Spy report links Iraq invasion to more terrorism
Spy report links Iraq invasion to more terrorism
By BETH GORHAMWASHINGTON (CP) - It couldn't have come at a worse time for U.S. Republicans trying to get re-elected in mid-term elections in November on the strength of their national security efforts.
Part of a comprehensive spy report finished in April and leaked last weekend said the U.S. invasion of Iraq helped create a new generation of Islamic radicals and increased the global terrorism threat.
That's the opposite of what President George W. Bush has been telling Americans for weeks in pre-election speeches and it could have a significant impact on whether the party retains control of Congress this fall.
The National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus view of 16 separate spy agencies including the CIA, was the talk of the capital Monday as Democrats held hearings on all the failings in Iraq and White House officials blitzed the airwaves in a bid to control the damage.
The classified report, maintained White House spokesman Tony Snow, talked about a lot more than just Iraq and contained nothing Bush hasn't already said: that al-Qaida is more dispersed and there are more independent terrorists.
The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee both urged the government to declassify the document so Americans could see it and draw their own conclusions.
"This NIE examines global terrorism in its totality," said the committee's chairman, Pat Roberts (R-Kan.)
While Bush has long described Iraq as the centre of the anti-terror war, he has repeatedly told voters that they're less vulnerable than they were after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Today we are safer, but we are not yet safe," the president said in a televised address to mark the fifth anniversary of the attacks.
And in a news conference on Aug. 21, Bush said the theory that everything was fine until the United States stirred up a hornet's nest in Iraq "just doesn't hold water as far as I'm concerned."
"The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East," he said.
White House officials complained about the timing of the leak to the New York Times and Washington Post, calling it a an obvious election ploy six weeks before the congressional races.
"We have always understand that extremist radical groups . . . are going to use Iraq or any other grievance they can come up with to try to incite recruits," said Dan Bartlett, Bush's counsellor.
"They are very good at using whatever grievance they can find."
And the leaks never mentioned a central conclusion of the report that success in Iraq "will deal a crippling blow to terrorism around the world," said Texas Congressman Mac Thornberry, a Republican who has seen the estimate.
"Let's just look at it from a common sense standpoint," Thornberry said. "Any time you stand up to a threat, you are increasing the dangers somewhat."
"The United States did not cause terrorism. We did not create it. But we are standing up to it."
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky said the report also noted that pulling out of Iraq prematurely would "bring terrorists here to our shores again."
"Obviously we've been doing it the right way by staying on offence and going after these guys in Afghanistan and Iraq."
It was a National Intelligence Estimate in October 2002 that wrongly said former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
This one is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism since the Iraq war began in March 2003.
It could be pure gold for Democrats, who have been looking for ways to tap into widespread public unease about Iraq while chipping away at the approval Bush retains among voters on anti-terrorism.
More Americans are telling pollsters these days that reducing the U.S. military presence overseas would reduce the terrorist threat.
The war has cost more than US$300 billion so far and claimed the lives of more than 2,600 American soldiers.
The U.S. army is stretched so thin by Iraq that it's extending the combat tours of thousands of soldiers beyond the promised 12 months for the second time since August. Defence officials are also considering sending in National Guard troops.
Retired military officers were blunt at Senate Democratic hearings Monday, saying Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has bungled the war and misled Americans.
Maj.-Gen. John Batiste, who commanded an infantry division in Iraq, said Rumsfeld once threatened to fire the next person who talked about the need for a postwar plan in Iraq.
If there had been a plan, it's likely the U.S. would have kept its focus on Afghanistan and "not fuelled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe and not created more enemies than there were insurgents," said Batiste.
In an autobiography released Monday, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf he never favoured invading Iraq.
"I feared it would exacerbate extremism, as it most certainly has. The world is not a safer place because of the war in Iraq. The world has become far more dangerous."
Musharraf, who is meeting with Bush this week, refused to say in an interview if the president should be blamed for making the world more dangerous.
"Let's live in the present and the future and not discuss what decisions were taken in the past."
Bush's latest public relations offensive has been centred on convincing Americans that Iraq has not been a dangerous diversion from hunting down terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and crushing the Taliban in Afghanistan, where Canadians have been dying in combat.
Former Democratic president Bill Clinton defended his own record on the search for bin Laden since the attack on the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000.
"We contracted with people to kill him," Clinton told Fox News on Sunday. "I got closer to killing him than anybody's gotten since."
"That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try - they did not try."
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