“I’m breaking the rules of the game here (no attacks on U.S. soil = Bush has made the U.S. less safe; a total of 2 attacks in other western democracies = Bush has made the world less safe), but please indulge me." 

The Iraq war is doing for a new generation of Jihadists what the Afghan war did for a previous generation.  It is radicalizing them training them in the art of war.  

Indeed, in so far as many of today’s Jihadists do not go to Iraq with any type of training, they can not be considered terrorists per say.  However, that is how they come out.  In a strange twist of fate, the situation in Iraq is such that terrorists have been able to replace the terror camps in Afghanistan with on the job training in Iraq.  The local population has been welcoming enough and forthcoming enough with information such that the Jihadists have been able to establish some sort of base of operations within the country coupled with some semblance of a command structure.  Indigenous forces (e.g., ex Republican guardsmen) have also provided Jihadists with invaluable training.       

To say that the US is safer now that thousands more Jihadists are proficient in the use of explosives, for example, strikes me as rather odd. 

That said, what is truly troubling is what all of this bolds for the future.  Afghanistan did not become a problem right away. It was really only after the Soviets pulled out that returning Jihadists began to cause major problems. Ironically, the US may find itself in a situation where victory in Iraq may spell greater danger for the US as Jihadists leave Iraq for greener pastures.      & nbsp; 

"I’m wondering why you focus on Iraq as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda, but seemingly overlook the fact that regime change in Afghanistan, by its very nature, could have only one outcome, and that outcome was ‘surprise! a recruiting tool for al Qaeda! ‘Who would have thunk it?’"    

The Afghanistan operation had more legitimacy in the eyes of world than did the Iraq operation.  For this reason alone it is not the “recruiting tool” that Iraq is.  Another reason is that Iraq is an Arab country right in the heart of the Arab world and Afghanistan not.  

Finally, for or strategic reasons the Jihadists have also tended to emphasis the Iraq as opposed to Afghanistan.  Pretty much every country in the world backed the operation in Afghanistan.   As a result, the Jihadists can not divide the West by attacking a country (e.g., Canada) under the sole pretext that it supported operations in Afghanistan.  Indeed, it would have the opposite affect; it would drive the West together.

The Jihadists know this.  One of the dominate themes of various Jihadist’s websites is how to best divide and conquer.  Hence, the kidnapping of two French reporters to protest the headscarf ban in France was roundly criticized on the grounds that it was drive the West together.  When the reporters were eventually released, the captors expressed “appreciation for the French attitude on the Iraqi question and the two journalist’s attitude toward the Palestinian cause”.           

The best that can be said about the fly paper theory from a US point of view is that it has brought the “war on terror”, via Al Jazzera and other Arab networks, into the living rooms of those in the Arab world.  This has and will continue to stimulate debate in the Arab world.