Terrorism
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27 September 2006
Bush Releases Intelligence Report Findings on Terrorism, Iraq
By David Shelby
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington – President Bush on September 26 authorized U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte to declassify selected portions of a report on trends in global terrorism to illustrate the report’s findings are far more complex and nuanced than the characterizations reported by the media.
The National Intelligence Estimate report, issued in April, studies the effect of U.S.-led counterterrorism efforts and dynamics within the Muslim world that affect those efforts. The classified report grabbed international headlines after one of its findings, linking the Iraq war with increased jihadist recruiting capabilities, was leaked to the press. (See related article.)
The report represents the consensus assessment of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies. Its declassified key judgments touch on the growth and nature of the global jihadist movement, the strategies of the movement, the relationship between the Iraq war and the movement, governance failures in the Muslim world that breed discontent, the nature of anti-American sentiment, and the movement’s potential vulnerabilities.
In a series of interviews September 25 and September 26, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended the administration’s counterterrorism policies, maintaining that the rise in jihadist activity was to be expected as the United States took a more aggressive stance in the War on Terror.
“[Y]es, you're confronting them and they will recruit and they will do everything that they can to bring new people to the cause. And it may well be that in the short term, more people will come to the cause; not because of Iraq, but because of the broadening of the War on Terror and the kind of very aggressive way in which we're fighting it,” she told the editorial board of the New York Times. “But the question I would have is, then what's the alternative? Do you not do things that you think will help you in the War on Terror because it may recruit a few more people to a jihad that has already plenty of people to begin with?”
She said al-Qaida is prepared to use any pretext to wage its war against the West and was at no loss for rationales to justify its jihad prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
“You need to know that of course, al-Qaida makes no distinction between the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq in their recruiting. They have even tried to latch on to what may be attitudes about Sudan. So there are plenty of excuses and plenty of arguments as to why people ought to go and fight these so-called Western forces. They didn't need Iraq to do that,” she said. “They attacked us on September 11th before anybody had even thought of overthrowing Saddam Hussein.”
She added that some of al-Qaida’s attacks do not even seem to have a rational pretext. “[T]hey've attacked in places where the countries aren't involved anywhere. They've attacked without regard to what your policies happen to be,” she said.
Rice said that the international community should not shy away from its current counterterrorism strategies because of al-Qaida’s aggressive recruiting tactics.
“Wherever you challenge them, they are going to try to recruit on that basis, they are going to try to stir up passions of people who have differences or perhaps people who have no alternative future or perhaps people who can be led down this road by fiery mullahs,” she told the New York Post. “But that doesn't mean that you don't pursue a strategy that in the long term is going to allow you to counter this ideology of hatred by producing different political structures and different political outcomes in the Middle East. And that's what Iraq offers.”
Rice said the jihadists have focused their efforts on Iraq because they understand the importance of the struggle there.
“They do know that when Iraq becomes stable, a country that will fight terrorism, a country that is democratic, a country that is a pillar of democracy in a Middle East that needs change, they know that that's a tremendous blow, maybe a deathblow to their ideology. And so of course they're going to fight hard,” she told radio talk show host Sean Hannity.
At the White House, press secretary Tony Snow said September 27 that U.S. and coalition efforts in the War on Terror have resulted in a “dispersed terror threat,” which is “less threatening” than when al-Qaida was able to operate with impunity, including operational training basis in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.
“They had the ability not only to have their people all together, but they had logistics, they could communicate with impunity around the globe, and they … didn't think anybody was going to intercept what they were doing. They had an operational capability then that they do not have now,” Snow said.
By contrast, through the War on Terror, “We interrupted their communications, we interrupted their finances, we interrupted their operational capabilities,” and it is now more difficult for al-Qaida to operate.
Snow also said counterterrorism activities in Iraq have encouraged Iraqis “who in the past may have been afraid of standing up to terrorists” to provide actionable intelligence at the rate of thousands of leads “each and every month” which have “led to significant operations.”
Transcripts of Rice interviews with the following entities are available at the State Department Web site:
• The New York Times Editorial Board,
• The New York Post Editorial Board, and
• The Sean Hannity Show.
A transcript of Snow’s briefing can be found at the White House Web site.
The full text of the declassified key judgments is available on the Director of National Intelligence Web site.
For additional information, see Response to Terrorism.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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