It's about time someone made a scorecard of the Administration's handling of the terror war. The Independent Institute has just compiled one, with analysis. Here are the results.

To date, the biggest accomplishment—the elimination of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime that was harboring al Qaeda—has been significantly diminished by the al Qaeda leadership’s escape and by the nascent quagmire there that is embroiling the United States.

....Now that the threat to the U.S. homeland from al Qaeda in Afghanistan has been greatly reduced, rather than dig the Afghan hole deeper, the United States should declare victory, withdraw U.S. forces and turn the peacekeeping over to a coalition of the willing.

And the effects of U.S. policy go downhill from here. The hawks in the administration used the September 11 attacks to justify an unrelated policy agenda—settling old scores with Saddam Hussein. Because the administration hyped the threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and then didn’t find any, its fall-back position is that Iraq is better off without the despotic Hussein.

There's lots more explanation, but here are the grades:

Report Card on U.S. War on Terrorism

Removing al Qaeda haven in Afghanistan and neutralizing the group’s leadership B-

Avoiding a quagmire in Afghanistan C-

Finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq F

Making Iraq better off by eliminating Saddam F Reducing proliferation of WMD to rogue states and terrorist groups F

Adopting a more “humble” foreign policy to prevent overstretch of U.S. military F

Making U.S. citizens and territory safer from terrorism and bringing 9/11 conspiracy to justice F