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Right after the terror attacks in 2001, even the folks poking fun at George W. Bush believed that he would rise to confront history’s challenge. It’s five years later, and boy, were we ever wrong!

The Bush administration continues to get good poll numbers on the War on Terror.

Oh, sure, Bush’s tax policies have looted the treasury for the benefit of the very rich. Sure, he’s filled important government jobs with incompetent cronies. Sure, he’s turned budget surpluses into the biggest deficits in history, and saddled our children and grandchildren with trillions of dollars of new debt. Sure, his Medicare changes were a nightmare of complexity and confusion. Sure, he invaded a country that never attacked us, based on false and falsified intelligence. Sure, he turned his back on the people of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck.

But he’s doing a fine job fighting terror, right?

That’s not what U.S. intelligence agencies are saying:

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

…

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,” it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

…

In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership.

But the new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.

…

[T]he Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of “D+” to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that “there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.”

“The Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse.” Worse! Not “little improved,” but “worse”. For that, a grade of “D+”?

The War on Terror is their strong suit, their best thing, and they’re doing more harm than good.

I say flunk ’em.