Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Hurting U.S. Terror Fight
The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded. A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the “centrality” of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document.
When I first read this article in the Washington Post, my first reaction was “It took you three and a half years to figure this out??” That the war in Iraq has only complicated the war against terror has been evident to anyone with half a brain almost since Day One. The “better to fight them on the streets of Baghdad than on the streets of Manhattan” argument was invented by Conservatives who recognized that they couldn’t defend the war in Iraq on it’s merits, so they resorted to cheap, meaningless, and wholly inaccurate propaganda.
The sad, inevitable reality is that we’ve created our very own terrorist threat out of whole cloth. Iraq may not have been Paradise on Earth prior to the American invasion, but it was hardly the hotbed of sectarian hatred and random, senseless politically motivated violence it is now. Now Iraq is averaging something like 100 civilian deaths PER DAY, and it ain’t because it’s Homecoming week. This new reality on the ground can, and should, be laid where it belongs- squarely at the feet of Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader and his fellow neocon thugs. We have been sold a bill of goods that has cost the lives of going on 3,000 of our sons and daughters…and for what?
We were told that the war in Iraq was all about the war against terror, that we were fighting for freedom and democracy, and that we were helping the Iraqi people realize their dream of creating a functioning democratic government. Well, guess what, y’all? It turns out that this was all just so much propaganda, and it also turns out that, despite the protestations of Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader to the contrary, we are if anything LESS safe than we were before we invaded Iraq.
NOW CAN WE IMPEACHING THE LYING, MURDERING BASTARD??
“It’s a very candid assessment,” one intelligence official said yesterday of the estimate, the first formal examination of global terrorist trends written by the National Intelligence Council since the March 2003 invasion. “It’s stating the obvious.”
Of course, what may be obvious to you and me is still being heartily denied by Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader and his apologists. No matter what the reality on the ground may be, you can count on these fools to spin the facts into something unrecognizable as the truth.
The NIE, whose contents were first reported by the New York Times, coincides with public statements by senior intelligence officials describing a different kind of conflict than the one outlined by President Bush in a series of recent speeches marking the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“Together with our coalition partners,” Bush said in an address earlier this month to the Military Officers Association of America, “we’ve removed terrorist sanctuaries, disrupted their finances, killed and captured key operatives, broken up terrorist cells in America and other nations, and stopped new attacks before they’re carried out. We’re on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront, and we’ll accept nothing less than complete victory.”
Don’t you ever wonder what color the sky is in Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s world? And don’t you also wonder what it is about the man that makes him so willing to stick to his talking points in spite of all evidence to the contrary? If you lie often enough, does it eventually become your truth? He can’t really believe his own propaganda…can he??
According to officials familiar with the document, it describes the situation in Iraq as promoting the spread of radical Islam by providing a focal point, with constant reinforcement of an anti-American message for disaffected Muslims. The Web sites provide a narrative of a war with frequent victories for the insurgents, and describe an occupation that they say regularly targets Islam and its adherents. They also distribute increasingly frequent and sophisticated messages from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urging Muslims wherever they are to take up arms against the “Crusaders” on behalf of Iraq.
Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s war in Iraq has been a resounding and utter failure. If you define “success” as making America safer from terrorism, we are no safter today (and probably less so) than were at the beginning of March, 2003, when he stood on a carrier deck and declared that “major combat operations” in Iraq were over. Yet Our Glorious Leader, Condoleeza Rice, and other neocon apologists will argue with no hint of irony that we are safer from terrorism that we were prior to 9.11. Truth is whatever you make it out to be, right?
“Many Americans…ask the same question five years after 9/11,” [Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader] said in a speech in Atlanta earlier this month. “The answer is yes. America is safer. We are safer because we have taken action to protect the homeland. We are safer because we are on the offensive against our enemies overseas. We’re safer because of the skill and sacrifice of the brave Americans who defend our people.”
Safer? I suppose if your legacy and the immediate future of your party are dependent upon the success in the war against terror, then of course you’re going to argue that we’re safer. Why? Well, because you ‘ve done stuff, really important stuff, and you can toss numbers and opinions and statistics around to buttress your argument. Best of all, you know that, if you repeat your talking points often enough and with enough conviction, eventually the American sheeple will accept your argument as the Truth. Thus are legacies made…in this case out of whole cloth.
No matter how often or how strongly Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader bleats and pounds his chest, the war in Iraq has NOTHING to do with the war against terror. It never has, and it never will, no matter how much he and his neocon apologists lie to the American sheeple.
WE DESERVE BETTER. Yeah, like THAT’S going to happen….
