'Experts' Strain to Snatch Defeat From Jaws of Victory

Catch-22, al-Reuters style.

On the one hand, Bush has crushed al Qaeda to the point where they no longer have the ability to mount an attack in the United States:

Even as al Qaeda tries to rebuild operations in Pakistan, experts including current and former intelligence officials believe the group would have a hard time staging another September 11 because of U.S. success at killing or capturing senior members whose skills and experience have not been replaced.

"If the question is why al Qaeda hasn't carried out another 9/11 attack, the answer I think is that if they could have, they would have," said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But, every silver lining has a cloud, especially if Reuters disapproves of the President's political party. Most of the article is about how horrible success has been for us:

Some experts warn that the successes of Bush's war on terrorism have been undercut by huge security costs, strains on the U.S. military from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and resentment of the United States abroad.

And there you have it. Where Bush went wrong was to pursue the terrorists to their home bases and shift the battlefield from Manhattan to Afghanistan and Iraq. Far better to have allowed bin Laden to continue launching attacks directly against American civilians. At least then we'd have less "resentment abroad."