Karl Rove attempts to distract public from massive Bush failures

The Big Story: Karl Rove during a speech on Wednesday, claimed: “Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Only the mighty conservatives would step forward and save a vulnerable nation.

Pardon me whilst I hurl. Let's make an accounting of exactly what conservatives have accomplished in the past four years, shall we?

• 1,382 days after 9/11, Osama bin Laden is still at large and al Qaeda is regrouping. More than three-and-a-half years ago Bush vowed to capture terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden “dead or alive.” He’s failed. The administration wants you to think it is hot on his tracks, however. CIA director Porter Goss said he had “an excellent idea” where Bin Laden is hiding. Vice President Cheney said he had “a pretty good idea of a general area that he's in.” With all the bluster, you’d think they could close the deal.
• 1,382 days after 9/11, terrorist attacks are at an all time high. By quantitative measures, the Bush administration’s approach to combating terrorism is an abject failure. Last year “[t]he number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled,” according to the Washington Post. State Department data shows that “attacks grew to about 655 last year, up from the record of around 175 in 2003.” How did the administration respond? By halting the publication of the State Department report.
• 1,382 days after 9/11, the Iraq war—a complete diversion from the fight against al Qaeda—has produced more terrorism not less. According to the CIA, “[t]he war in Iraq is creating a training and recruitment ground for a new generation of "professionalized" Islamic terrorists.” An in-house CIA think tank concluded that in the poorly planned aftermath of the invasion, “hundreds of foreign terrorists flooded into Iraq across its unguarded borders.” There is a serious risk that Iraq is now “creating newly radicalized and experienced jihadis who return home to cause trouble in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and elsewhere.”