Click
photo to play
Length: 5:29
ANDERSON COOPER: Some new
polling from our friends at Opinion Research. Forty
percent of Americans, when asked, say they support
the war in Iraq. Fifty-nine percent oppose it.
Forty-two percent now approve of how President Bush
is handling his job. That's up a couple points from
early August. Fifty-five percent give him failing
grades.
The polling was done before intelligence story came
out this past weekend.
Want to take look at the impact at ground level.
We're, of course, continuing to focus on this
National Intelligence Estimate, which is basically a
report put together by all the intelligence agencies
in the United States, saying that, in effect, the --
at least the parts that were leaked to "The New York
Times," saying that the war in Iraq is actually
contributing to the global jihad against the United
States, from CNN's Michael Ware right now -- he joins
us from Baghdad -- and Peter Bergen, CNN terrorism
analyst and the author of "The Osama bin Laden I
Know: An Oral History."
Michael, does this match up to what you're seeing on
the ground over there, that things are getting worse,
that this is making things worse?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, the fact
that the Iraq war is creating more enemies for
America, is fostering al Qaeda, not weakening it, has
been self-evident here on the ground since at least
the summer of 2004.
Coincidentally, this national intelligence
assessment, they began writing it that same year.
Once Zarqawi arrived here, he began to hijack a local
fight and internationalize it, globalize it, turning
it into jihad. Now, this is exactly what Osama bin
Laden had been hoping for. I mean, the al Qaeda
pattern is to inspire and to franchise terrorism.
And that's what we're seeing. We're now seeing this
as the melting pot, or even the blooding ground, for
the next generation of al Qaeda. And that's being
seen here on the ground -- Anderson.
COOPER: Peter, I remember you actually wrote about
this in an article for "Foreign Affairs" back in
2005, saying, in part -- and I quote -- "Today's
insurgents in Iraq are tomorrow's terrorists."
I mean, was it really that predictable? Should U.S.
officials have seen this coming?
PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, U.S.
officials did see this coming, because, Anderson,
even before the war started, the intelligence
community made an assessment that the war was likely
to produce exactly this effect. So, this is not
entirely surprising.
And, you know, there's a problem, a logical problem,
that the president has had with a lot of this, which
is the argument that it's better to fight them in
Baghdad than in Boston, A, is based on two false
predicates, one, that there's a finite group of
people that you can attract to one place and kill. It
turns out that there's a lot of people who were
attracted to this fight.
And, secondly, the -- this war is going to end. It
may take a long time. And not all the foreign
fighters who come to this war are going to be killed.
And, believe me, when the war is over, they're not
going to go back home and open coffee shops and
falafel stands in their home countries. They're going
to be the well-tested shock troops of the
international jihad.
They will have swapped business cards. They will have
fought the best army in history. They will have used
terrorist tactics, like IEDs, suicide bombings.
They're going to be a giant problem. And, for the
moment, you know, this problem is largely confined to
Iraq. But that is not going to be true in the future.
COOPER: Well, Michael Ware, the White House is
saying, well, look, if these people have hated
America, hated Israel for years, they didn't need
Iraq to hate us more. And others have said, Senator
John McCain said, look, if it wasn't in Iraq, it
would be in Afghanistan.
WARE: Well, I mean, the invasion of Iraq did several
things.
One -- firstly, it fueled their information
operations. I mean, the images of Abu Ghraib, the
images of U.S. troops entering Iraqi homes,
everything that spins off that played directly into
their hands. But the other thing is, they were
looking for a platform, the next Afghanistan, the
next Chechnya. Where better than in the face of the
great enemy, America, itself?
We saw that Zarqawi had this vision back in 2003, his
bombing campaign of that summer against the Jordanian
Embassy, the U.N. headquarters. And then the plan he
outlined for Osama bin Laden in a letter intercepted
by U.S. intelligence and published in early 2004
mapped all this out. He said: This is precisely what
I'm going to do.
And he's done it. This is Zarqawi's enduring legacy,
even after his death -- Anderson.
COOPER: Peter, though, is there something unique
about Iraq? Because, I mean, I will put you the same
quotes that I just put to Michael Ware.
I mean, you know, if not Iraq, could have been
Afghanistan, could have been somewhere else. Do you
agree with that, or do you think that's misleading?
BERGEN: Well, A, it is happening in Afghanistan. I
mean, Anderson, you and I were there just recently. I
mean, we have got foreign fighters in conducting
suicide operations in Afghanistan. So, it's not that
it isn't happening in Afghanistan.
But Iraq has made it much worse. And I will give you
an objective standard to judge this. In 2003,
worldwide significant terrorist attacks were the
highest since 1982, as the war began in Iraq. Those
numbers then doubled in 2004. And they went off the
charts in 2005. And when the 2006 figures are in, you
will see this trend is exponentially rising.
We have had suicide attacks in London. We have had
suicide attacks in Madrid. We have had suicide
attacks in a lot of places that didn't have these
problems before the Iraq war. And we don't -- the
objective standard is terrorist attacks around the
world have gone through the roof as the Iraq war
began.
COOPER: Peter Bergen, Michael Ware, appreciate it.
Thanks, guys.