Bill Clinton's legacy

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

GW's legacy:

ET. Let's understand something here. This is a war we're in, whether fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, or the streets of New York.

kaydee, let's understand something else here. We're at war in Iraq for only one reason: W lied this country into this needless, misguided adventure. Our being in Iraq has increased, not decreased the odds of us having to fight in the streets of NYC. That is the unanimous assessment by all US intelligence services of the impact of Bush's war of choice on the nation's security situation. Let's not forget that.

[GaryC 7]

GW's legacy:

ET. Let's understand something here. This is a war we're in, whether fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, or the streets of New York.

kaydee, let's understand something else here. We're at war in Iraq for only one reason: W lied this country into this needless, misguided adventure. Our being in Iraq has increased, not decreased the odds of us having to fight in the streets of NYC. That is the unanimous assessment by all US intelligence services of the impact of Bush's war of choice on the nation's security situation. Let's not forget that.

Link to that BS please.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Our being in Iraq has increased, not decreased the odds of us having to fight in the streets of NYC. That is the unanimous assessment by all US intelligence services of the impact of Bush's war of choice on the nation's security situation. Let's not forget that.

Link to that BS please.

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — 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.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document. The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.

Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate said it avoided specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would once again strike on United States soil. The relationship between the Iraq war and terrorism, and the question of whether the United States is safer, have been subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003.

National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.

Analysts began working on the estimate in 2004, but it was not finalized until this year. Part of the reason was that some government officials were unhappy with the structure and focus of earlier versions of the document, according to officials involved in the discussion.

Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes.

Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, said the White House “played no role in drafting or reviewing the judgments expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism.” The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.

Documents released by the White House timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the successes that the United States had made in dismantling the top tier of Al Qaeda.

“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe,” concludes one, a report titled “9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges.” “We have done much to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism.”

That document makes only passing mention of the impact the Iraq war has had on the global jihad movement. “The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry,” it states.

The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies.”

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment, based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing jihad movement and says, “Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack.”

The new National Intelligence Estimate was overseen by David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, who commissioned it in 2004 after he took up his post at the National Intelligence Council. Mr. Low declined to be interviewed for this article.

The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.

It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.

In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership.

But the new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.

In recent months, some senior American intelligence officials have offered glimpses into the estimate’s conclusions in public speeches.

“New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, during a speech in San Antonio in April, the month that the new estimate was completed. “If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide,” said the general, who was then Mr. Negroponte’s top deputy and is now director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

For more than two years, there has been tension between the Bush administration and American spy agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Some intelligence officials have said the White House has consistently presented a more optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than justified by intelligence reports from the field.

Spy agencies usually produce several national intelligence estimates each year on a variety of subjects. The most controversial of these in recent years was an October 2002 document assessing Iraq’s illicit weapons programs. Several government investigations have discredited that report, and the intelligence community is overhauling how it analyzes data, largely as a result of those investigations.

The broad judgments of the new intelligence estimate are consistent with assessments of global terrorist threats by American allies and independent terrorism experts.

The panel investigating the London terrorist bombings of July 2005 reported in May that the leaders of Britain’s domestic and international intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, “emphasized to the committee the growing scale of the Islamist terrorist threat.”

More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of “D+” to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that “there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.”

[one...two...tree 2,762]

GW's legacy:

ET. Let's understand something here. This is a war we're in, whether fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, or the streets of New York.

Perhaps you need proof such as a few more thousand Americans killed as was the plan a couple of months ago in England; of course luckily the plan was thwarted by the British.

Now let's comment on your post. The IRAQ war, having been fought for 4 years, has less than 10% of the men we lost in the Vietnam war. You're post typifies the hysteria and unrealistic notions put forth every day by a leftist media, and a very left and liberal Democratic Party.

It lacks any perspective at all. I'm sure that you wish to convey to readers here that Americans are being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yes they are. But in far less numbers than your photo would suggest.

We've had less casualties in this war than in any war we've ever fought, period.

The nature of war is that soldiers die. Iraq is no Vietnam; trust me I lived through that war.

Bush's legacy will be that of the only U.S. President that understands that we ARE at war and no amount of ignoring that fact will make the bad guys go away.

The Democrats, in concert with a very left, liberal media, emboldened our enemies by portraying what is happening in Iraq as a conflict taking many, many U.S. lives and further acquiescing to their (the enemy) propaganda and terrorists war tactics.

Apparently, we lose another war. Iran and Korea are paying close attention to what’s happening.

Do you just regurgitate what you hear from people like Hannity and Savage? Seriously, do you actually read any dissenting or opposing arguments against Bush's policies from conservative publications without suspecting it is some kind of liberal conspiracy?

No, like I said in these forums before. I'm a Viet Vet, now an aerospace engineer of 30+ years and defense contractor that consults to the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force.

I travel to the middle east on average 5 times a year; accumulative time "in country" 3~6 months/year.

I don't need to "regurgitate" anything as I have first hand, eyeball experience.

And you?

So where do you get your news sources from? Whose political commentary are you listening to? I'm curious. Be honest.

Like I said, I'm "there" most of the time so I don't need to rely on news sources to form my opinions.

Let's say that I don't peruse all the leftist extremist sites on the web and endlessly post copies of articles that support my leftist and very absurd liberal agenda (if I had one of course)....

I can't do battle with all you liberals in these forums because you simply have too many misconceptions and too much ignorance concerning this subject and it would take all my time rebutting you guys.

It’s clear to me that you simply read, and unfortunately for this country, subscribe to the reports and ideas relating to a war that the very people reporting about it do not understand.

Most are liberals and have no Military experience themselves.

Fortunately for us we didn't have satellite and television in WW2. We'd all be speaking German right now........

Oh come on now...you're not being honest. Just say what news sources you rely on for information.

Ever read The American Conservative? Cato Institute?

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

"THE war in Iraq has “made the overall terrorism problem worse.” Many Islamist extremists consider it to be the first front of a total war against Islam. It has galvanised jihadists, becoming their “cause célèbre”, and it has contributed directly to increasing recruitment of violent Islamist terrorists. The terrorist threat is now more acute than it was before the September 11th attacks on the United States.

These blunt conclusions, leaked last week to the New York Times and the Washington Post, are part of a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on global terrorism trends. Such estimates are the consensus opinion of 16 government agencies, including the CIA, FBI, State Department and all four branches of the armed forces. They are hard to dismiss by any but the wilfully dim-sighted. “Stating the obvious”, one leaker said. But it has never been obvious to the Bush administration."

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displays...y_id=E1_SJSDJQS

Okay, so this is a regurgitated article from the Economist (not exactly part of the "far left media"), but I'm assuming that the report accurate portrays the views of those in bold, who aren't exactly liberals who are probably more familar with the reality of the situation in Iraq more than anyone here through firsthand experience.

[rebeccajo 14]

Do you know what I've never understood about this war on terrorism?

Why isn't it being fought by the intelligence community rather than our men?

I'm serious. Maybe it's a weird opinion but it's something I've always wondered about.

It just seems to me that if you want to go after something that goes bump in the night, you go after it underground so that the playing field is level.....

[mybackpages 0]

Life is cheap, except when its our own.

Ever noticed how the hundreds / thousands of deaths of members of 3rd world countries make barely a footnote in a news report, "a by the way" type thing - but half a dozen dead US troops make front page news.

"Liberal Media" eh?

They are not even counted as deaths- it's "collateral damage"

[kaydee457 13]

GW's legacy:

ET. Let's understand something here. This is a war we're in, whether fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, or the streets of New York.

kaydee, let's understand something else here. We're at war in Iraq for only one reason: W lied this country into this needless, misguided adventure. Our being in Iraq has increased, not decreased the odds of us having to fight in the streets of NYC. That is the unanimous assessment by all US intelligence services of the impact of Bush's war of choice on the nation's security situation. Let's not forget that.

You, and I know that's nonsense. U.S. Presidents don't "lie" on such a scale; unless of course you're one of those conspiracy nuts that believe that everyone in Government is corrupt and untruthful. I don't thisk you are.

There were a lot of Democrats standing by our President arguing to go to war against U.N opinion given the best evidence we had at the time.

Since then, pudits like yourself have spun that "best evidence" into a U.S. President that is a liar and intentionally went to war.

That's absurd. Too many "checks and balances".....

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Do you know what I've never understood about this war on terrorism?

Why isn't it being fought by the intelligence community rather than our men?

Good question. We used to do all of our anti-terrorism stuff that way.

Although that didn't work exactly either - The Bay of Pigs was a CIA engineered disaster.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Do you know what I've never understood about this war on terrorism?

Why isn't it being fought by the intelligence community rather than our men?

The military aspect is the aspect we see on TV every day. That doesn't mean the CIA isn't doing what it does too. They're going after their money and that's entirely an intelligence/LE operation.

[rebeccajo 14]

Do you know what I've never understood about this war on terrorism?

Why isn't it being fought by the intelligence community rather than our men?

The military aspect is the aspect we see on TV every day. That doesn't mean the CIA isn't doing what it does too. They're going after their money and that's entirely an intelligence/LE operation.

Yeah, I'm sure they are on the job. But is going after 'their' money what they'd be best at? Have I been reading too much Tom Clancy?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Have I been reading too much Tom Clancy?

No such thing as too much Tom Clancy

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Have I been reading too much Tom Clancy?

No such thing as too much Tom Clancy

There is such a thing as too much Clancy Brown.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Do you know what I've never understood about this war on terrorism?

Why isn't it being fought by the intelligence community rather than our men?

I'm serious. Maybe it's a weird opinion but it's something I've always wondered about.

It just seems to me that if you want to go after something that goes bump in the night, you go after it underground so that the playing field is level.....

exactly!

[mybackpages 0]

You, and I know that's nonsense. U.S. Presidents don't "lie" on such a scale; unless of course you're one of those conspiracy nuts that believe that everyone in Government is corrupt and untruthful. I don't thisk you are.

So let's not use the word "lie". Bush, like any president, is suppose to make a decison based on the evidence in front of him. The problem with foreign policy decisions is that most of the evidence is information is is not known for a fact. It is interpreted intelligence.

In the days of the drum beat to war- CIA officers were torn over the meaning of the intelligence i nregards to the presence of WMD in Iraq. The closest advisors to the President were of the school of thought that Saddam needed to go. If the evidence was manipulated, misinterpretated or falsely promoted to achieve an objective outside the scope of what was being told to the country- is that a lie? If not, it's just a bad as one.