It was a common article of faith, I seem to recall out here in the left side of blogtopia (y! sctw!) that the whole Mess in Mesopotamia would become THE recruiting ground for al-Qaeda in the middle east. Well, hate to say "I told you so" but...

The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials told Congress yesterday.

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Donnie, on the other hand is pretty sure that all is well...remain calm. I hear he always liked the part of Chip Diller in Animal House.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee that he has trouble believing any of the estimates of the number of insurgents because it is so difficult to track them.

Rumsfeld said that the CIA and DIA had differing assessments at different times but that U.S. intelligence estimates of the insurgency are "considerably lower" than a recent Iraqi intelligence report of 40,000 hard-core insurgents and 200,000 part-time fighters. Rumsfeld told Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the committee's ranking Democrat, that he had copies of the CIA and DIA estimates but declined to disclose them in a public session because they are classified.

Truly, Rumsfeld is an imbecile. I'm guessing that he's still referring to them as "dead enders", and refuses to believe than any will stand up to him and Beloved Leader.

After the hearing, Rumsfeld told reporters that he did not mean to be "dismissive" of the intelligence reports.

"People are doing the best that can be done, and the fact is that people disagree," he said. ". . . It's not clear to me that the number is the overriding important thing."

That is all.