Bush Denies Iraq War Boosted Terror Threat

U.S. President George W. Bush on Saturday denied that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has increased the terrorism threat against the United States (see GSN, Sept. 27).

The latest National Intelligence Estimate, parts of which were released last week by the White House, reported that Islamic extremists have increased in number and geographic reach in recent years.

Portions of the report leaked to the media “created a heated debate … and a lot of misimpressions about the document’s conclusions,” Bush said in his weekly radio address, according to the State Department.

He said the report finds four factors used to attract new extremists.

“First, long-standing grievances such as corruption, injustice and a fear of Western domination; second, the jihad in Iraq; third, the slow pace of reform in Muslim nations; and fourth, pervasive anti-Americanism,” Bush said.

Americans should not “buy into the enemy’s propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we are provoking them,” he said.  The United States and its people are targeted because terrorists “hate everything America stands for, and because they know we stand in the way of their ambitions to take over the Middle East” (U.S. State Department release, Sept. 30).

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