War Helps Recruit Terrorists?

From the Washington Post and the WMD Mailbag:

This will require some fisking...

The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials told Congress yesterday.

If they are so baffled, why are we listening to these people? If they are baffled, they don't know what they are talking about. They aren't baffled.

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

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

Let's break this down... Islamofascists are exploiting the war...what were they doing on 9/11? Having a picnic? No. They were exploiting the situation. That's what terrorists do.

No jihadist terrorists will be leaving Iraq at all, unless in a box, if the CIA does their job and the military continues to do theirs... We need intelligence in order to cut these guys, that's what the CIA is supposed to be doing, right? I suggest they do it.

On a day when the top half-dozen U.S. national security and intelligence officials went to Capitol Hill to talk about the continued determination of terrorists to strike the United States, their statements underscored the unintended consequences of the war in Iraq.

"The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss said in his first public testimony since taking over the CIA. Goss said Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist who has joined al Qaeda since the U.S. invasion, "hopes to establish a safe haven in Iraq" from which he could operate against Western nations and moderate Muslim governments.

If they weren't attacking Iraqi civilians and our military in Iraq, they would be attacking American civilians here at home. That's not a cause, it's a distraction. One that I am thankful for...if Islamofascists want to blow up their fellow Arabs, I say better them than us...but at some point, those folks are going to say enough is enough...I think they did that on Election Day. The terrorists' days are numbered...while I don't know what that number is, I know it is finite.

"Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment," Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate panel. "Overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia believe the U.S. has a negative policy toward the Arab world."

Admiral, with all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about. It isn't our policies that ticks these guys off, it's our freedom. The policy BS is a liberal cover for the truth. They hate us for who and what we are.

Overwhelming majorites in Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are getting their news from al-Jazeera...and that's if they are getting it at all. Most are getting their view of America from the mosques. Let's focus on reality here...

Jacoby said the Iraq insurgency has grown "in size and complexity over the past year" and is now mounting an average of 60 attacks per day, up from 25 last year. Attacks on Iraq's election day last month reached 300, he said, double the previous one-day high of 150, even though transportation was virtually locked down.

They were real effective too...60% of the population went out and voted. Think about that. 60% of the people living in a war zone went out and did their civic duty...we should be ashamed of our own voting record considering the only harship we might have to face is standing in line for awhile...at least nobody was threatening to blow us up while doing it.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee that he has trouble believing any of the estimates of the number of insurgents because it is so difficult to track them.

That's because the previous two idiots who testified aren't driving their agencies to do their jobs.

Rumsfeld said that the CIA and DIA had differing assessments at different times but that U.S. intelligence estimates of the insurgency are "considerably lower" than a recent Iraqi intelligence report of 40,000 hard-core insurgents and 200,000 part-time fighters. Rumsfeld told Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the committee's ranking Democrat, that he had copies of the CIA and DIA estimates but declined to disclose them in a public session because they are classified.

"My job in the government is not to be the principal intelligence officer and try to rationalize differences between the Iraqis, the CIA and the DIA," Rumsfeld testified. "I see these reports. Frankly, I don't have a lot of confidence in any of them."

Finally, a quote from somebody who makes sense.

After the hearing, Rumsfeld told reporters that he did not mean to be "dismissive" of the intelligence reports.

"People are doing the best that can be done, and the fact is that people disagree," he said. ". . . It's not clear to me that the number is the overriding important thing."

That's Rumsfeld for "I meant every word of it."

Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House panel that the extremists associated with al Qaeda and Zarqawi represent "a fairly small percentage of the total number of insurgents."

Sunni Arabs, dominated by former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, "comprise the core of the insurgency" and continue to provide "funds and guidance across family, tribal, religious and peer-group lines," Jacoby said.

That's nice...how about we get some actionable intelligence so we can kill these guys, eh?

There is a page two to this article, but I've seen enough...if you want, read the whole thing.....

Mark's Remarks

Matt is right on. The only reason the War on Terror could possibly be recruiting insurgents is through the complicity of the media. There are no reports on the thousands of schools and hospitals being rebuilt. There are no reports of power being restored to pre-war levels. There are none of these reports even though these things are happening. There are no reports about the relatively calm 16/18 of the Iraqi nation. Even though this is the percentage of provinces that are calm as opposed to full of insurgents.

The Mainstream Media, with its already noticeable bias against Bush and its constant handwringing over how EVIL(TM) America is, is now serving as a propaganda wing of al Queda, knowingly or unknowingly. We get bombarded with Abu Gharib, but we never hear about the torture chambers of Saddam or the tortures of Al Queda. We see the pictures of A.G. but heaven help us if we show 9/11 video to remind Americans of what we went through.

I am all for presenting the good and the bad, but there is no good being presented by the MSM or especially al-Jazeera.

Islamofascism Delenda Est!