Iraq has fuelled terror threat, US intelligence warns

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1747150.ece


....

But the findings could scarcely have come at a more delicate time,
weeks before mid-term congressional elections in which Mr Bush's
claim to have made the country safer will be a central theme. They
also contradict Mr Bush's recent assertions, on the fifth anniversary
of the 11 September attacks, that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
had been vital to win the "war on terror". Instead the document, the
gist of which appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post
yesterday, makes clear that if Iraq has turned into the "central front"
in that war, as the President insists, that front is largely of the
administration's making.

The conflict, in which almost 2,700 US troops and nearly 50,000
Iraqis have died, has helped inspire a spread of radical Islamic
ideology around the globe, it says. While al-Q'aida itself may
have been weakened since 2001, the terrorist movement had mutated
into a new breed of "self-generating" groups inspired by Osama
bin Laden, but with no direct structural links to his organisation.

The report warns that militants who had taken part in the anti-US
fight in Iraq could go back to their own countries "exacerbating
domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies".

Iraq has fuelled terror threat, US intelligence warns

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1747150.ece


....

But the findings could scarcely have come at a more delicate time,
weeks before mid-term congressional elections in which Mr Bush's
claim to have made the country safer will be a central theme. They
also contradict Mr Bush's recent assertions, on the fifth anniversary
of the 11 September attacks, that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
had been vital to win the "war on terror". Instead the document, the
gist of which appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post
yesterday, makes clear that if Iraq has turned into the "central front"
in that war, as the President insists, that front is largely of the
administration's making.

The conflict, in which almost 2,700 US troops and nearly 50,000
Iraqis have died, has helped inspire a spread of radical Islamic
ideology around the globe, it says. While al-Q'aida itself may
have been weakened since 2001, the terrorist movement had mutated
into a new breed of "self-generating" groups inspired by Osama
bin Laden, but with no direct structural links to his organisation.

The report warns that militants who had taken part in the anti-US
fight in Iraq could go back to their own countries "exacerbating
domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies".