WASHINGTON: The growth of global terrorism is to be blamed upon the US-led war in Iraq, according to a highly classified intelligence report.
The US and its allies in the war in Iraq have angered the Muslim world, fuelling terrorism, the secret document said. Sections from the paper were leaked to the New York Times which published them in an article yesterday. The report has only amplified a debate that had been going on quietly across the world.
The still secret document titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” is the first official assessment of the consequence of the invasion of Iraq. More than a dozen investigation agencies contributed to the paper. Supporters of President Bush have said the leak was very likely a pre-election stunt by the opposition.
Opening chapters in the classified paper focus on the Iraq war and said the jihadist ideology and movement gained momentum from reports of war crimes and atrocities committed by US troops in the Islamic nation. President Bush has often had to defend his position on the Iraq issue after US troops were unable to find any weapons of mass destruction that Bush had warned ally nations about.
The world was told that the Saddam Hussein government had violated a UN Security Council Resolution by developing weapons for chemical, biological and nuclear warfare; the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent war was thus justified by the US, the UK, South Korea, Australia and other nations.
Since then, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the US occupation of Iraq was a crucial part of the “war on global terrorism”.
The report also said that radical Islamism had grown despite the disruption of the terrorist group al-Qaeda, believed to be on the run since the US defeated Taliban forces in Afghanistan in 2001.
The Iraq war had spawned smaller “self-generating” cells that have no direct connection to the group or to Osama bin Laden. Members of such cells were very likely inspired by Laden as also by reports of atrocities and torture of Islamic prisoners, the intelligence report said.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said the US Homeland security was compromised because of "President Bush's repeated missteps in Iraq and his stubborn refusal to change course”.
