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Terror's gains

REALITY HAS FINALLY caught up with rhetoric. Last winter the Bush administration wasted no opportunity to declare that Iraq posed a clear and present danger to America in part because it was in league with terrorists -- maybe even including al-Qaida. There wasn't much evidence for it then, but it made a handy hook to hang a war on.

There's more evidence now. Both Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez and civilian boss L. Paul Bremer III have said that some measure of the continuing trouble in Iraq is caused by foreign terrorists who appear to have al-Qaida behind them. Organizations linked to al-Qaida have been moving men into Iraq and stepping up activity there, they say.

Let's put it another way: Since the war, Iraq has started to look like a fertile ground for terrorists. The American invasion made this possible. The United States has created what it went to war to prevent. ...

...American tactics have so far produced unfortunate results: a major spike in Middle East instability and far more hostility toward the United States in the Muslim world than existed two years ago. It's time for a reality check; the invasion of Iraq may have gotten rid of an odious regime, but it was a setback, not a victory, in the war on terror.