A Stitch in Haste

It's official:

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee[.]
...
Titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

Well that's just lovely.

So the Iraq War, which despite all protestations by the White House, had and has absolutely nothing to do with the War on Terror, has cost us:

--our credibility, and our goodwill, around the world

--$317 billion (and counting)

--2,700 American lives (and counting)

...and has hurt us in the War on Terror.

The War on Terror, meanwhile, has cost us:

--our minds (via the Administration's absurd theories of executive power)

--our hearts (via the eradication of our civil liberties)

--our souls (if we continue to engage in "torture-lite" and essentially withdraw from the Geneva Convention).

How could one President, one Administration and one party do so much damage in such a short time?

Madness. Sheer madness.

POST SCRIPT: I suppose the Bush apologists will now insist that the New York Times was "traitorous" for disclosing the contents of the classified report. If this be treason...

UPDATE: Regarding the White House's response to the stories, keep the following in mind:

--The phrase "not representative of the complete document" is not synonymous with "incorrect" or even with "taken out of context." In fact, "not representative of the complete document" means "indeed an accurate part of the document."

--Similarly, the phrases "only a small handful" and "a fraction of judgments" do not mean "wrong" or "misreported." Quite the opposite.

--Contrary to the rantings of the ever-unstable John Hinderaker, the National Intelligence Estimate is not produced solely by the CIA (which, we are now told, has been waging a "war against the Bush administration" — good grief). No, the NIE is a survey of 16 major intelligence agencies. And they, as a group, came to this conclusion.