Tons of intelligence reports exist about the windfall that the Iraq war has given to global Salafist jihad. The National Intelligence Council in 2005, for instance, called Iraq the new “breeding ground” for “professionalized” terror. An April 2006 NIE, which remains classified, plainly said the war “has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” as one intelligence official told the New York Times. It’s hard to see how this could be controversial: there would be no al-Qaeda in Iraq — which the National Intelligence Estimate today says “energize(s) the broader Sunni extremist community” — had there been no invasion.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=180365