Right-wingers have consistently held that Bush’s war on terror was a ‘success’ based on the sole fact that, aside from 9/11 and the ensuing anthrax attacks, there were no major foreign terrorist attacks within the United States. Bush “kept us safe” for seven years.

Aside from the rather salient point that Clinton had at least as good a record (after the WTC bombing in ’93, there were no major foreign terrorist attacks within the United States until the end of his term also), one has to note that Bush faced no major threats to thwart. (Clinton faced the Millennium threat, and it was thwarted; conservatives go to great lengths to deny Clinton credit for that, despite giving Bush more credit for doing less.)

The lack of an attempt obviously means that al Qaeda didn’t try to attack us at home.

Doesn’t that come across as strange? Certainly they didn’t hold off because our borders are so secure, or Bush’s anti-terror methods were so air-tight; they weren’t. They didn’t hold off because they were so busy killing our troops in Iraq; Bush’s war increased their recruited base so much they could easily have spared the manpower.

Has anyone considered the idea that al Qaeda didn’t attack us because Bush was doing exactly what they wanted him to do? And they didn’t want to interfere with that?