Just a wee bit out of balance, maybe

According to the US State Department’s annual country reports on terrorism, al-Qaeda is still the biggest terrorist threat to the US and its “allies”. It has regained much of its pre-9/11 strength; terrorist-related deaths increased last year by 8 per cent to 22,000. A separate report from the US government’s Accountability Office says there is “no comprehensive plan” to deal with the al-Qaeda threat.

Hello?

After all the American deaths and maimings and traumas, after the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, after six and a half years of an all-out “war on terror” and five years of blitzkrieg in Iraq, after Blackwater and Halliburton and trillions of dollars of American money, after the devastation and the migrations and the plundering, after all the hassle imposed on millions of travellers, after Guanatanamo and Abu Ghraib, secret detentions and renditions, after the waterboarding and the outsourced torture services — after all this, al-Qaeda is still the number one threat, the terror toll is still rising, there is still no "comprehensive plan" for dealing with it?

Weighed on the US’s own evidence, would anyone dare to say that “the war on terror” is a strategy that is working?

Bill Clinton was impeached for telling a stupid fib about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. What would they have done to him after a demonstration of incompetence and corruption as massive and prolonged as this? And yet GW Bush is still strutting around telling us how wonderful and successful he has been.