Editorial: War in Iraq heightens threat to United States

09/27/2006

Bush’s intelligence chiefs agree: Bush’s war is a disaster.

Published: September 26, 2006

Right in the middle of the fall political campaign comes a report from the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies that concludes the Bush administration’s war in Iraq is impeding U.S. efforts to defeat Islamic terrorism. The war is, in fact, creating an entire new generation of prospective terrorists who hate America. Fighting over there to avoid fighting over here—the mantra of war supporters—is thus revealed as the cheap political talking point it always was.

This is no ordinary report. It is the first National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq since the start of the war, and it represents the consensus view of all 16 national intelligence agencies—most of them run by officials the Bush White House appointed. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld crowd’s own experts are telling them the only remaining reason they have for justifying the Iraq war is a lie, just as the Iraq’s WMD programs and its connections to the 9/11 attacks or Osama bin Laden were lies.

If you were to create a new recruiting poster for the iconic, finger-pointing Uncle Sam, he would say, “We want YOU to fight and die in Iraq so that YOUR families will be at greater risk of terrorist attack.” That’s the ultimate obscenity of this war: Our young die in the belief that they are protecting Aunt Molly and Uncle Joe, when in actuality the war’s effect is to draw bull’s-eyes on Molly’s back and Joe’s forehead.

Most Americans understand that the war in Iraq is a tragic blunder that has gotten the United States now acting like a confused rat in a maze. What to do?

If the war today puts the United States at risk tomorrow, then American troops should be withdrawn as soon as possible in a safe, orderly fashion. A reasonable goal is to bring a first, large contingent home by year’s end and have them all out several months later.

Bush won’t do that on his own. He’ll have to be forced—by Congress. After the November election. With Democrats and moderate Republicans in control.

Defeat this November is the deserved consequence for every incumbent member of Congress who has sung with gusto the bunting-draped “We’ll fight them over there” chorus that was written and produced for them by the White House. Two especially deserving of that consequence in Minnesota are Rep. Mark Kennedy, who is running for the Senate, and Rep. John Kline, who is running for reelection.

Kline’s behavior has been especially contemptible because he is a retired Marine officer. It’s difficult to comprehend that someone of that background would demonstrate so little regard for the troops that he would vigorously support sending them to fight and die in a war that puts their nation at risk.

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq makes quite clear that Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism. It is, rather, the central recruiting office and training ground for new terrorists. The United States needs to find a way out of there. To get out, it needs a transformed Congress capable of forcing a new course on the White House. President Bush refuses to acknowledge the bloody reality he has wrought. The only way he will ever confront that reality is if he is forced, by a Congress stripped of its fall-in-line supporters of the war.