Agency: Iraq war creating worse threat (like we needed them to tell us)

[bigtree]

still . . . there it is:

U.S. intelligence says terrorism abroad more likely to increase due to displacement and growing radicalism

By Mark Mazzetti, New York Times

WASHINGTON — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by U.S. intelligence agencies has found that the U.S. 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, said several officials in Washington who were involved in preparing the assessment or have read the final document. The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by U.S. intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and it represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

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 U.S. intelligence official.


http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/news/ci_4389778

[bigtree]

1. this is the same intelligence estimate that Bush uses to justify his wars

hardly something to just let slip by unaddressed.

Sadly, judging by the way the subject threads have dropped, I hardly expect it will get the notice it deserves here.