Iraq is terrorist training ground

CHAOTIC post-war Iraq has become the world’s biggest training ground for the next generation of “professionalised” terrorists, according to a CIA report.

Awash with weapons and politically unstable, Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the country of choice for al-Qaida and related terrorists to train, the document said.

Iraq provides terrorists with “a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills,” said the report by the National Intelligence Council.

“There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries,” wrote David Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats.

The report, titled Mapping the Global Future, was based on a year-long analysis, including interviews with 1,000 US and foreign experts.

US President George Bush has called Iraq the “central front” in the war on terrorism.

But critics argue that the terrorists arrived in Iraq after the US-led invasion.

There is no evidence that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein was ever linked to Osama bin Laden.

According to the report, seen by the Washington Post, hundreds of foreign terrorists flooded into Iraq across its unprotected borders soon after the invasion.

There, they found tonnes of unguarded weapons which they are now using against US troops.