January 15, 2005

President Bush's Iraq policy has received another heavy blow with a report by top intelligence advisers that the 2003 invasion and its aftermath have turned the country into a breeding ground for a new generation of worldwide Islamic terrorism. Post-Saddam Iraq has become "a magnet for international terrorist activity," said Robert Hutchings, director of the National Intelligence Council, the official research arm of the entire US intelligence community, as he presented Mapping the Global Future, the NIC's latest report on long-term global trends. The NIC warning is the second repudiation within a week of the Bush administration's rationale for the war. Two days ago, the White House quietly signalled it had ended the search for Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Since then - and especially during his 2004 re-election campaign - the President has portrayed Iraq as a key part of the global war on terror and insisted the US has been made safer by the overthrow of Saddam. But these claims have been demolished by the NIC. According to David Low, a senior NIC official, Iraq has been transformed into "a training and recruitment ground, and an opportunity [for terrorists] to enhance their technical skills". The likelihood now - even in the best case scenario where the upcoming Iraqi elections restore some stability to the country - is that foreign terrorists currently operating there will "go home, wherever home is", and disperse across the world as new threats to the US. [more] and [more]

Pictured above: US Losses - Photos Hidden By US News Media [more]