Iraq and Terrorism

Porter Goss informs us that the insurgency in Iraq is fueling the international terror threat against us.

"The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries," he said.

Awhile back I argued that the war in Iraq is not a front in the larger "war on terror", at least not in the sense that many conservatives meant, in that the insurgency seems to be mostly home-grown, and the terrorists sneaking into Iraq seemed more intent on doing battle with our soldiers or overthrowing the Iraqi government then attempting major attacks against the United States itself. Nonetheless, Iraq has become the new training ground for terrorists, along with Chechnya, as Bosnia and Afghanistan were at one time. If in fact these terrorists who survive their encounters with the American and Iraqi militaries with hard-earned knowledge of how to carry out attacks are rushing home to begin planning on how to practice their tradecraft closer to our home, then we are considerably worse off then we were before the invasion. After the toppling of the Taliban, terrorists lacked any area in the world beyond Chechnya where they could gain experience and training from their cohorts; now, Iraq itself has become a much more effective training ground then Afghanistan ever was. It is of course bitterly ironic that one of the tossed-off justifications for the invasion, the threat of Iraq sponsored terrorism, has now manifested itself as a threat of experienced terrorists created in the forge of the insurgency bringing the war closer to us. In other words, we are now less safe then we were before the invasion...because of the invasion.

Doubtless there are conservatives who will say that this indicates our need to "stay the course" in Iraq. Sadly, the threat of Iraqi terrorism has become a self-fulfilled prophecy.