The National Intelligence Estimate that was released today—titled "The Terrorist Threat to the Homeland"—amounts to a devastating critique of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq, Iran, and the terrorist threat itself.
Its main point is that the threat—after having greatly receded over the past five years—is back in full force. Al-Qaida has "protected or regenerated key elements" of its ability to attack the United States. It has a "safe haven" in Pakistan. Its "top leadership" and "operational lieutenants" are intact. It is cooperating more with "regional terrorist groups."
As a result, the report concludes, "the U.S. Homeland will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years" and is, even now, "in a heightened threat environment."
This is bad enough news for President Bush, who has tried to bank support for his policies on the claim that the terrorist threat has diminished.
Worse news still is the report's further observation—never stated explicitly but clear nonetheless—that the threat has re-emerged as a result of the war in Iraq.
.......
It's worth recalling that, back in the spring of 2003, as the war was getting under way, Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense (and one of the war's outspoken architects), told Vanity Fair that one reason to invade Iraq was to allow U.S. troops to leave Saudi Arabia. The presence of "infidel" soldiers on holy soil had been "a huge recruiting device for al-Qaida," Wolfowitz said. (Osama Bin Laden had publicly cited their presence as a rationale for the attack on the World Trade Center.) Yet the troops couldn't safely leave Saudi Arabia as long as Saddam Hussein was still in Iraq. Hence, Saddam had to be removed first. (Though Wolfowitz didn't say so, another element of the plan was to relocate the U.S. bases from Saudi Arabia to the new, presumably pro-Western Iraq.)
http://www.slate.com/id/2170564/
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