Negroponte Stock Photo

Some critics of the war in Iraq have speculated that the war has put Americans in more danger, but now a recent “National Intelligence Estimate” (NIE) completed in April says the war has made things worse spreading radical Islamic jihadist ideology around the world. The assessment, representing a consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, was intended to be classified but anonymous officials have now spoken to the press concerning the document.

Reports first appeared in the New York Times but later appeared in the Washington Post. The NIE report titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States”, says that war has helped create a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the September 11th attacks.

The Bush Administration has denied that the war in Iraq has put Americans in more jeopardy claiming it is better to fight the enemy over there rather than here. Fearing criticism against the Administration after this new disclosure, White House spokesman Peter Watkins said “"The New York Times' characterization of the NIE is not representative of the complete document. Their (the terrorist) hatred for freedom and liberty did not develop overnight; those seeds were planted decades ago. Instead of waiting while they plot and plan attacks to kill innocent Americans, the United States has taken the initiative to fight back."

It appears neither Congress nor the White House wanted the American people to know just how bad things were becoming. The Times said that the new classified 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.”

The Times interviewed more than a dozen government officials and outside experts for their article. All of those interviewed, including critics and supporters of the President, spoke anonymously because the document was classified. They were all involved in the creation of the document or had seen the assessment. Since the documents were classified, they all spoke in broad terms rather than specifics. Comment on this Article at our Forum

National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents in the intelligence community. They are approved by the director of intelligence, John D. Negroponte, and their conclusions are based on a collection of raw intelligence from various spy agencies.

According to the Times, there has been tension for two years between the Bush administration and American spy agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Officials have said that the White House has consistently presented a “more optimistic picture” of the situation in Iraq than is justified by intelligence reports from the field.

British Intelligence has also said that the terror threat is growing. A panel in July of 2005 after the London bombings, reported that Britain’s domestic and international intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, “emphasized to the committee the growing scale of the Islamist terrorist threat.”

The Washington Post says the NIE indicates that “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.”

The Post says the report points towards the war in Iraq as the central motivating inspiration for “new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda.”

The Washington Posts’ assessment appears to be even direr than the New York Times. They say that rather than contributing to the evidential victory in the global war on terrorism, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position.

There may not be a military solution to the war on terrorism, according to the Post. They report that the NIE says that the battlefronts are far more impenetrable and difficult, if not impossible to “combat with the standard tools of warfare.”

Although the report does suggest that the U.S. has seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qaeda and disrupted its ability to plan and direct major operations, radical Islamic networks have spread further and decentralized. The new cells are developing independently of any central structure.

The war in Iraq has singled out Americans as the enemy. The Post says that their interviews have indicated that the war has promoted the spread of radical Islam by providing a focal point, “with constant reinforcement of an anti-American message for disaffected Muslims.”

Both President Bush and Ossama Bin Laden have described the war in Iraq as the “central front” in their global wars. Iraq has become the new training ground for terrorists. Many terrorists are learning bomb making techniques and other strategies in the Iraqi training ground.

A former deputy under Negroponte and now CIA director, Michael V. Hayden, believes that if current trends continue, "threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide."

These assessments have not always been right. Back in 2002 on NIE concluded that Iraq had "continued its weapons of mass destruction [WMD] programs," possessed stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and "probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade." Some people still claim this report was correct and that Saddam moved his WMD to Syria.

The National Intelligence Council (NIC) assessment in 2003 was correct in determining that the aftermath of a change in government in Iraq could lead to a long-term internal conflict. A July 2004 NIE outlined a range of possible outcomes to the increasingly difficult security situation there, with the best prospect a government with only tenuous control and the worst a civil war.

One counterterrorism official told the Washington Post that a really big hole in U.S. strategy involves our “focus on the terrorists and very little on how they are created. If you looked at all the resources of the U.S. government, we spent 85, 90 percent on current terrorists, not on how people are radicalized." Comment on this Article at our Forum

By Dan Wilson
Best Syndication Staff Writer

Washington Post Article

New York Times Article