So what the hell has this Administration been doing for six years?

For six years we've been told that only this Administration takes the threat of terrorism seriously. For six years we've been told that only Republicans can keep us safe. For six years we've been told that we need to allow the government to listen to our phone calls and track our internet comings and goings in order to keep us safe. For four years we've been told that the Iraq War is the central front of the Global War on Terror.

Six years. Billions of dollars. The wholesale evisceration of our civil liberties. Over 3500 soldiers dead in Iraq and more in Afghanistan. And what do George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have to show for it?

The Return of Al Qaeda

A new National Intelligence Estimate presents a sobering analysis of terrorism threats to the United States, concluding that Al Qaeda has reconstituted its core structure along the Pakistani border and may now be a stronger and more resilient organization today than it appeared a year ago, according to three U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the draft document.

In fact, the activities of Al Qaeda’s leadership along the Afghan-Pakistani border are only one component of an overall threat environment that is worrying officials both in the United States and Europe. The stepped-up movement of suspected Islamic militants between Iraq and Europe has proven so troubling that the German government recently set up a special interagency team to track the flow of suspected jihadi recruits to and from that worn-torn country, two German sources told NEWSWEEK.

[snip]

The NIE reflects the consensus judgment of U.S. intelligence agencies and is prepared by the National Intelligence Council. A version of the new report, due to be released later this summer, is especially striking because it contrasts in some respects with previous analyses by the U.S. intelligence community. An NIE on “Trends in Global Terrorism”—portions of which were declassified last September—concluded that U.S. counterterrorism efforts “have seriously damaged the leadership of Al Qaeda and disrupted its operations.”

At the same time, however, last year’s NIE also warned that Al Qaeda had spawned a jihadi movement that had metastasized, and that radical jihadis were “increasing in both number and geographic dispersion.” One cause, the analysis concluded, was the U.S. invasion of Iraq—which intelligence officials said had become a “cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihaidst movement.”

But the new NIE’s conclusions about Al Qaeda activities in Pakistan, along with the increasing signs of jihadi militants flowing out of Iraq, suggest that the U.S. counterterrorism community may now be facing the worst of both worlds: a reconstituted Al Qaeda leadership coupled with a growing and dispersed worldwide army of angry jihadis inflamed by the U.S. presence in Iraq. The new document’s conclusions also could make it more difficult for the White House to argue, as it frequently has in the past, that President Bush’s post-9/11 efforts have made the country “safer.”

One of two things is happening: Either this Administration, in the serious trouble its in, is cynically ratcheting up the fear card beyond all reason as a distraction in the hope that once again, Americans will respond and not ask the question I ask in the title of this post, or else the Bush/Cheney junta has botched their handling of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks so completely -- perhaps deliberately -- that they have squandered six years, thousands of lives, and countless dollars, all in vain, and the result is that the enemy they claim to fight has only become stronger as a result of their actions.

Either way, it is reprehensible.

(Jon Swift puts it all into perspective for us.)