Iraq's Biggest Export: Terror

Thanks to George W. Bush, Iraq has become the world's premiere terrorist training ground.

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.

Some of the fighters appear to be leaving as part of the waves of Iraqi refugees crossing borders that government officials acknowledge they struggle to control. But others are dispatched from Iraq for specific missions. In the Jordanian airport plot, the authorities said they believed that the bomb maker flew from Baghdad to prepare the explosives for Mr. Darsi.

Estimating the number of fighters leaving Iraq is at least as difficult as it has been to count foreign militants joining the insurgency. But early signs of an exodus are clear, and officials in the United States and the Middle East say the potential for veterans of the insurgency to spread far beyond Iraq is significant.

If asked, of course, Bush will look us in the eyes and claim that this merely proves his case - namely, that Iraq is the "central front in the war on terror," and that to leave Iraq is to invite The Terrorists to come to America and kill the children of selected members of the White House press corps.

Back on planet earth, every mammal with its brain stem intact knows that this nightmare is entirely of Bush's making. Iraq was not a haven for terrorists prior to the U.S. invasion. Bush made it that. He assured us that in short order following the invasion, Iraq would become a major exporter of petroleum. Instead, it is becoming the world's greatest exporter of a commodity against which Bush is supposedly waging a war: terrorism.

Heckuva job.