According to an article at WashingtonPost.com, the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank, says that Iraq has now become a new training ground for terrorists!! Yippee!!!
Loss:
According to an article from Reuters.com and News.Yahoo.com, US and Polish military have caused massive damage to some of the most valuable artifacts in Babylon--yes that Babylon--the cradle of fucking civilization.
It's all roses, people! :D
From WashingtonPost.com:
Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground
War Created Haven, CIA Advisers Report
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 14, 2005; Page A01
Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.
Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills," said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. "There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries."
Low's comments came during a rare briefing by the council on its new report on long-term global trends. It took a year to produce and includes the analysis of 1,000 U.S. and foreign experts. Within the 119-page report is an evaluation of Iraq's new role as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists.
President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. But the council's report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war.
"At the moment," NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, Iraq "is a magnet for international terrorist activity."
Before the U.S. invasion, the CIA said Saddam Hussein had only circumstantial ties with several al Qaeda members. Osama bin Laden rejected the idea of forming an alliance with Hussein and viewed him as an enemy of the jihadist movement because the Iraqi leader rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular government.
Bush described the war in Iraq as a means to promote democracy in the Middle East. "A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East," he said one month before the invasion. "Instead of threatening its neighbors and harboring terrorists, Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both."
But as instability in Iraq grew after the toppling of Hussein, and resentment toward the United States intensified in the Muslim world, hundreds of foreign terrorists flooded into Iraq across its unguarded borders. They found tons of unprotected weapons caches that, military officials say, they are now using against U.S. troops. Foreign terrorists are believed to make up a large portion of today's suicide bombers, and U.S. intelligence officials say these foreigners are forming tactical, ever-changing alliances with former Baathist fighters and other insurgents.
"The al-Qa'ida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq," the report says.
According to the NIC report, Iraq has joined the list of conflicts -- including the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, and independence movements in Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao in the Philippines, and southern Thailand -- that have deepened solidarity among Muslims and helped spread radical Islamic ideology.
At the same time, the report says that by 2020, al Qaeda "will be superseded" by other Islamic extremist groups that will merge with local separatist movements. Most terrorism experts say this is already well underway. The NIC says this kind of ever-morphing decentralized movement is much more difficult to uncover and defeat.
Terrorists are able to easily communicate, train and recruit through the Internet, and their threat will become "an eclectic array of groups, cells and individuals that do not need a stationary headquarters," the council's report says. "Training materials, targeting guidance, weapons know-how, and fund-raising will become virtual (i.e. online)."
The report, titled "Mapping the Global Future," highlights the effects of globalization and other economic and social trends. But NIC officials said their greatest concern remains the possibility that terrorists may acquire biological weapons and, although less likely, a nuclear device.
The council is tasked with midterm and strategic analysis, and advises the CIA director. "The NIC's goal," one NIC publication states, "is to provide policymakers with the best, unvarnished, and unbiased information -- regardless of whether analytic judgments conform to U.S. policy."
Other than reports and studies, the council produces classified National Intelligence Estimates, which represent the consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies on specific issues.
Yesterday, Hutchings, former assistant dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, said the NIC report tried to avoid analyzing the effect of U.S. policy on global trends to avoid being drawn into partisan politics.
Among the report's major findings is that the likelihood of "great power conflict escalating into total war . . . is lower than at any time in the past century." However, "at no time since the formation of the Western alliance system in 1949 have the shape and nature of international alignments been in such a state of flux as they have in the past decade."
The report also says the emergence of China and India as new global economic powerhouses "will be the most challenging of all" Washington's regional relationships. It also says that in the competition with Asia over technological advances, the United States "may lose its edge" in some sectors.
Staff writer Bradley Graham and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
U.S.-Led Forces Damaged Ancient Babylon-Report
Sat Jan 15, 8:00 AM ET
By Kate Holton
LONDON (Reuters) - U.S.-led forces, using Iraq's ancient city of Babylon as a military base, have caused "substantial damage" to one of the world's most renowned archaeological treasures, a British Museum report said.
The report said U.S. and Polish military vehicles had crushed 2,600-year-old pavements in the city, a cradle of civilization and home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Archaeological fragments were used to fill sand bags, it added.
"This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," John Curtis, keeper of the museum's Ancient and Near East department, said in the report obtained by Reuters.
Curtis, invited to visit Babylon by Iraqi antiquities experts, said he had found cracks and gaps made by people who had apparently tried to gouge out the decorated bricks forming the famous dragons of the city's Ishtar Gate.
U.S. military commanders set up a base in Babylon in April 2003, just after the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, and handed it over to a Polish-led force five months later.
Poland said it had decided to remove troops from the area when Warsaw realized having a military base there was not "beneficial to the site." The camp will be formally handed over to the Iraqi Culture Ministry on Saturday.
"We have moved our operations from camp Babylon and returned that site to the Iraqi people and to scientists because of its importance, not only to Iraq, but to the world's cultural heritage," said a spokesman for the Polish-led forces in Iraq.
"We realized the existence of a military base there was not beneficial to that site and when an opportunity of moving to a new camp arose we decided to move," Lieutenant Colonel Artur Domanski said.
Babylon was the capital of ancient Babylonia, an early civilization that existed from around 1,800 BC until 600 BC.
Most famous for the Hanging Gardens built by Nebuchadnezzar, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, large parts of it were reconstructed by Saddam in an attempt to associate himself with his country's past glories.
In the report, Curtis described the decision to set up a base in the area as "regrettable."
"Babylon is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world and the damage caused by the military camp is a further blow for the cultural heritage of Iraq," he said.
About 3.2 million square feet of the site was covered in gravel, the report said, brought in from outside which was compacted and sometimes chemically treated to make helipads and car parks. The report said the gravel would contaminate previously undisturbed archeological deposits.
The Guardian newspaper quoted U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan as saying the significance of Babylon was not lost on the foreign troops.
"An archaeologist examined every construction initiative for its impact on historical ruins."
Curtis said the Iraqi government should be urged to put Babylon forward for inclusion in the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO's) list of World Heritage Sites as soon as possible.
"Now, more than ever, Babylon needs the care, attention and advice that being a World Heritage Site would ensure it received," he said.
Domanski said Poland was aware of the charges that its forces had damaged the site and planned to reply to them no later than Sunday.
© 2005 Reuters Limited
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