WaPo Editors Asleep at the Switch?

How did they let this story slip through their ideological prism?

In a stunning admission, the Washington Post said Sunday that President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq deserves at least some of the credit for the fact that terrorists have not been able to launch another 9/11-style strike against America.

"A broad cross section of counterterrorism officials believes al Qaeda and like-minded groups, in part frustrated by increased U.S. security measures, are focusing instead on Americans deployed in Iraq," the paper said, "where the groups operate with relative impunity."

"Comparative" would be a better modifier, and I wouldn't use the term "impunity" at all. But that doesn't douse the magnitude of concession the WaPo has thrown out there. It all but admits that everything John Kerry and the Democrats said over the two year of the '04 campaign about Operation Iraqi Freedom was complete and utter fecality.

Or, put even more deliciously, it admits that {sotto voce} George W. Bush was right.

Bush Administration officials have long argued that taking the war to the terrorists' doorstep was the best way of drawing fire away from the homeland, while "draining the swamp" of global terrorism's most notorious players.

Conventional media wisdom held, however, that the war had actually boosted al-Qaida recruitment - generating an even greater threat to the U.S. than would have otherwise been the case.

Intelligence officials cited by the Post, however, now say just the opposite has happened.

"Reports of credible terrorist threats against the United States are at their lowest level since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," according to U.S. intelligence officials and federal and state law enforcement authorities cited by the paper. [my emphasis]

Well, well, well. How do you prefer your crow, Donks - medium or well-done?

While you're making up your mind, choke on this:

Even in the Middle East, the Bush Administration's offensive strategy seems to have produced results from a national security standpoint.

With their ability to communicate and move about freely limited by tight U.S. and Pakistani surveillance, Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahiri, have both recently urged Abu Musab al Zarqawi, chief of al-Qaida operations in Iraq, to organize attacks on the U.S. homeland.

But Zarqawi himself remains pinned down by U.S. forces in and around Baghdad, with almost weekly reports of skirmishes where he's barely eluded capture.

Add to this the very fact that a major state sponsor of terrorism, Saddam Hussein, is sitting in a jail cell, and his country has been flipped over to the good guys, and you get the following optimistic conclusion:

While Zarqawi and many in his inner circle remain at large, counterterrorism experts now believe they're too busy with operations in Iraq to plan and execute anything like another 9/11.

Check and mate.

Man, somebody at the Post must have been tripping when this story trundled by.

Either that, or s/he/they lost a bet to their counterparts at the Washington Times.

Maybe next time they'll make the stakes Nats tickets instead.