Iraq Is A Terrorist Training Ground

I quote from this article:

At the same time, some Pentagon officials now acknowledge that the
two-and-a-half-year insurgent war has turned Iraq into a terrorist training
camp.

U.S. intelligence indicates Islamic militants from several African
nations — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan and Somalia — travel through
Syria into Iraq, where they get hands-on training in roadside and suicide
bombings, assassinations and kidnappings as well as counter-surveillance and
counter-intelligence against military targets, constantly changing their
tactics to counter American defenses...

And Pentagon officials now fear those freshly trained terrorists are taking the deadly lessons they learn in Iraq to other countries. U.S. intelligence indicates many of the
militants are returning home or slipping into Europe, where they may join
existing terrorist groups or create and train new cells of their own.

All that cost (of life and of money) only to see Iraq surpass Afghanistan as the top terrorist training ground makes me concurrently very sad, angry, and hopeless.