national security "toughness" with stubborn refusal to see what's lying right before everyone's eyes: The invasion of Iraq has been a gigantic, years-long rolling catastrophe for American security.
If I were shaping the Democrats' election strategy, I would create a television commercial where someone reads the [previous] four paragraphs -- from a new report in the NYT today -- and then I would air it over and over and over every single day as much as possible until November 7.
Bush has been election season fearmongering all over the country for the past few weeks getting more and more hysterical, coming very close to actually shrieking "they are coming to kill you in your beds, don't you understand!!!"--If we had concentrated on Afghanistan, today we'd be dealing mostly with the morons trying to blow up their tennis shoes and take down the Brooklyn Bridge with blow torches. Instead we're making hundreds of battle-hardened, violent jihadists by the boatload in Iraq and getting them ready for export all over the world. Excellent plan, Just excellent. You can see why the Republicans are so proud of their expertise on national security.
Joe:
Anything Bush says about terror means nothing. His own government says he's made it worse. Now, we need to hold Bush and the GOP accountable for this record.
