U.S. isn't winning its war on terror, experts tell poll

WASHINGTON - More than eight in 10 American terrorism and national security experts don't agree with President Bush's claims that the U.S. is winning the fight against terrorism, and the Iraq war is the biggest reason why, according to a poll released Wednesday.

One participant, a former CIA official who described himself as a conservative Republican, said the war in Iraq has provided global terrorist groups with a recruiting bonanza, a valuable training ground and a strategic beachhead at the crossroads of the oil-rich Persian Gulf and Turkey, the traditional land bridge linking the Middle East to Europe.

"The war in Iraq broke our back in the war on terror," said the former official, Michael Scheuer, author of "Imperial Hubris," a popular book highly critical of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts. "It has made everything more difficult and the threat more existential."

Scheuer, a former counter-terrorism expert with the CIA, is one of more than 100 national security and terrorism analysts who were surveyed this spring for the poll by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank headed by John Podesta, who served as White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration.

The views of the analysts were starkly at odds with those espoused by President Bush. He has repeatedly expressed confidence in U.S. progress in the anti-terrorism campaign. And he often asserts that the war to depose Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was not only a vital part of this mission but that Iraq has become the central front in that campaign.

The public also gives Bush higher marks in this effort than the policy experts surveyed.

In an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken June 22-25, 57 percent of respondents said America's efforts to fight terrorism are going well; 41 percent said it is not going well. The poll has a 3 percentage point margin of error.

One participant in the Foreign Policy/Center for American Progress poll, retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, said the U.S. military deserves credit for actions in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world meant to disrupt terrorist operations.

"It's very difficult to plan, very difficult to finance that plan, very difficult to recruit, very difficult to train, when you are constantly harassed," said Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Colin Powell while he was the secretary of state during Bush's first term.

Wilkerson criticized the Bush administration, though, for what he called an over-reliance on the military in the anti-terrorism campaign. Like many other analysts polled, Wilkerson stressed the need to increase U.S. diplomacy and other sources of so-called "soft power" to help win hearts and minds across the Muslim world.

"Bombs, bullets and bayonets are not the answer to this problem," Wilkerson said.

Wilkerson and Scheuer made their remarks during a panel discussion the poll's sponsors held to announce their findings. Among the experts polled, nearly 80 percent had once worked for the U.S. government. Of those, more than half worked in the executive branch, a third in the military and 17 percent in the intelligence community.