By Jeff Jacoby
Jewish World Review
The consensus in the intelligence community is that the war in Iraq has worsened the threat from radical Islamic violence and hurt US efforts to combat terrorism. So, at any rate, say The New York Times ("Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat") and The Washington Post ("Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Hurting US Terror Fight"), which reported on the most recent National Intelligence Estimate in front-page stories on Sunday. Is it true?
The NIE was a classified document until Tuesday, when President Bush declassified some of its findings. The Times and Post stories were written, it appears, by reporters who hadn't read the document they were characterizing. The papers' headlines were unequivocal, but the stories themselves never actually quoted the NIE. They merely passed along the spin — and advanced the antiwar agenda — of the anonymous sources who chose this moment to leak secret intelligence for political purposes.
Has the Iraq war undermined efforts to defeat the jihadis? Maybe, but the Times and Post stories don't come close to making that case. They claim that new terrorists are being enlisted at a growing rate and that America's presence in Iraq has become a major terrorist recruitment tool. Well, yes: If you go to war against fanatics in Iraq, the fanatics will point to Iraq as a reason for their war. That hardly adds up to a weakened campaign against al-Qaeda and its accomplices. D-Day and the battle of Midway triggered some of the most ferocious fighting of World War II and resulted in tens of thousands of additional Allied casualties. But would anyone say that they undermined the drive to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan?
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