WASHINGTON—The Iraq insurgency continues to baffle the American military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent source of recruiting for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top national security officials told the U.S. Congress yesterday.
"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," Central Intelligence Agency director Porter Goss told the Senate select committee on intelligence.
"These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."
On a day when the top half-dozen U.S. national security and intelligence officials went to Capitol Hill to talk about the continued determination of terrorists to strike the United States, their statements underscored the unintended consequences of the war in Iraq.
"The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss said in his first public testimony since becoming CIA director.
Goss said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist who has joined Al Qaeda since the U.S. invasion, "hopes to establish a safe haven in Iraq" from which he could operate against Western nations and moderate Muslim governments.
"Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment," Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate panel. "Overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia believe the U.S. has a negative policy toward the Arab world."
Jacoby said the Iraq insurgency has grown "in size and complexity over the past year," and is now mounting an average of 60 attacks per day, up from 25 last year. Attacks on Iraq's election day last month reached approximately 300, he said, double the previous one-day high of 150, even though transportation was virtually locked down.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the U.S. House armed services committee he has trouble believing any of the estimates of the number of insurgents because it is so difficult to track them.
On terrorism, Goss and FBI director Robert Mueller reiterated their belief that Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups intend to strike the United States but offered no new information about the threat.
"It may be only a matter of time before Al Qaeda or another group attempts to use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons," said Goss.
Mueller, whose bureau has the lead role in finding and apprehending terrorists in the United States, said his top concern is "the threat from covert operatives who may be inside the U.S." and said finding them is the FBI's top priority. But he said they have been unable to do so.
"I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing," Mueller said.
According to a new poll, Americans now consider North Korea to be one of their country's biggest enemies — up sharply from four years ago.
When the Gallup poll asked people in the United States which country they "considered to be America's greatest enemy today," North Korea and Iraq were tied for first, with 22 per cent choosing each country.
Iran was third, chosen by 14 per cent. North Korea claimed last week that it has nuclear weapons.