Leaked Intelligence Report Rocks Bush Election Stance...

[bridgit]

'US spy agencies have dropped a political bombshell six weeks before national elections, with the leak of a classified report concluding that the war in Iraq has spawned a new wave of Islamic radicalism and increased the global threat of terrorism.

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.' http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0924-01.htm

[LynnTheDem]

1. Gee...who could have known.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2213463

[bridgit]

2. go figure, huh...

[bobthedrummer]

3. It should be noted, sometime, that Iraq is having a civil war. eom

[bridgit]

4. indeed so...

[madrchsod]

5. hmmm ...bush creates the monster

and he says he must keep creating more to protect us from more of them...ohhh my god my head hurts...

[bridgit]

6. yeah, it's a lose/lose situation...bush's very favorite kind it would seem

x(

[Bucky]

7. "has made the overall terrorism problem worse" -- I wonder if they asked

the Iraqis :eyes:

[bridgit]

10. perish the thought...

[windbreeze]

8. What a surprise this is...

but you see, the problem is...* does not live in the same reality as we do..
windbreeze

[bridgit]

9. you got that right, he most decidedly does not...

must be nice to be above it all x(