US: The war in Iraq has made the threat of global terrorism worse, according to a study by 16 US intelligence agencies, which was reported in a number of US newspapers yesterday.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) says the war has helped to create a new generation of radical Islamists and boosted recruitment to terrorist organisations.
The 30-page document, based on raw intelligence from all US intelligence agencies, concludes that the US-led invasion of Iraq and the insurgency that followed it are the leading inspiration for new Islamist terrorist networks that are united only by their opposition to the US.
"It paints a fairly stark picture of what we all know, and that this is a movement that is spreading and gaining momentum around the world. Things like the Iraq war have given the terrorists recruiting tools and places to ply their trade and a training ground," one official who has seen the document told the New York Times.
The Bush administration used the last NIE in 2002 to make the case for war in Iraq, pointing to the assessment's claims that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was on course to develop nuclear weapons, claims which later proved to be untrue.
Democrats yesterday seized on the latest NIE as evidence that the Bush administration had failed to make the US safer since September 11th, 2001, and to call for a change of course in Iraq.
"This intelligence document should put the final nail in the coffin for President Bush's phoney argument about the Iraq war. Despite what President Bush says, the intelligence community has reported the plain truth - the misguided war in Iraq has 'metastasised and spread' terrorism like cancer around the world," said Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy, a Democrat.
Republican senator Mitch McConnell said the war in Iraq had prevented further attacks on US soil. "Attacks here at home stopped when we started fighting al-Qaeda where they live, rather than responding after they hit," Mr McConnell said.
Another Republican senator, judiciary committee chairman Arlen Specter, said he was concerned about the intelligence estimate and called for new thinking on the US presence in Iraq.
"I think there is a much more fundamental issue how we respond. And that is what we do with the Iraq war itself. That's the focal point for inspiring more radical Islam fundamentalism, and that's a problem that nobody seems to have an answer to," he said.
The NIE's conclusion that the Iraq war has fuelled terrorism directly contradicts statements by President Bush, most recently on the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
"The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad," the president said.