The topic below was originally posted on my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal as well as The Peace Tree, the Independent Bloggers Alliance and Worldwide Sawdust.

Foreign Affairs published a sobering article by Bruce Riedel in their May/June issue entitled, "al Qaeda Strikes Back." Riedel, a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution retired last year after 29 years with the CIA.

With Bush so anxious to compare the trials of our own time to the challenges of World War II, and others on the right ready to equate what we're now facing with the greatest dangers of the past, it only seems appropriate that we see how Bush stacks up against the man who led us through those days.

That's right, folks, it's time for Presidential ThunderDome.  George W. Bush vs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Two preseidents enter, one president leaves!

Not too long ago, I discussed the fall of Mogadishu as another sign that Islamic extremists are winning and that the United States under Bush has failed to successfully combat al-Qaeda and it's related groups. One such diary on Political Cortex got attention from BBC Radio, which had me on one of their live call-in shows.

Some responses to my fears that Bush's failures are enabling a new, extremist Caliphate in the Muslim world criticized me for being too quick to judge Islam harshly. I take such criticism to heart because my beef is with religious extremists of all kinds and those fools, like Bush, who aid and abet their oppressive, terrorist agendas. I have no beef with any religion in particular or religion in general. It is extremism and terrorism that I object to.

Not long ago I wrote about the Bush Administration's renaming the War on Terrorism as the "Long War"...or, as I prefer to dub it, the "Forever War" after Joseph Haldeman's science fiction classic. The fact is that Bush has done practically NOTHING to actually fight al-Qaeda since he abandoned the fight in Tora Bora so he could invade Iraq. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda regroups worldwide, reasserting itself in Pakistan and Afghanistan, spreading to Iraq, and further establishing itself in Somalia.

More evidence has surfaced that Bush was not sincere when he said that we must fight a war against terror and that the war can be won and must be won. Most of us know about the UAE port deal with a country whose royal family once sheltered Bin Laden from a CIA attack that would have killed him. But there is another piece of evidence that Bush is not sincere when talks about terrorists - he considers peace activists to be terrorists.

Most of us would think of terrorists as people like Bin Laden whose purpose is to kill innocent civilians at random for political purposes. But not Bush. He thinks that anybody who expresses their First-Amendment right to dissent from the President's policies is a terrorist and must be tracked as much as possible. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer link provides a list of Washington-area peace groups who have been spied on by the Bush administration.

Hamza Rabia, the latest alleged "Number 3 Al Qaeda leader" (who might have been just a key associate) is definitely dead. Maybe.

Pakistani officials insisted Monday that DNA evidence and communications intercepts both confirm that a top al-Qaida operative died in an explosion at his tribal hide-out last week, brushing off Washington's reluctance to confirm the man was dead.

You have to wonder how these folks were able to apprehend the guy's DNA, but unable to apprehend the guy himself.

But wait, there's more! The head of Pakistani counterterrorism, Javed Iqbal Cheema, is being cagey on whether or not Pakistan's sample of DNA was matched to DNA found at the scene, or if its DNA sample was matched to DNA actually taken from Rabia's body:

He would not say whether Pakistani forces had recovered Rabia's remains from the blast site. The Karachi-based Dawn newspaper reported that Rabia's body had been retrieved by associates from outside Pakistan and spirited away.

So, this is uh, one hell of a victory, isn't it? At this rate, the War on (Some) Terror is going to be over in no time. Maybe.

We got one!  Oh, boy, we got one! Bush's strategery is working!

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The operational commander of al-Qaida and possibly the No. 3 official in the terrorist organization, Hamza Rabia, was killed early Thursday morning by a CIA missile attack on a safehouse in Pakistan, officials told NBC News.

>Pakistan's president later confirmed the militant leader's death.

Two things to note about this. First, location. The "top al qaeda leader" was in Pakistan, not Iraq. Not Afghanistan, either. But Pakistan. Second, let's try and pin this guy down, shall we?

The government describes him as al Qaeda's #3.   Now, since al Qaeda's #2 has been killed more times than Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her, wouldn't that make this guy al Qaeda's #2? Or does the terrorist organization not do promotions?

But is he even #3?  Back in 2003, the "top operational leader" was reported to be Amjad Farooqi.  Abu Hamza Rabia was decribed as his "assistant."  When Farooqi was killed in 2004, he was replaced not by Rabia, but by Abu Faraj Farj.  Abu Faraj Farj, in turn, was captured by in May of 2005 . So, let's assume that, after being passed up twice for the job, Rabia finally became "al Qaeda's #3" in May.

His capture is sure good PR, but does it really make us safer? The job of "operational leader" has been filled by three people in two years. As each person is captured or killed, another terrorist picks up the spot. Has al Qaeda been crippled at all by the revolving door status of the #3 position? Let's look to our Dear Leader for answers.

lies, lies and more lies...

murray waas, as usual, breaks some key information in an excellent article just released in the national journal online...

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.