If you still believe, deep inside, that we are actually “winning” our War on Terror and/or that the invasion of Iraq actually moved us closer to that goal, please read this much-blogged-about article that’s surely going to become a classic for great reporting and myth smashing.

Bush has shaped his presidency, and his reelection campaign, around the threat that announced itself in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Five days after the attacks, he made it clear that he conceived a broader war. Impromptu remarks on the White House South Lawn were the first in which he named “this war on terrorism,” and he cast it as a struggle with “a new kind of evil.” Under that banner he toppled two governments, eased traditional restraints on intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and reshaped the landscape of the federal government.

As the war on terrorism enters its fourth year, its results are sufficiently diffuse — and obscured in secrecy — to resist easy measure. Interpretations of the public record are also polarized by the claims and counterclaims of the presidential campaign. Bush has staked his reelection on an argument that defense of the U.S. homeland requires unyielding resolve to take the fight to the terrorists. His opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), portrays the Bush strategy as based on false assumptions and poor choices, particularly when it came to Iraq.

The contention that the Iraq invasion was an unwise diversion in confronting terrorism has been central to Kerry’s critique of Bush’s performance. But this account — drawn largely from interviews with those who have helped manage Bush’s offensive — shows how the debate over that question has echoed within the ranks of the administration as well, even among those who support much of the president’s agenda.

Interviewing senior bush advisers, the reporter then goes on to pulverize the president’s specious claims of victory and success and freedom on the march. It’s devastating. You will simply not believe the mess we are now in as a result of our dirty little invasion of Iraq.

Most amazing in bush’s utter refusal to understand that Al Qaeda is a hydra-like creature, sprouting dozens of new heads for every one we manage to sever. He sees it as an organization with a set number of officers, and if he can just kill those officers….

It’s a depressing but important read. I truly expect a lot of Republican officials to step into the voting booth on November 2nd and pull the lever for Kerry. When you read this, you ralize that a lot of them have to know just how bad, just how dangerous our little princeling is, for us and for the world.