Iraq and terror

The debate about the connections between Iraq and last Thursday's attacks seems still to have some life in it - even if it still isn't really front-page news. Last night, Channel 4 News got really quite excited about a paragraph in a Chatham House (RIIA) briefing paper about security and terrorism (pdf only). In an article by Frank Gregory and Paul Wilkinson entitled "Riding Pillion for Tackling Terrorism is a High-risk Policy," the authors write "There is no doubt that the situation over Iraq has imposed particular difficulties for the UK, and for the wider coalition against terrorism. It gave a boost to the Al-Qaeda network’s propaganda, recruitment and fundraising, caused a major split in the coalition, provided an ideal targeting and training area for Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists...Riding pillion with a powerful ally has proved costly in terms of British and US military lives, Iraqi lives, military expenditure, and the damage caused to the counter-terrorism campaign."

Jack Straw could only express his "absolute astonishment" at the suggestion, but this is hardly anything very new, and as much as I respect Paul Wilkinson, his comments hardly carry the sort of authority held by the Director of the CIA, Porter Goss, who in February told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: "Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists. These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism.They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries...The Iraq conflict...has become a cause for extremists."
Again, this isn't exactly unusual, but if Straw is astonished by Chatham House's assertions, we can be sure his views diverge a long way from those of the Director of the CIA. It might be reasonable, in this case, for Mr Straw to explain why his analysis of the situation differs so greatly from the CIA, and what the basis is for his own views (all he offered yesterday was "September the 11th happened in September 2001.") Well, that puts Straw's "absolute astonishment" in some context, but doesn't give me much faith in the man in charge of UK foreign policy.