A boost for Bin Laden

Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday September 26, 2006
The Guardian

A month before the invasion of Iraq, Tony Blair was privately warned by his top intelligence advisers that an invasion would increase the terrorist threat against Britain. The joint intelligence committee advised in February 2003 that "al-Qaida and associated groups continue to represent by far the greatest threat to western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq".

(snip)

Now, more than three and a half years later, in their first official assessment of global terrorism since the invasion of Iraq, 16 separate US intelligence agencies have agreed what was obvious then. Their National Intelligence Estimate, leaked last weekend, says the Iraq invasion has indeed increased the terrorist threat by encouraging the spread of Islamic radicalism across the world.

The CIA also admitted recently what its more competent officers had known from the start: there never was any link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. It is a sad irony that, having exaggerated the influence of Osama bin Laden's network, by their actions the US and Britain have succeeded in increasing it.