Remember the War on Terrorism?

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - The CIA believes the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better-trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, officials said on Wednesday. A classified report from the U.S. spy agency says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of skills, from car bombings and assassinations to coordinated conventional attacks on police and military targets, officials said.

Once the insurgency ends, Islamic militants are likely to disperse as highly organized battle-hardened combatants capable of operating throughout the Arab-speaking world and in other regions including Europe.

Fighters leaving Iraq would primarily pose a challenge for their countries of origin including Saudi Arabia and Jordan. But the May report, which has been widely circulated in the intelligence community, also cites a potential threat to the United States. "You have people coming to the action with anti-U.S. sentiment ... And since they're Iraqi or foreign Arabs or to some degree Kurds, they have more communities they can blend into outside Iraq," said a U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the report's classified status.

Okay, so the CIA isn't a credible source of intelligence anymore . . we all know that. How about the war on domestic terrorism?

June 12, 2005
WASHINGTON — On Thursday, President Bush stepped to a lectern at the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy in Columbus to urge renewal of the USA Patriot Act and to boast of the government's success in prosecuting terrorists. Flanked by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Bush said "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted."

Those statistics have been used repeatedly by Bush and other administration officials, including Gonzales and his predecessor, John Ashcroft, to characterize the government's efforts against terrorism. But the numbers are misleading at best.

An analysis of the Justice Department's list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people — not 200 — have been convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security.

Most of the others were convicted of relatively minor crimes such as making false statements and violating immigration law — and had nothing to do with terrorism, the analysis shows. Overall, the median sentence was 11 months.

Animal rights extremism FBI's top domestic terrorism priority
PAUL ELIAS
Associated Press
Jun. 21, 2005
PHILADELPHIA - Violence by environmental and animal rights extremists against U.S. drug makers has increased so much in recent years that it's currently the FBI's top domestic terrorism issue, a top agency official says.

The agency has about 150 open cases of arson, bombings and other violent crimes associated with militant environmental and animal rights activists protesting the experimental use of animals in medical research, he said.

Lewis made the comments Monday in an address to some of the 18,000 biotechnology executives gathered here at the four-day Biotechnology Industry Organization's annual convention.

Some of the same groups associated with the wave of violent attacks on biotechnology companies said they planned demonstrations outside the convention center Tuesday.