International Poll: Many Countries think Iraq War upped Terror Threat by USA Today / The Guardian 10:36am 5th Mar, 2004   March 4, 2004 (USAToday)    WASHINGTON — A majority of people living in the two countries bordering the United States and in five major European countries say they think the war in Iraq increased the threat of terrorism in the world, Associated Press polls found.    In the United States, people were evenly divided on whether the war has increased or decreased the terror threat.    The polls found that people living in all the countries except the United States have an unfavorable view of the role that President Bush plays in world affairs.    The AP polls were conducted by Ipsos, an international polling firm, in Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Spain and the United States.    While a majority in each of the countries polled except the United States said the terrorism threat was greater now, fewer than one in 10 in any of the European countries said the terror threat had been decreased by the war.    In Canada and France, just over half felt it had been increased, whereas in Germany, three-fourths thought the Iraq war has made the terror problem worse.    Concern about terrorism was very high in Italy and Germany, where about seven in 10 said they were very worried or somewhat worried, and especially in Spain, 85%, where residents also have to contend with domestic terrorism by Basque separatists. The high levels of concern about terrorism are probably linked to the recent history of terror in those countries, one public opinion analyst said.    "Italy and Germany were the countries most heavily affected by terrorism during the 1970s," said Christian Holst, director of opinion research at Ipsos Germany. "This kind of sticks in people's memories — the older they are, the more they remember, and the higher the level of fear is."    Fewer than half in Canada said they were worried about terrorism, a finding that didn't surprise Darrell Bricker, president of public affairs polling of Ipsos-Reid in Canada.    "Our experience with terrorism tends to be on the news and south of the border, not here," Bricker said.    Events in the Mideast are increasing terror concerns in many countries, the polls found. A majority in each country, including the United States, said they felt the situation between Israel and the Palestinians has made the terror threat around the world worse.    General negative feelings about the Iraq war contribute to fears of "either defeated Iraqis or terrorists who use the Iraq war as a pretext to commit attacks," Holst said.    The polls found that people living in all the countries except the United States have an unfavorable view of the role that President Bush plays in world affairs. Only in the United States did a majority, 57%, have a positive view of the role played by the U.S. president.    Just over half in Mexico and Italy had a negative view of Bush's role. In Britain, the closest U.S. ally in the war in Iraq, and in Canada, two-thirds have a negative view.    Sam McGuire, director of opinion research at Ipsos UK, said Bush's low ratings in Britain are notable, given that country's close alliance with the United States. Britain traditionally has been seen as the United States' "staunchest European ally on world affairs," he said, and long has been a buffer between the United State and Europe.    Three-fourths of those in Spain and more than four in five in France and Germany had a negative view of Bush's role in world affairs.    "Bush has a lot of work to do if he wants to be popular in France," said Edouard LeCerf, director of opinion research for Ipsos France.    People in the different countries had a more mixed reaction about whether Britain and the United States should have gone to war in Iraq, if it turns out no weapons of mass destruction are found.    Of the eight countries polled, a majority in five countries — the United States, Canada Mexico, Italy and Britain — say that even if no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq, there were other reasons to justify the war.    The AP-Ipsos polls of 930 to just over 1,000 adults in each country were taken Feb. 12-21 and have margins of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.    © Copyright 2004 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.    March 3, 2004 (The Guardian/UK)    "Admit WMD Mistake, Survey Chief Tells Bush" by Julian Borger in Washington.    David Kay, the man who led the CIA's postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has called on the Bush administration to "come clean with the American people" and admit it was wrong about the existence of the weapons.    In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Kay said the administration's reluctance to make that admission was delaying essential reforms of US intelligence agencies, and further undermining its credibility at home and abroad.    He welcomed the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate prewar intelligence on Iraq, and said the wide-ranging US investigation was much more likely to get to the truth than the Butler inquiry in Britain. That, he noted, had "so many limitations it's going to be almost impossible" to come to meaningful conclusions.    Mr Kay, 63, a former nuclear weapons inspector, provoked uproar at the end of January when he told the Senate that "we were almost all wrong" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD).    He also resigned from the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which he was appointed by the CIA to lead in the hunt for weapons stockpiles, saying its resources had been diverted in the fight against Iraqi insurgents.    "I was more worried that we were still sending teams out to search for things that we were increasingly convinced were not there," Mr Kay said.    His call for a frank admission is an embarrassment for the White House at the start of an election year. The defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has dismissed Mr Kay's assertion that there were no WMD at the start of the Iraq war as a "theory" that was "possible, but not likely".    In his state of the union speech in January, George Bush did not refer to his prewar claims that Iraq was an "immediate threat" but instead said the ISG had found "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities".    Mr Kay, who was formerly a UN weapons inspector, called for the president to go further. "It's about confronting and coming clean with the American people. He should say we were mistaken and I am determined to find out why," he said.    A White House official said it was too early to draw conclusions: "The ISG is still working, and the commission on this has not even started."    However, Mr Kay said that continued evasion would create public cynicism about the administration's motives, which he believes reflected a genuine fear of WMD falling into the hands of terrorists. He also said that if the administration did not confront the Iraq intelligence fiasco head-on it would undermine its credibility with its allies in future crises "for a generation".    Mr Kay said that he had become convinced there were no WMD to be found several months ago, before presenting an interim report to Congress last October saying no stockpiles had been found, but he said the CIA and the Blair government were nervous about the impact of his conclusions.    "I think the greatest concern about the report was in London rather than in Washington. It was a different political issue in London than it was here," he said, referring to the storm around the death of his former UN colleague David Kelly.    Mr Kay said he had been expecting Dr Kelly's arrival in Iraq to help the search for biological weapons programs, and had spoken to him shortly before his death. "He never had any doubts about Iraq's programs," Mr Kay said.    © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
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