NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE LEAK:
WAR IN IRAQ FUELS GLOBAL TERRORISM

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Intelligence report fuels debate on terror threat

Their criticisms came in a collection of statements sent to reporters today amid the disclosure of a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded the war has helped create a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The report was completed in April and represented a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government, according to an intelligence official. The official, confirming accounts first published in Sunday's New York Times and Washington Post, spoke on condition of anonymity on Sunday because the report is classified.

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This was mind-numbingly obvious from the moment the Bush administration started their saber-rattling about Iraq, and countless individuals on the left, myself included, said so repeatedly at the time. Terrorism is an extremely complicated political problem, not an army or a monster that one can beat down with a stick in a metaphoric "war" on it, so the invasion of Iraq obviously never had anything to do with it. Despite the juvenile rhetoric about how "they hate our freedom," the so-called Islamofascists actually have legitimate grievances against the US, such as our support of the corrupt and brutal Saudi Royal Family, which is where we should have directed our anti-terror efforts in the first place. Instead, the neo-cons seized upon 9/11 in order to advance their plans for American global domination without even thinking about how it would simply add to terrorists' very reasonable motivations for terrorism.

Let me spell this out: outraging already angry Muslim populations by killing lots of Muslims only creates vast incentive for jihad against the US. Never mind the inherent immorality of war for a moment; the Iraq invasion was an extraordinarily bad idea from the get-go--it is incredibly counterproductive. Bush and his controllers took a bad situation and made it much, much worse, and we will certainly be cleaning up after their mess for decades to come.

How the fuck can anybody think that the Republicans have any idea what they're doing here, let alone somehow better than the Democrats on national security? This is truly one of the most surreal situations I've ever encountered.

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