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To: HG who wrote (433)	9/24/2006 12:39:10 PM
From: HG	Respond to of 536

Iraq war created a terrorist flood, American spymasters warn Bush Paul Harris in Washington and Peter Beaumont in Baghdad Sunday September 24, 2006 The Observer America's spy agencies have concluded that the invasion of Iraq has created a flood of new Islamic terrorists and increased the danger to US interests to a higher level than at any time since the 9/11 attacks. This grim assessment is provided in a classified intelligence document called the National Intelligence Estimate, large parts of which have been leaked to the New York Times. The report is the largest US intelligence survey of the global terror threat carried out since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Its conclusion will surprise few critics of the Iraq war or US policy against terrorism. It is, however, a sharp contrast to the message often coming out of the White House and provides a far more harrowing assessment of terrorism than a congressional report published last week. The White House and senior Republicans often say their tough line has made America safer over the past five years. This report indicates that America's spymasters disagree with that opinion, and its findings could embarrass President George Bush in the run-up to November's crucial midterm elections. The study represents a consensus opinion of 16 different intelligence organisations. Entitled 'Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States', it was completed last April. Its stark warning is that the threat from Islamic terror groups and their jihadi philosophy has spread across the world. The New York Times quoted one intelligence official as saying the report describes the invasion and subsequent conflict in Iraq as one of the major factors behind this spread. It says the threat from radical Islam does not now come from a tight-knit core of al-Qaeda terrorists commanded from a central organisation or group of leaders, such as those that carried out the 9/11 attacks. Instead jihadi ideas have spread to create a new class of terrorists who are 'self generating' and can create terror cells capable of carrying out an attack without much outside help.