Since the declaration of war against terror, America and its allies have detained or killed 70 per cent of Al Qaida's senior leaders. But the frequency of terrorist acts has increased. This is because US strategy in Afghanistan assumed that terrorists couldn’t operate without state sponsorship. Ideological motivation is now more important for Al Qaida recruitment than a state sponsor.
U.S. counterterrorism policy and the foreign policy to which it is connected are still flawed. That may be the reason why the number of terrorist attacks worldwide has actually increased, instead of decreasing, after the Bush administration launched the global war against terrorism.
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq is frequently portrayed as the result of either intelligence failures or misrepresentation of the intelligence by others. In fact, both were involved. It appears that a third factor was involved as well: misrepresentation of intelligence by the intelligence community itself. One week before lawmakers were to vote on the use of force in Iraq, the CIA released an unclassified version of its just-completed National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). As the intelligence community's definitive judgments on key issues, NIEs are always important documents on which great care is expended. However, this NIE was unusually important because it was the authoritative assessment of the Iraqi threat available to members of Congress on which to base a decision whether to support or oppose a war.
The historic events in Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and North Korea have raised several key questions that help frame the proliferation debate over the future direction of U.S. non-proliferation policy.
The Bush administration, in the face of increasing criticism that it misled the public and Congress about the threat posed by Iraq's weapon programs and the ease of the occupation, last week began a broad defense of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Below we present key excerpts and commentary on the administration's major points. They are: 1) the war was a continuation of Clinton policy; 2) everyone thought Saddam had illicit weapons; 3) officials just repeated what the intelligence agencies told them; 4) they never said the threat was imminent; and 5) they never asserted an operational link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.
The Bush administration is preparing to launch a "Greater Middle East Initiative" at the G-8 summit meeting in June. The time is indeed opportune for engagement on regional reform, but as planned, the initiative fails to establish a basis for genuine partnership and does little to address the real challenges of Arab democratization.