Raw Story:
Spy agencies say that the Iraq war has worsened the threat of terrorism, according to a front page article in Sunday's New York Times.
"A stark assessment of terrorism trends by U.S. intelligence agencies has found that the U.S. 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," reports Mark Mazzetti.
"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 who were involved in preparing the assessment or have read the final document," the article continues.
This goes along with the assessment given by retiring CIA Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, Dr. Emile A. Nakhleh:
..."We've lost a generation of goodwill in the Muslim world."
"The President's democratization and reform program for the Middle East has all but disappeared, except for official rhetoric," Nakhleh says, "That was the centerpiece of the President's policies for the region, and now no one is talking about it. We have lost credibility across the Islamic world regarding 'democracy' and 'representative government' and 'justice'... The Islamic world says 'you talk about human rights, but you're holding people without charging them.'"
"Because of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other abuses we have lost on the concepts of justice, fairness and the rule of law, and that's the heart of the American idea," Dr. Nakhleh tells us, "That's very serious, and that's where I see the danger in the years ahead."
You can't pretend to bring democracy to the Middle East and expect people there to believe it. You can't roll tanks down the street and bomb the living shit out of everything, you can't disappear people and torture them, you can't rape them and murder them and steal their nation's resources and expect everyone to be fine with it.
We've managed to create one of the rarest of wars - a civil war/rebellion. All sides are rebelling against the US and the fighting amongst themselves is just for dominance once we leave. All sides in this civil war agree on one thing -- the US is their enemy.
Good job, George and Rummie and Dick and Wolfie, etc. In WWII -- which you want us all to believe this is -- there was an acronym, FUBAR. It means 'Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.' This war is FUBAR.
You've managed to take an awful place, Saddam's Iraq, and make it even worse. That doesn't just take ignorance and idiocy, a lack of planning and foresight, a total disregard for reality and an unshakeable faith in your own utopian daydreams, that takes real talent.
And you boys are talented at this FUBAR art -- in direct proportion to how much you suck at this worldbuilding crap you want to do.
Another WWII acronym comes to mind, since it describes everything you neocon dreamers touch, from Iraq to Katrina to Afghanistan. It's SNAFU - 'Situation Normal: All Fucked Up'. SNAFU is this administration's default setting.
Tags: news politics war Iraq Bush Rumsfeld neocon disaster morons terrorism crime scandal CIA
