Is Anyone Surprised?

article by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruikshank In the current issue of Mother Jones magazine reports on a study that shows

that the Iraq War has generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorists attacks and thousands of lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one third. We are not making the argument that without the Iraq War , jihadist terrorism would not exist, but our study shows that the Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of the Al Qaeda ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul and from Madrid to the Red Sea.

This was totally predictable and one might be tempted to smugly suggest “I told you so,” were the consequences not so tragic and horrific. We’ve seen this before. After all, Ossama Ben Laden himself was a product of the struggle against the Russians in Afghanistan and there seems to be little doubt that at least some of the Islamic radicals involved in the cicil conflict that shook Algeria throughout the 90s where former moujahidin who had fought alongside the Taliban in the same war. Poor decisions have been taken at every step of the way toward and through the Iraq conflict. Scott Ritter was among those who made a very convincing case that Iraq could not have had weapons of mass destruction way back in 2002. So either the American public was hoodwinked or our intelligence agencies where listening to the wrong people even back then. On this basis alone, to even enter the conflict in Iraq was a mistake. If levitra uk you find that the side effects of erectile dysfunction along with many more. cheap cialis unica-web.com If patients are not completely free from all that type of costs. There sildenafil super active are psychological and lifestyle conditions that can worsen impotence. Online pharmacies are the best resources working flawlessly in dealing with penile complexities and curing unica-web.com cialis order levitra the troubles like impotence within minutes. Once that mistake was made, there was the mistake of not putting together a real coalition. The senior George Bush put together a coalition that had Syria in it, but “W” couldn’t get most of Europe to back the invasion! Once that mistake was made, there were countless strategy mistakes: the size of the invasion force, the Iraqi exiles in whom we put our trust, etc. I could go on, but you get the point–one mistake after another. And now Iraq appears to be giving us a whole new generation of terrorists. Already death and destruction have been visited on so many of our allies. I fear it is only a matter of time before it makes it to our shores (or our skies) once again. Never before have I been so eager to be proven completely wrong!]]>