OP-ED; NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE

The Long, Hard Slog…

Donald Rumsfeld knew it all along, but he and his cohorts sent American and multinational soldiers into harm’s way anyway. He knew, when he wrote the now infamous memo, that we may be creating more terrorists than we are killing by invading Iraq. He knew that we would be in it for the long haul. He knew.

President Hosni Mubarrak of Egypt said the same thing when the US was building up for invasion: we will create 100 more bin Laden’s for every terrorist we kill.

But that did not stop the march to Baghdad, rather it emboldened and encouraged the cowboys of Washington. “Bring it on!” President Bush retorted.

Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and many, many other Republicans, snarling, baring their teeth, itching for a fight, echoed his sentiment.

So the new National Intelligence Estimate, portions of which were leaked in advance to the New York Times and Washington Post, must be sobering to the drunken glee at which the US government invaded Iraq. But it isn’t.

The National Intelligence Estimate is a document collected, produced, and analyzed by the 16 US intelligence agencies. Produced in April, it is the first complete assessment of global terrorism since the Iraq invasion three years ago.

According to officials involved in the drafting of the document, as cited by the New York Times, it was scrubbed multiple times, partially due to a prior structure and focus with which some government officials were unhappy. However, the unhappiness notwithstanding, the officials said that the language was not softened for political purposes.

The document, entitled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ says that the threat of global terrorism has increased greatly and spread further around the world, rather than receding, as public officials both advertised and asserted before, during, and since the Iraq invasion.

Dozens of anonymous sources, in the intelligence service and familiar with the final draft of the estimate, interviewed for an article for the New York Times, echoed the sentiment of the Estimate, without getting into the still highly classified details.

The report states that terror cells no longer operate on the directive of Osama bin-Laden; instead, they are independent, but still working for the same cause. The threat has adapted, but the US has not. “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want,” Secretary Rumsfeld once said. Interesting diction, considering the war in Iraq was a war of choice, and now has made the world less safe from terror.

Naturally, the damning indictment of the Iraq war has stirred strong response from both sides of the aisle. The White House released a ton of documents in response to the leak (read: “Friday night follies”) and the documents attest to the administration’s policies decimating the Qaeda leadership. But that is no longer the nature of the enemy.

House and Senate Republicans are also toeing the party line established by the Administration. “The difficulties faced by the US have emboldened terrorist groups,” the maverick-turned-party hack Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) acknowledged on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” He added that terrorists “did not need any motivation to attack us on Sept. 11.”

Democrats are ratcheting up the rhetoric, and to good effect. “Even capturing the remaining top Al Qaeda leadership isn’t going to prevent copycat cells, and it isn’t going to change a failed policy in Iraq,” Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

The National Intelligence Estimate is sure to be another election year battle. But hopefully, this time it won’t fall on deaf ears.