When the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003 many people predicted that the invasion would cause more harm than good. This was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. There had better be a damned good reason for this, people said, because we have already sent troops to Afghanistan. The Bush administration sold the war by declaring that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction and that in a post-9/11 world we could not afford the possibility that Saddam would forge an alliance with bin Ladin. Indeed, many war-mongers said, Saddam already had a relationship with bin Ladin and war with Iraq is a necessary way to reduce the threat of terror.

We know through congressional and other investigations that all the justifications for the Iraq War were false and strong evidence suggests that the Bush administration actively misled the American public about the most important policy decision that a President can make: the decision whether to go to war.

War patriots called the war critics unpatriotic in denouncing the war in Iraq. It's tough to fight back rhetorically when people say that you are pro-Saddam and that indecision on these issues will come back to haunt us. But the critics were right. Yesterday's New York Times reported on the front page the sad reality that the Iraq War has made the terror threat even more ominous.

This is serious. We went to war for pretextual reasons and not only killed thousands of American soldiers and God knows how many Iraqis, but the war has actually made the terror threat worse. This story is one of this "holy shit" moments, like when you realize on a hot day that your car is overheating on the highway and there's no antifreeze in the trunk, or that the condom broke or that a cop is pulling you over and you had too much to drink. There is no turning back. That's the problem with war. Unintended consequences cannot be ignored, unless you are a war-monger who loves war and violence and you want to flex your muscles to a world that will fight back and make you pay.

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat

By Mark Mazzetti
The New York Times
24 September 2006

Washington - 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.

An opening section of the report, "Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement," cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report "says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," said one American intelligence official.

. . .

National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.

. . .

Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, said that the White House "played no role in drafting or reviewing the judgments expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism." The estimate's judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.

Documents released by the White House timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the successes that the United States had made in dismantling the top tier of Al Qaeda.

"Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe," concludes one, a report titled "9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges." "We have done much to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism."

That document makes only passing mention of the impact the Iraq war has had on the global jihad movement. "The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry," it states.

The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, "exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies."

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment, based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing jihad movement and says that "Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack."

. . .

The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of "self-generating" cells inspired by Al Qaeda's leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.