Expanding a bit on this thought from Jen Rubin: A standard, almost rote part of Obama’s argument is that the war in Iraq “hasn’t made us safer, and has in fact made us less safe.”

But we haven’t had a (knock on wood) terrorist attack on American soil since the anthrax, and nothing that was clearly by al-Qaeda on our soil since 9/11. It’s actually been a while (again, knocking on wood) since a major terrorist attack in the West — London? Looking back on the immediate post-9/11 era — Daniel Pearl’s murder, the Bali bombings, the Limburg tanker bombing, the Riyadh compound, the Istanbul consulate bombings, the Madrid train bombings — a case can be made that al-Qaeda pulled off more big attacks before and immediately after the start of the Iraq War than lately.

CIA Director Michael Hayden’s assessment won’t be the last word, but it ought not be ignored by the candidates:

While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden said Osama bin Laden is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely forfeited his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit adherents. Two years ago, a CIA study concluded that the U.S.-led war had become a propaganda and marketing bonanza for al-Qaeda, generating cash donations and legions of volunteers.
All that has changed, Hayden said in an interview with The Washington Post this week that coincided with the start of his third year at the helm of the CIA.
“On balance, we are doing pretty well,” he said, ticking down a list of accomplishments: “Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally — and here I’m going to use the word ‘ideologically’ — as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam,” he said.

The U.S. can’t necessarily claim all the credit for this. But think about how many Jordanians now loathe al-Qaeda for blowing up the wedding in Amman. Bizarrely enough, if America never invades Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi probably never launches that attack. If the war in Iraq never begins, al-Qaeda never tries the strategy of massacring Shia and Sunni Iraqis alike – turning clerics of both sects against their movement. The television network of al-Jazeera, hardly a pro-American voice, inevitably has to cover acts of al-Qaeda violence against Muslims, and day by day, the message that al-Qaeda are indiscriminate, psychopathic mass murderers gets pounded home. Zawahiri’s answer to angry Muslim questioners was the biggest deer-in-the-headlights moment since… well, Scott McClellan, come to think of it.

“The Iraq War made us less safe” — well, that sounds credible when you just want the war to end, and you imagine thousands of Iraqis signing up with al-Qaeda. But if the war didn’t turn into such a propaganda tool for bin Laden… then we’re left with a big pile of dead al-Qaeda and a country full of Arabs who hate them.

Does that result really make us less safe?