Reuters reports (1 Nov 05):

By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. terrorism experts Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have reached a stark conclusion about the war on terrorism: the United States is losing.

Despite an early victory over the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the two former Clinton administration officials say President George W. Bush's policies have created a new haven for terrorism in Iraq that escalates the potential for Islamic violence against Europe and the United States.

America's badly damaged image in the Muslim world could take more than a generation to set right. And Bush's mounting political woes at home have undermined the chance for any bold U.S. initiatives to address the grim social realities that feed Islamic radicalism, they say.

"It's been fairly disastrous," said Benjamin, who worked as a director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999.

"We have had some very important successes getting individual terrorists. But I think the broader story is really quite awful. We have done a lot to fuel the fires, and we have done a lot to encourage people to hate us," he added in an interview.

Benjamin and Simon, a former State Department official who was also at the NSC, are co-authors of a new book titled: "The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right" (Times Books).

Following on from their 2002 book, "The Age of Sacred Terror" (Random House), Benjamin and Simon list what they call U.S. missteps since the September 11, 2001, attacks on America.

The Bush administration presents the war on terrorism as a difficult but largely successful struggle that has seen the gutting of al Qaeda's pre-September 11 leadership and prevented new attacks in the United States over the past four years. ...