A front page Washington Post story on Friday – one that got quite a bit of television and radio attention as well — carried this lead: “Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of ‘professionalized’ terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director’s think tank”.

Yes, but there are differences between what took place in Afghanistan and what is taking place in Iraq – differences that should not escape the notice of either the CIA or the Washington Post.

To note just a few: In Afghanistan, the Taliban government facilitated the training of terrorists. Not so in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the training was conducted openly, in large, well-supplied terrorist training camps. Not so in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the United States did not interfere in any serious way with the training of terrorists. Not so in Iraq. In Afghanistan, trained terrorists graduated and then dispersed around the world to plan acts of mass murder. In Iraq, trained terrorists fight the U.S. armed forces – which also, one hopes, are becoming “professionalized” in 21st Century warfare.

Iraq may be, as the story says, “a haven” for terrorists, but surely it’s not a safe haven, not with U.S. Special Forces and Marines on the ground.

The CIA report says that Iraq now “is a magnet for international terrorist activity.” Let’s consider: To what country would we prefer that terrorists be drawn? Where else would we like them to be conducting their international terrorist activity?

The CIA report notes also that terrorists now communicate, train and recruit through the Internet. Are there not benefits to us in denying them the kind of man-to-man and hands-on training they previously received in terrorist boot camps in Afghanistan? (And, of course, they also previously received such training in Iraq – for example at Salman Pak, south of Baghdad, and at the camp run by al Qaeda-linked Ansar al Islam in the northeast.)

The report predicts that increasingly “training materials, targeting guidance, weapons know-how, and fund-raising will become virtual (i.e. online).” Again, virtual is probably an improvement on actual, don’t you think? Even so, let’s hope the CIA is doing more than observing all this. Let’s hope they are, at long last, making plans to defeat whatever methods the terrorists devise.

Or, alternatively, we can throw up our hands, and spend our time trying to think of ways to appease the terrorists or at least not offend them more than we already have.

The full Washington Post story is here.