Mother Jones Exclusive: How the Iraq War Inspired a Wave of Global Terrorism

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The White House has long claimed that our presence in Iraq attracts terrorists who might otherwise attack American interests. This assertion has always seemed dubious, but in a new Mother Jones exclusive study, Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank put the “flypaper” theory firmly to rest. They’ve crunched the numbers and found that the Iraq War has, in fact, led to a significant increase in jihadist terrorism across the globe. Call it the “Iraq Effect.” If you include Iraq and Afghanistan, terror attacks have increased 609% since the U.S. took Baghdad; take away Iraq and Afghanistan and the increase drops, but it’s still a hefty 35%. Rather than eliminating terrorists, Bergen and Cruickshank explain, the war has energized terror groups and become a “catalyst for the increasing globalization of the jihadist cause.” It’s a sobering assessment of an overlooked consequence of the Iraq debacle.

The full study will be posted tonight at 10 PM Eastern/7 PM Pacific, when Bergen and Cruickshank will be appearing on Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN to discuss the Iraq Effect. Bergen will appear on C-Span’s Washington Journal tomorrow morning at 9:15 AM Eastern/6:15 AM Pacific.

And stay tuned as we roll out more of our “Iraq 101” package tonight. It’s loaded with info on everything you wanted to know about the war but were afraid to ask.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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