Haven For Terrorists

If we keep it up, they'll be breeding terrorists on farms.

Sunni and Shiite extremist groups are working inside Iraq to create a terrorist haven, where foreign fighters can operate, a U.S. State Department report said Friday.

Militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq group and others 'view Iraq as a potential safe haven and are attempting to make it a reality,' said the annual report on worldwide terrorism.

The study said Syria and Iran, whom the United States consider to be state sponsors of terror, are supporting terrorists in Iraq.

Syria 'was used as a facilitation hub for terrorist groups operating in Iraq' and Iran 'has provided political and ideological support for several terrorist and militant groups active in Iraq,' the report found.

It also noted the 'proliferation of smaller looser networks that are less capable but also less predictable.'

These terrorist groups loosely associated with al Qaeda 'represent the most prominent current terrorist threat to the United States' and allies because they are 'smaller, harder to detect and more difficult to counter,' the report found.

'These micro-actors are launching more attacks, and they are more local and more lethal,' said a senior State Department official involved in the preparation of the report.