You know, wouldn't it be nice if the US rejected terror like Britain does, by saying, "we're not afraid"? Instead, our government routinely politicizes terror by terrorizing us with threats of terror.

The most recent onslaught comes with a just-released National Intelligence Estimate that proclaims, rather throatily, that Al Qaeda "has protected or regenerated elements of its homeland attack capability."

The report has been treated by the administration, all the way up to the Commander-in-Thief, as a great big I-told-you-so—not to them—but from them to us!  Which is perplexing, since the paper basically argues that everything the Bush administration has done in the so-called War on Terror has been an unmitigated failure.

You have to ask yourself why an administration as pathologically averse to admitting its mistakes as this one would suddenly be touting news of vast failures as proof that "staying the course" in Iraq is the only option.

Hmm. It's a mystery, innit?

Meanwhile, the Democrats need to stop fixating on Iraq. It's a quagmire in more ways than one. They need to come out with one voice for troop withdrawal—no more debates—and get to matters that truly imperil Americans, like economic justice, universal health care, and equal educational opportunity.

The Iraq debate is over. It's a failure. Finish it. And while we're at it let's move on from this administration which routinely uses terror on Americans in the phony fight against terror abroad, which has so far only added fuel to the fire.

Americans need to stand up like Brits and say to this administration: we're not afraid.