The Americans unleashed this monster long before Mr Bush when they brought together the most fanatical Islamic fighters they could find and armed them and trained them to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. That was in the 1980's, during Reagan's term of office. The Mujahedin people promoted by America to bleed the Soviets white became the future Taliban and Al Queda. The long term results have been catastrophic for moderate Islamic people everywhere, for 3000 people in New York (and their families), for the Russians, for Afghanistan, for Iraq, and for America. Bush wins the booby prize for having initiated the final culminating horror of what has been, from the beginning, a totally misguided policy. No one has benefited from it thus far, except perhaps Iran whose position has been strenthened by the almost complete demolition of their greatest regional rival...Iraq. If Iran has benefited, it has been merely by default, not by intention.

It has, however, been a brilliantly successful policy if you want is this: perpetual war and a perpetual market for high tech weaponry and munitions. Maybe its planners were not so stupid after all. It depends on what they had in mind.