The Good Democrat

War In Iraq Worsens Terror Threat

How about that? Isn’t that what we’ve been saying all along? Now intelligence agencies are agreeing with Democrats who were against the war from the beginning, saying that the War in Iraq is a distraction from the real war on terror, and from what I personally have been saying, that our actions in Iraq are increasing terrorist attacks rather than decreasing them.

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.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and 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 American intelligence official.

I remind you what Porter Goss said in February 2005 about the war in Iraq as an aide in helping recruit terrorists.

“Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists,” CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Com’on America! See the writing on the wall. The Bush Administration is not protecting you! Republicans are not protecting you! The more we “stay the course” in Iraq, the worse it will be for us.