Iraq, Terror, and Reality
A few weeks ago an intelligence report from April was leaked to the New York Times. It was entitled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” and was what is known as an NIE (national intelligence estimate). This represents the consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, and was a great embarrassment to the government. A good article.
The Report concludes in part that the war in Iraq is fuelling the spread of global Jiihad. Which is far from the picture the Bush administration desires to present, especially with upcoming elections. After several attempts at dismissing these conclusions Bush on Sep. 26 caved into pressure and released the full document.
This shouldn’t have surprised anyone, the war in Iraq promptly and openly brought about a massive surge in anti-american sentiment. It seems inconceivable that this would not have be represented in higher recruitment by global terrorist organizations, and although recruitment figures are of course not easy to obtain it has long been known that the war is being used as a recruitment tactic.
The administration has sought to play down these facts for a long time, there is enough opposition to the war based on pre-war untruths, causalties, cost and it being an unecessary diversion without this.
Another unpopular comment was this:
Twelve million people voted last December. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma, because there is — my point is, there is a strong will for democracy.
Now that it is clear the war not only was a diversion but counterproductive to the defeat of Al-Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations it will be interesting to see what develops. It is hard to believe it fail to hurt the republicans, especially in light of other scandals, in the upcoming election, but perhaps I overestimate other voters.
At least all can take heart that American intelligence agencies now realize that the actions and reputation of the country are important to why so many people hate it, and fight it. A lack of such understanding is in large part what lead to the situation that now exists in the first place.
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Edo River here, aka “self-hating American”. Naw, shucks, ya’ll oughta know me better than that. I just love Sawyer character on the ABC TV program series LOST. If you haven’t seen the first season, I really recommend watching 2 episodes, any two.
So, America, probably, has done a great service to the ME region, in the long run. It may be that it will unite the countries into a regional cooperative similar to the European Union,….yeah, right Waaaaaaaaaaaaay down the road, in the time of our great grandchildren. the American admin was, in my not so humble opinion, like a kid who watched his father through the window do surgery in an ER department of a hospital. So one day this kid believed he and his 2 older overweight buddies could do the same thing. It looked so easy…..
Sigh, and again Sigh……we are all members of one kind, we are all citizens of one country, waves of one sea, leaves of one branch….but its tough to believe, probably for someone who can tell others what to do, and when to do it.
good night
I have no clue what any of that has to do with anything. It seems so……random.