The world is safer now that we've "liberated" Iraq, right Howie?
Well, maybe not. A new CIA assessment of Iraq indicates that the agency believes that 21st Century Iraq has much in common with 1980s/90s Afghanistan, and that "terrorists-in-training" may be flocking there to get "hands-on" experience in insurgent warfare.
The officials said the report spelled out how the urban nature of the war in Iraq was helping combatants learn how to carry out assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings and other kinds of attacks that were never a staple of the fighting in Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet campaigns of the 1980's. It was during that conflict, primarily rural and conventional, that the United States provided arms to Osama bin Laden and other militants, who later formed Al Qaeda.
Meanwhile, far from being in their "death throes," the Iraqi insurgency is taking a higher and higher toll on American lives because of their increasing technological sophistication in the use of "improvised explosive devices."
Last month there were about 700 attacks against American forces using so-called improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.'s, the highest number since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the American military command in Iraq and a senior Pentagon military official. Attacks on Iraqis also reached unprecedented levels, Lt. Gen. John Vines, a senior American ground commander in Iraq, told reporters on Tuesday.
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