Militants Widen Reach as Terror Seeps Out of Iraq

The Bushies are fond of insisting that if we leave Iraq the terrorists will follow us. The reality is that the war itself has created legions of terrorists that are preparing to attack us or our interests on American soil or abroad. The current conflict in Lebanon is a good example:

The Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and the tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond, according to American, European and Middle Eastern government officials and interviews with militant leaders in Lebanon, Jordan and London.

Another one of those interests is oil:

In Saudi Arabia last month, government officials said they had arrested 172 men who had plans to attack oil installations, public officials and military posts, and some of the men appeared to have trained in Iraq.

Our intelligence community has been telling us since the beginning that the Iraq War was making worldwide terrorism worse:

In an April 17 report written for the United States government, Dennis Pluchinsky, a former senior intelligence analyst at the State Department, said battle-hardened militants from Iraq posed a greater threat to the West than extremists who trained in Afghanistan because Iraq had become a laboratory for urban guerrilla tactics.