Confirming The Obvious: Iraq War Made World Less Safe

Another Iraq headline that all Democrats should be using to highlight the war's failures-

NY Times: Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat

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...

This outcome was, of course, obvious to those who tried to speak out against this war before the President and his party hoodwinked the country into it (reread Al Gore's Sept. '02 speech to the Commonwealth Club, and this incredibly prescient report from the CATO Institute from August of '02, as but two of many examples). We were labeled unpatriotic, or worse, for our concerns.

More warnings have been flowing from critics as the war has progressed (and as our soldiers came home in caskets- hidden by the government, as our treasury was depleted, and our credibility destroyed), and only recently are falling on something other than deaf ears.

That we need to start bringing this war to a close goes without saying... but what cannot be said enough is that it never should have been started in the first place. It wasn't a good idea that went bad- it was always an unnecessary and immoral preemptive action. And while the past cannot be changed, we still have an obligation to hold our leaders accountable for the decision(s) they made. The President continues to lie to the American people about how this war began, he wants to stay the course, he wants to expand his war into Iran and elsewhere. We need a new Congress to check this President, we need accountability. I hope the path to that will begin in November.

I also recommend this Daily Kos post which sums up well the impact this war has had.

(I also want to note how much I am looking forward to Frank Rich's new book- 'The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina'- in which Mr. Rich breaks down the marketing campaign used to sell the war and the administration's embrace of 'truthiness' in general. Sounds like a must-read.)