BIG MISTAKE

by RAY FLEMING
EARLIER this week President Bush was worried that leaked excerpts from the official National Intelligence Assessment of the situation in Iraq would harm the prospects of Republican candidates in the mid-term elections in November. So he authorised declassification and publication of more of the Assessment in order to prove that it shows America is winning in Iraq and in the war on terrorism. Big mistake! The best that this report, which draws on the findings of US's sixteen intelligence organisations, can offer by way of encouragement for the Republican Party is that by permanently stabilising the situation in Iraq the United States would strike a blow at terrorism throughout the world. That may be true in theory but in practice there is only a remote possibility of achieving such stabilisation in the foreseeable future; the American people know that even if the White House pretends not to. More significantly the Assessment says that Iraq has become “the cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives.” The report was completed in April, since when matters have got much worse in Iraq. Remember how the June killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, was going to change things for the better? A later report due in July has not yet been finished and presumably will not be until the November elections are over.