"Kill 'em all......let Allah sort 'em out!"

Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times ($^%^&#@!) leaks to us today information from anonymous sources of a classified National Intelligence Estimate:

Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document.

Great.

That's just peachy.

I don't question the veracity of the assessment at all. I'm just amazed at the bureaucratic leaks, and at the kinds of stories the NY Times, perhaps the leading U.S. newspaper, runs with during a time of war each day. This is the same newspaper that had a stake in Plamegate, that leaked 2 of 3 stories on NSA Surveillance programs; and it was the paper that ran 31 consecutive frontpage news stories on Abu Ghraib. I personally don't feel the war in Iraq in itself is what has fed and bred the Jihadists. It's our own obsessing over stories about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib...it's our own shooting ourselves in the foot with language such as "Bush lied"..."racial profiling and discrimination against Muslims"......"there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11" (a liberal fantasy that President Bush ever said that in the way that they understand it)...."OCCUPATION of Iraq"...."it's an imperialistic war for oil".....the focus on civilian deaths of innocent Iraqis as the fault of our military and not that of the Jihadists and insurgents...everything plays right into the hands of the terror propagandists. Our mission in Iraq- to make us safer by planting the seeds of democracy in the Middle East and subsequently helping the Iraqis build a better future for their people- has been twisted to fuel the misperception of this war. The negative press falls right into the hands of our enemies.

Even though by most accounts, Al Qaeda is fractured and much of its senior leadership killed or captured, splinter cells and Jihadist wannabes are cropping up not because of the actions of the U.S. But because of the propaganda. The same kind that fuels the anti-American hate, that has no basis in truth. The same kind that will have Arabs believe 9/11 was orchestrated by Jews, and about a third of our own citizens buying into conspiracy theories that the Bush Administration "knocked down the Towers". Disgusting and stupid.

The Pope's speech gets twisted and interpreted in a way that fuels Muslim outrage. Who's responsible for the violent reaction? The Pope? Or the Islamists? Grow some thicker skin and grow up!

Removing Saddam was a good thing. But we weren't done. Helping the Iraqi people in the rebuilding was and still is, the noble, responsible thing to do.

One final word (I'd talk about what Ted Kennedy just said about the NIE report, but I've lost patience):

I want to tell you before 9/11 innocent people used to die and nothing would happen but your death changed history forever.-Sooni's 9/11 post.

If you are a bit perplexed by that statement, go read this Baghdad blogger's post for the context. Hat tip to Gayle.

UPDATE 09/26/06: It would appear that President Bush plans to declassify portions of the NIE report to counter leakage of the CLASSIFIED report printed in the NY Times this past sunday.

UPDATE 09/27/06: Flopping Aces has two posts.
Ex-Donkey Blog also hee-haws.
Dean Bartlett calls it "uninteresting".
Freedom Eden links to the Washington Post.
Counterterrorism Blog counters here and here.
Mike's America is....well, Mike's America.