This will not come as news to any of the regular visitors to this site. But if you just happened by you should probably read this.

The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.

A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the "centrality" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document.

"It's a very candid assessment," one intelligence official said yesterday of the estimate, the first formal examination of global terrorist trends written by the National Intelligence Council since the March 2003 invasion. "It's stating the obvious."

Yes it is "stating the obvious", but what I have learned time and time again is that there are many people for whom obvious is not at all obvious.

For those people let me just say this in plain simple English.

"The war is bad! It has done more harm then good! The reason for going to war in Iraq was a lie! Dick Cheney eats babies!" Okay I made that last one up. But that does not mean it is not true!