The Mega-Lie Called the "War on Terror": A Masterpiece of Propaganda

By Richard W. Behan

AlterNet, Posted on September 27, 2007

http://www.alternet.org/story/63632/

(17 links at the URL above)

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually
come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the
state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military
consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and
thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state." --Joseph
Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush has told and
repeated a lie that is "big enough" to confirm Joseph Goebbels' testimony.
It is a mega-lie, and the American people have come to believe it. It is the
"War on Terror."

The Bush administration endlessly recites its mantra of deceit:

The War on Terror was launched in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11, 2001. It is intended to enhance our national security at home and to
spread democracy in the Middle East.

This is the struggle of our lifetime; we are defending our way of life from
an enemy intent on destroying our freedoms. We must fight the enemy in the
Middle East, or we will fight him in our cities.

This is classic propaganda. In Goebbels' terms, it is the "state" speaking
its lie, but the political, economic, and military consequences of the Bush
administration lie are coming into view, and they are all catastrophic. If
truth is the enemy of both the lie and George Bush's "state," then the
American people need to know the truth.

The military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were not done in
retaliation for 9/11. The Bush administration had them clearly in mind upon
taking office, and they were set in motion as early as February 3, 2001.
That was seven months prior to the attacks on the Trade Towers and the
Pentagon, and the objectives of the wars had nothing to do with terrorism.

This is beyond dispute. The mainstream press has ignored the story, but the
administration's congenital belligerence is fully documented in book-length
treatments and in the limitless information pool of the internet. (See my
earlier work, From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil

By Richard W. Behan

AlterNet, Posted on February 5, 2007

http://www.alternet.org/story/47489/

for example.)

Invading a sovereign nation unprovoked, however, directly violates the
charter of the United Nations. It is an international crime. Before the Bush
administration could attack either Afghanistan or Iraq, it would need a
politically and diplomatically credible reason for doing so.

The terrorist violence of Sept. 11, 2001, provided a spectacular
opportunity. In the cacophony of outrage and confusion, the administration
could conceal its intentions, disguise the true nature of its premeditated
wars, and launch them. The opportunity was exploited in a heartbeat.

Within hours of the attacks, President Bush declared the United States "...
would take the fight directly to the terrorists," and "... he announced to
the world the United States would make no distinction between the terrorists
and the states that harbor them." Thus the "War on Terror" was born.

The fraudulence of the "War on Terror," however, is clearly revealed in the
pattern of subsequent facts:

In Afghanistan the state was overthrown instead of apprehending the
terrorist. Offers by the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden were ignored,
and he remains at large to this day.

In Iraq, when the United States invaded, there were no al Qaeda terrorists
at all.

Both states have been supplied with puppet governments, and both are dotted
with permanent U.S. military bases in strategic proximity to their
hydrocarbon assets.

The U.S. embassy nearing completion in Baghdad is comprised of 21
multi-story buildings on 104 acres of land. It will house 5,500 diplomats,
staff and families. It is ten times larger than any other U.S. embassy in
the world, but we have yet to be told why.

A 2006 National Intelligence Estimate shows the war in Iraq has exacerbated,
not diminished, the threat of terrorism since 9/11. If the "War on Terror"
is not a deception, it is a disastrously counterproductive failure.

See below: Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat, by Mark
Mazzetti, New York Times, Published: September 24, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/world/middleeast/24terror.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

Today two American and two British oil companies are poised to claim immense
profits from 81 percent of Iraq's undeveloped crude oil reserves. They
cannot proceed, however, until the Iraqi Parliament enacts a statute known
as the "hydrocarbon framework law."

The features of postwar oil policy so heavily favoring the oil companies
were crafted by the Bush administration State Department in 2002, a year
before the invasion.

Drafting of the law itself was begun during Paul Bremer's Coalition
Provisional Authority, with the invited participation of a number of major
oil companies. The law was written in English and translated into Arabic
only when it was due for Iraqi approval.

President Bush made passage of the hydrocarbon law a mandatory "benchmark"
when he announced the troop surge in January of 2007.

When it took office, the Bush administration brushed aside warnings about al
Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Their anxiety to attack both Afghanistan and Iraq
was based on other factors.

Iraq

The Iraqi war was conceived in 1992, during the first Bush administration,
in a 46-page document entitled Draft Defense Planning Guidance.

The document advocated the concept of preemptive war to assure the military
and diplomatic dominance of the world by the United States. It asserted the
need for "... access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil." It
warned of "... proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." And it spoke
of "... threats to U.S. citizens from terrorism." It was the template for
today's war in Iraq.

The Draft Defense Planning Guidance was signed by the secretary of defense,
Richard Cheney. It was prepared by three top staffers: Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis
"Scooter" Libby and Zalmay Khalilzad-all of whom would fill high-level
positions in the administration of George W. Bush, nine years in the future.

In proposing global dominance and preemptive war, it was a radical departure
from the traditional U.S. policy of multilateral realism, and it was an
early statement of the emerging ideology of "neoconservatism."

The document was too extreme. President George H.W. Bush publicly denounced
it and immediately retracted it. Many in his administration referred to its
authors as "the crazies."

But the ideology survived. Five years later William Kristol and Robert Kagan
created a neoconservative organization to advocate preemptive war and U.S.
global dominion to achieve, in their words, a "benevolent global hegemony."
It was called the Project for the New American Century, quickly abbreviated
as PNAC. Among the founding members were Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz,
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Rumsfeld and Jeb Bush.

In a letter to President Clinton on Jan. 26, 1998, the Project for the New
American Century once more urged the military overthrow of the Saddam
Hussein regime.

President Clinton ignored the letter, apparently viewing this iteration of
the proposal as no less crazy than the original.

As the presidential campaign of 2000 drew to a close, the PNAC produced yet
another proposal for U.S. world dominion, preemptive war and the invasion of
Iraq. It was a document called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy,
Forces, and Resources For a New Century" ( PDF).

Weeks later, in January of 2001, 29 members of the Project for the New
American Century joined the administration of George W. Bush. Their ideology
of world dominion and preemptive war would dominate the Bush
administration's foreign and defense policies.

Within 10 days of his inauguration, President Bush convened his National
Security Council. The PNAC people triumphed when the invasion of Iraq was
placed at the top of the agenda for Mideast foreign policy. Reconciling the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, long the top priority, was dropped from
consideration.

The neoconservative dream of invading Iraq was a tragic anachronism, an
ideological fantasy of retrograde imperialism. A related and far more
pragmatic reason for the invasion, however, would surface soon.

No administration in memory had been more closely aligned with the oil
industry. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were intimately tied to
it, and so was National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. So were eight
cabinet secretaries and 32 other high-level appointees.

By early February, Vice President Cheney's "Energy Task Force" was at work.
Federal agency people were joined by executives and lobbyists from the
Enron, Exxon-Mobil, Conoco-Phillips, Shell and BP America corporations.

Soon the task force was poring over detailed maps of the Iraqi oil fields,
pipelines, tanker terminals, refineries and the undeveloped oil exploration
blocks. It studied two pages of "foreign suitors for Iraqi oil field
contracts" -foreign companies negotiating with Saddam Hussein's regime, none
of which was a major American or British oil company.

The intent to invade Iraq and the keen interest in Iraqi oil would soon
converge in a top secret memo of Feb. 3, 2001, from a "high level National
Security Council official." The memo: "... directed the NSC staff to
cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the 'melding' of
two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: 'the review of operational policies
toward rogue states' such as Iraq and 'actions regarding the capture of new
and existing oil and gas fields.'"

As early as Feb. 3, 2001, the Bush administration was committed to invading
Iraq, with the oil fields clearly in mind.

The terrorist attacks on Washington and New York were still seven months in
the future.

Afghanistan

The issue in Afghanistan was the strategically valuable location for a
pipeline to connect the immense oil and gas resources of the Caspian Basin
to the richest markets. Whoever built the pipeline would control the Basin,
and in the 1990s the contest to build it was spirited.

American interests in the region were promoted by an organization called the
Foreign Oil Companies Group. Among its most active members were Henry
Kissinger, a former secretary of state but now an advisor to the Unocal
Corp.; Alexander Haig, another former secretary of state but now a lobbyist
for Turkmenistan; and Richard Cheney, a former secretary of defense, but now
the CEO of the Halliburton Corp.

Late in 1996, however, the Bridas Corp. of Argentina finally signed
contracts with the Taliban and with Gen. Dostum of the Northern Alliance to
build the pipeline.

One American company in particular, Unocal, found that intolerable and
fought back vigorously, hiring a number of consultants in addition to
Kissinger: Hamid Karzai, Richard Armitage, and Zalmay Khalilzad. (Armitage
and Khalilzad would join the George W. Bush administration in 2001.)

Unocal wooed Taliban officials at its headquarters in Texas and in
Washington, D.C., seeking to have the Bridas contract voided, but the
Taliban refused. Finally, in February of 1998, John J. Maresca, a Unocal
vice president, asked in a congressional hearing to have the Taliban
replaced by a more stable regime.

The Clinton administration, having recently refused the PNAC request to
invade Iraq, was not any more interested in a military overthrow of the
Taliban. President Clinton did, however, shoot a few cruise missiles into
Afghanistan, after the al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa. And
he issued an executive order forbidding further trade transactions with the
Taliban.

Maresca was thus twice disappointed: The Taliban would not be replaced very
soon, and Unocal would have to cease its pleadings with the regime.

Unocal's prospects rocketed when George W. Bush entered the White House, and
the Project for the New American Century ideology of global dominance took
hold.

The Bush administration itself took up active negotiations with the Taliban
in January of 2001, seeking secure access to the Caspian Basin for American
companies. The Enron Corp. also was eyeing a pipeline to feed its proposed
power plant in India.) The administration offered a package of foreign aid
as an inducement, and the parties met in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad.
The Bridas contract might still be voided.

But the Taliban would not yield.

Anticipating this in the spring of 2001, the State Department had sought and
gained the concurrence of India and Pakistan to take military action if
necessary. The PNAC people were not timid about using force.

At the final meeting with the Taliban, on Aug. 2, 2001, State Department
negotiator Christine Rocca, clarified the options: "Either you accept our
offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." With the
futility of negotiations apparent, "President Bush promptly informed
Pakistan and India the U.S. would launch a military mission into Afghanistan
before the end of October."

This was five weeks before the events of 9/11.

Sept. 11, 2001

A tectonic groundswell of skepticism, doubt and suspicion has emerged about
the Bush administration's official explanation of 9/11. Some claim the
administration orchestrated the attacks. Others see complicity. Still others
find criminal negligence. The cases they make are neither extreme nor
trivial.

Whatever the truth about 9/11, the Bush administration now had a fortuitous,
spectacular opportunity to proceed with its premeditated attacks.

The administration would have to play its hand skillfully, however.

Other nations have suffered criminal acts of terrorism, but there is no
precedent for conflating the terrorists with the states that harbor them,
declaring a "war" and seeking with military force to overthrow a sovereign
government. Victimized nations have always relied successfully on
international law enforcement and police action to bring terrorists to
justice.

But the Bush administration needed more than this. War plans were in the
files. They needed to justify invasions. Only by targeting the "harboring
states," as well as the terrorists, did they stand a chance of doing so.

The administration played its hand brilliantly. It compared the terrorist

attacks immediately to Pearl Harbor, and in the smoke and rage of 9/11 the
comparison was superficially attractive. But Pearl Harbor was the violent
expression of hostile intent by a formidably armed nation, and it introduced
four years of full-scale land, sea and airborne combat. 9/11 was al Qaeda's
violent expression of hostility: 19 fanatics armed with box cutters. Yes,
extraordinary destruction and loss of life, but the physical security of our
entire nation was simply not at stake.

Though the comparison was specious, the "War on Terror" was born, and it has
proven to be an exquisite smokescreen. But labeling the preplanned invasions
as a "War on Terror" was the mega-lie, dwarfing all the untruths that
followed. The mega-lie would be the centerpiece of a masterful propaganda
blitz that continues to this day.

The wars

On Oct. 7, 2001, the carpet of bombs is unleashed over Afghanistan.

Soon, with the Taliban overthrown, the Bush administration installed Hamid
Karzai as head of an interim government. Karzai had been a Unocal
consultant.

The first ambassador to Karzai's government was John J. Maresca, a vice
president of Unocal.

The next ambassador to Afghanistan was Zalmay Khalilzad, another Unocal
consultant.

Four months after the carpet of bombs, President Karzai and President
Musharraf of Pakistan signed an agreement for a new pipeline. The Bridas
contract was moot. The way was open for Unocal.

In February of 2003 an oil industry trade journal reported the Bush
administration was ready to finance the pipeline across Afghanistan and to
protect it with a permanent military presence. Osama bin Laden remained at
large.

The mega-lie, the fabricated "War on Terror" was an easy sell in the
Afghanistan adventure. The shock of 9/11 was immense, Osama bin Laden was
operating from Afghanistan and the "state," the Taliban, was at least
sympathetic to his organization. And the signature secrecy of the Bush
Administration had kept from public view its eight months of negotiating
with the Taliban. The first premeditated war was largely unopposed.

Selling the Iraq invasion to the American people and to the Congress would
be far more difficult.

With the Trade Towers and the Pentagon still smoldering, President Bush and
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld ordered their staffs to find Saddam Hussein's
complicity in the attacks. Of course they could not, so there would need to
be a sustained and persuasive selling job -a professionally orchestrated
campaign of propaganda.

Soon after 9/11, fear-mongering propagandizing became the modus operandi of
the Bush Administration. It began in earnest with the president's "axis of
evil" State of the Union address in 2002, full of terrorism and fear. "The
United States of America," the president said, "will not permit the world's
most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive
weapons."

No regime anywhere was in fact threatening anyone with anything, but Bush
appointed a 10-person "White House Iraq Group" in August of 2002. Chaired by
Karl Rove, its members were trusted partisans and communications experts
skilled in perception management. Their role was explicitly to market the
need to invade Iraq. The group operated in strict secrecy, sifting
intelligence, writing position papers and speeches, creating "talking
points," planning strategy and timing, and feeding information to the media.
This was the nerve center, where the campaign of propaganda was orchestrated
and promulgated.

The group chose to trumpet nearly exclusively the most frightening
threat-nuclear weapons. Rice soon introduced the litany of the smoking gun
and the mushroom cloud, Cheney said hundreds of thousands of Americans might
die, and Bush claimed Saddam was "six months away from developing a weapon."

In the 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush uttered the infamous
"sixteen words": "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This was
typical of White House Iraq Group work: The CIA knew and had said the
information was bogus.

The propaganda campaign was ultimately successful, not least because of the
axiomatic trust American people extend to their presidents: Nobody could
have anticipated the range, intensity and magnitude of the expertly crafted
deception. And the campaign was aided by a compliant mainstream press that
swallowed and regurgitated the talking points.

The Congress was persuaded sufficiently to authorize the use of military
force. The American people were persuaded sufficiently to accept the war and
to send Mr. Bush to the White House for a second term. But no other war in
the country's history had to be so consciously and comprehensively sold.

Much of the deception, distortion and lies was eventually exposed. The link
between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the weapons of mass destruction, the
aluminum tubes, the mobile laboratories, the yellowcake from Niger: none of
it true. Only the mega-lie, the "War on Terror," survives.

On Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the Security
Council, waving the vial of simulated anthrax and claiming "there is no
doubt in my mind" Saddam Hussein was working to produce nuclear weapons.

But the Security Council, not so easily propagandized, refused to authorize
American force.

On March 14, 2003, President Bush met in the Azores with Prime Ministers
Blair of the United Kingdom and Aznar of Spain. They abandoned the effort
for U.N. authorization, claimed the right to proceed without it and a week
later launched the war.

Four years of violence. Nearly 4,000 young Americans dead. Seven times that
many maimed. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead. Millions fleeing as
refugees, their economy and infrastructure in ruins. A raging civil war.
Half a trillion dollars and counting.

Stopping the madness

And for what? Neither face of the war has come remotely close to success.
The "War on Terrorism" has not suppressed terrorism but has encouraged it
instead. The premeditated war -for ideological dreams of world dominion and
the pragmatic capture of hydrocarbon assets -is a colossus of failure.

The Afghan pipeline is a dead issue. As the warlords and the poppy growers
in Afghanistan thrive, and as the Taliban regroups and regains dominance,
the country tilts ominously into chaos once more.

The Iraqi hydrocarbon law -the clever disguise for capturing the oil
fields -is fatally wounded, its true purpose becoming more widely known.
Organized resistance is growing quickly, both in Iraq and in the United
States. And the factions who need to agree on the law are otherwise engaged
in killing each other.

The Iraqi war has not resulted, either, in the global dominance sought by
the Project for the New American Century people, but in global repugnance
for what their pathetic ideology has wrought.

Clearly the involvement of the U.S. military in the Mideast must cease.
Pouring more lives and dollars into the quagmire may keep alive the warped
dreams of the Bush administration, but those dreams are illegitimate, indeed
criminal.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney reject any alteration in their
course. They ask instead for more time, more money and even -in threatening
Iran -for more targets.

There is no apparent way to stop madness, to end the hemorrhaging of blood
and treasure, but to impeach these men and, if found guilty, to remove them
from office.

The integrity of the Constitution and the rule of law are at stake as well,
but the Congress continues its indifference to impeachment, effectively
condoning the administration's behavior. Should this continue, thinking
Americans will discard the last crumbs of respect for the incumbent
legislature -polling shows there's not much left -and punish its members,
Republican and Democrat alike, in next year's election.

Impeachment will expose the fraudulence of the "War on Terror" and liberate
us from the pall of fear the Bush administration has deliberately cast upon
the country. Both political parties will be free to speak the truth:
Terrorism is real and a cause for concern, but it is not a reason for abject
fear.

We need only compare the hazard of al Qaeda to the threat posed by the
Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. On the one hand is a wretched
group of sad fanatics -perhaps 50,000 in all -clever enough to commandeer
airliners with box cutters. On the other was a nation of 140 million people,
a powerful economy, a standing army of hundreds of divisions, a formidable
navy and air force and thousands of nuclear tipped intercontinental missiles
pre-aimed at American targets.

We were a vigilant but poised and confident people then, not a nation
commanded to cower in fear. We can and must regain that strength and
self-assurance.

Ending the nightmare will take far less courage than the Bush people
exhibited in beginning it. Taking a nation to war on distortion, deception
and lies is enormously risky in many respects: in lives and in treasure,
certainly, but also in a nation's prestige abroad and in the trust and
support of its people. The Bush administration risked all this and more, and
it has lost.

We risk far less by embracing the truth and acting on it. Our nation
cherishes honesty: the fraudulence must end. But Bush and Cheney have shown
themselves incapable of honesty, and we also cherish justice. They must be
impeached.

Richard W. Behan's last book was Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics,
and the Fate of the Federal Lands (Island Press, 2001). He is currently
working on a more broadly rendered critique, To Provide Against Invasions:
Corporate Dominion and America's Derelict Democracy. He can be reached by
email at rwbehan@rockisland.com.

+++

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat

by Mark Mazzetti

New York Times, Published: September 24, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/world/middleeast/24terror.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 -- A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American
intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation
ofIraq. has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the
overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Reach of War

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role
to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent
White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House
Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington
involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal
of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq
war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services
inside government. Titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the
United States,'' it asserts that 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.
The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both
supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed
had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the
creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document's
general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.

Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate said it avoided
specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would once again
strike on United States soil. The relationship between the Iraq war and
terrorism, and the question of whether the United States is safer, have been
subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003.

National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that
the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue,
and are approved by More articles about John D. Negroponte., director of
national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw
intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.

Analysts began working on the estimate in 2004, but it was not finalized
until this year. Part of the reason was that some government officials were
unhappy with the structure and focus of earlier versions of the document,
according to officials involved in the discussion.

Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were
determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention
of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and
some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more
focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear
whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual
policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in
preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged
for political purposes.

Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, said 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 Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the successes that the United
States had made in dismantling the top tier of Al Qaeda..

"Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are
not yet safe," concludes one, a report titled "9/11 Five Years Later:
Success and Challenges." "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 the Iraq 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.

The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in
Iraq could return to their home countries, "exacerbating domestic conflicts
or fomenting radical ideologies."

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee
released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment,
based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing jihad movement
and says, "Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to
attack."

The new National Intelligence Estimate was overseen by David B. Low, the
national intelligence officer for transnational threats, who commissioned it
in 2004 after he took up his post at the National Intelligence Council. Mr.
Low declined to be interviewed for this article.

The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a
core of 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 More articles about Osama bin Laden. or his top
lieutenants.

It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and
how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer
have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.

In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding
that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of
terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al
Qaeda's current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad
leadership.

But 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 American 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 Gen. Michael
V. Hayden., during a speech in San Antonio in April, the month that the new
estimate was completed. "If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at
home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing
attacks worldwide," said the general, who was then Mr. Negroponte's top
deputy and is now director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

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

Spy agencies usually produce several national intelligence estimates each
year on a variety of subjects. The most controversial of these in recent
years was an October 2002 document assessing Iraq's illicit weapons
programs. Several government investigations have discredited that report,
and the intelligence community is overhauling how it analyzes data, largely
as a result of those investigations.

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

The panel investigating the London terrorist bombings of July 2005 reported
in May that the leaders of Britain's domestic and international intelligence
services, MI5 and MI6, "emphasized to the committee the growing scale of the
Islamist terrorist threat."

More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research
group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of "D+" to United
States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The
council concluded that "there is every sign that radicalization in the
Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking."

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