The National Intelligence Estimate concludes that the Iraq War has spawned a new generation of terrorists.
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
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.
One more quick point of importance. On August 21st, 1998 in a Wahington Post Article, this was written:
And urge him on, a view supported bluntly by House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.). "If anything, this was somewhat overdue, and I'm not talking days, but months and years. This needs to be the first punch we land. We need to land more," Goss added, warning that "now that we have struck back, it is sure to inflame them even more. All Americans need to understand that."
Here is the whole article from WP
Why is everyone acting surprised about this report? Doesn't everyone know when you disturb a bees nest, they get pissed and attack? They swarm?
Are the left wingers simply "acting" surprised in the hopes that they can deflect issues in time for the elections? More political game playing, with our lives at stake.
No one that lives in the world of reality can honestly say they expect a war, any war, to be bloodless or easy.
The question I ask myself, that I do not see many other people asking, is where would we be if we hadn’t gone to war on terror?
As I have previously said about Iraq, we know they had used chemical warfare on their own people, what would have stopped them from handing those over to a terrorist group, after they tested it enough on their people,? What if all those planes on 9/11 had been carrying anthrax or a nerve gas? These are very real possibilities, things that I have no doubt would have occured eventually. Would we have been better off waiting until they did such a thing and then taking care of the problem?
How much were we supposed to take before we woke up and said enough? Are people truly naive enough to believe that there would be no terrorists? Do people truly think that there were no terrorists before 9/11 or our war on Iraq? That they wouldn't have grown into even bigger numbers had we done nothing?
So, lets take a minute here to ask ourselves just that question.... where would we be if we hadn't gone into Iraq?
Iraq managed to produce anthrax, aflatoxin, botulinum toxin, gas gangrene, ricin, and wheat smut, and was also known to be working on cholera, mycotoxins, shigellosis, and viruses (including camelpox, infectious hemorrhaghic conjunctivitis and rotavirus) as well as genetic engineering. There are suspicions that Iraq was also working on smallpox. Shown here
Iraq moved up to producing the nerve gases sarin (GB) and tabun (GA) in 1984. These gases are highly toxic compounds that can penetrate the body either through contact with skin or eyes, or by inhalation. Just a few droplets will kill within minutes if inhaled or within hours if absorbed through the skin. The initial effects depend on the amount of contact with the agent and are almost immediate. Chemical nerve agents tend to have little or no incubation or latent period in the body. These agents act by attacking the central nervous system, causing rapid paralysis, respiratory failure and death by asphyxiation. More about that here
So, knowing that in the land of reality that there were terrorists before our war on Iraq, and taking the next logical step, knowing that any state that sponsors terrorism "might" supply a terrorist group (any terrorist group) with the aforementioned weapons..... where does that leave us?
Leaves us living day to day wondering where the next plane would hit, whether it had anthrax or any other chemical weapons on it, which building would be bombed next, wondering if the next bomb would be a dirty bomb.
Should we have waited for Saddam to have killed thousands of more people from his country with his experiments on his quest to perfect his biological and chemical weapons, the whole time ignoring the UN resolutions, hindering the inspectors and generally thumbing his nose at the world?
Should we have waited a little longer until he gave those weapons, once perfected, to a group of terrorists to use against the US and our allies?
Bush critics (and I have been known to disagree with Bush also) say we shouldn't have gone to war in Iraq? OK, what should we have done? What better ideas do they have? What exactly would they have done differently?
It is very easy to backseat drive, to armchair quarterback, to use hindsight to "say" this could have been done better. But going on the knowledge that we were given by our "intelligence" (same intelligence that the article above is using, by the way) what exactly were we supposed to do?
I might not agree with every decision made by this administration, but I stand by those decisions and look forward, not backwards, to what we can do NOW to assure victory. To protect ourselves.
Thinking about where we would be at now if we hadn't gone to Iraq, scares me much more than where we stand now.
