President Bush said today that he had ordered the declassification of key parts of a major intelligence report that reportedly found that the Iraq war has helped produce a new generation of Islamic radicals and increased the terrorist threat.
The president was clearly unhappy that findings from the document, a National Intelligence Estimate completed in April, had made their way into news reports. The New York Times disclosed some of the findings in its issue on Sunday.
Noting that evidence-gathering for the assessment had concluded in late February, and that the report itself had been finished two months later, he said: "Here we are, coming down the homestretch of an election campaign and it’s on front page of your newspapers. Isn’t that interesting?"
The president’s made the announcement during a brief White House news conference alongside a key ally in the terror fight, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.
Mr. Bush also said that people were drawing the wrong conclusion from the leaked news reports.
"Some people have guessed what’s in the report and concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake," the president said. "I strongly disagree."
