A new CIA report begins to answer the key question regarding the Iraq war: are we producing terrorists faster than we can kill them? The answer ain't good.
According to the classified CIA report, the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
“The assessment, completed last month and circulated among government agencies, was described in recent days by several Congressional and intelligence officials,” Doug Jehl wrote in The New York Times. “The officials said it made clear that the war was likely to produce a dangerous legacy by dispersing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict.”
The report says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of deadly skills, from car bombings and assassinations to tightly coordinated conventional attacks on police and military targets. If and when the insurgency ends, Islamic militants are likely to disperse as highly organized battle-hardened combatants capable of operating throughout the Arab-speaking world and in other regions including Europe.
Vice President Dick Cheney has recently argued that the insurgency is in its last throes, despite reports that the guerrillas have grown more sophisticated and more deadly. [Editor & Publisher]
And here, also from E&P, is McClellan's absolutely incredible answer to a question on how concerned the administration is about these developments at Wednesday's presser:
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, let me mention a couple things. As the President has said for some time now, Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism {overused talkingpoint}. Wherever you stood before the decision to go into Iraq, I think we can all recognize that the terrorists have made it a central front in the war on terrorism {repeated overused talking point}. That's why, as the President said earlier today, we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq so that we don't have to fight them here at home {ridiculously overused talking point}. And that's where things are. And that's why the terrorists understand how high the stakes are ...
Unbelievable. The White House hasn't changed a single word in its talking points in two-and-a-half years -- they remain the same no matter what is happening on the ground in Iraq, just as the administration's team of General Westmorelands continue to insist that the insurgency will fizzle any minute, no matter what is happening on the ground in Iraq (hence, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel's assertion that the White House is untethered to reality):
Bush on June 18: "We will fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here"
" Our men and women in uniform are fighting terrorists in Iraq, so we do not have to face them here at home." (Bush's 2005 State of the Union Address)
"We're still on the offense here in this country. We're chasing down these killers overseas so we don't have to face them here at home ... We're making good progress."Bush quoted in a pre-election Fox News story in September 2004
"Our military is confronting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places so our people will not have to confront terrorist violence in New York or St. Louis or Los Angeles." George W. Bush in a speech to the American Legion National Convention August 26, 2003
What's even more incredible, is that the Bush minions on talk radio, Fox News and the Freepersphere are willing to suspend rationality, free thought and just plain common sense to repeat these talking points to their listeners and readers -- no matter how absurd those claims now sound in light of CIA and other analyses. (don't miss the Voice of America report from last week citing "experts" who say the Iraq war has actually reduced the terror threat... it's precious.)
It's worth noting that the CIA delivered almost the same assessment of Iraq's prospects in January, which indicates that elections or none, not much has improved in that country, despite the heroic efforts of U.S. troops (with some help from the Iraqi police and soldiers, when they're not getting blown up...)
So what have we learned here? The CIA under Bush's appointed man, Porter Goss, believes that we're churning out international terrorists in Iraq like so many Skittles from the Skittle factory, all trained up and ready for export around the world, and the White House's response is that apparently America is not in or of the world, because we can be assured we won't have to fight them here...?
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
