US spy chiefs say Bush's war is spur to jihad

A STARK assessment of terrorism trends by 16 intelligence agencies in the United States has found that the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped to spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the attacks of 11 September, 2001.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by US intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began and it represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside the American government.

Entitled Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, is growing and spread worldwide.

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 US intelligence official.

The new National Intelligence Estimate was overseen by David Low, an intelligence officer for transnational threats, who commissioned it in 2004 after he took up his post at the National Intelligence Council.

The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of al-Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of "self-generating" cells inspired by al-Qaeda's leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.

It also examines how the internet has helped to spread jihadist ideology.

The new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.

In recent months, some senior US intelligence officials have offered glimpses into the estimate's conclusions in public speeches.

"New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge," said General Michael Hayden, during a speech in San Antonio in April.

"If this trend continues, threats to the US at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide," said the general, who is now the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

For more than two years, there has been tension between the Bush administration and American intelligence agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Some intelligence officials have said that the White House has consistently presented a more optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than has been justified by intelligence reports from the field.

Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican and the Senate Majority leader, said he had not seen the classified report, but said Americans understand that the US must continue to fight terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere.

"Either we are going to be fighting this battle, this war overseas, or it's going to be right here in this country," Mr Frist said yesterday during ABC television's This Week broadcast, echoing an argument that the US president, George Bush, frequently makes.

But one of the sternest critics of the war, Ted Kennedy, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, said: "This intelligence document should put the final nail in the coffin for President Bush's phoney argument about the Iraq war.

"The fact that we need a new direction in Iraq to really win the war on terror and make Americans safer could not be clearer or more urgent - yet this administration stubbornly clings to a failed 'stay-the-course' strategy.

"How many more independent reports, how many more deaths, how much deeper into civil war will Iraq need to fall for the White House to wake up and change its strategy in Iraq?"

The judgments of the new intelligence estimate are consistent with assessments of global terrorist threats by US allies and independent terrorism experts.

The relationship between the Iraq war and terrorism have been subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003 in both the US and Britain.

National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the American intelligence community produces. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all the spy agencies.

Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, said that the White House "played no role in drafting or reviewing the judgments expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism".

The estimate's judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion.

That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.

Documents released by the White House timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington emphasised the successes the US had had in dismantling the top tier of al-Qaeda. "Since the 11 September attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe," concludes one, a report entitled 9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges.

It adds: "We have done much to degrade al-Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism."

That document makes only passing mention of the impact that the war has had on the global jihad movement.

"The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry," it states.