Five-and-a-half years after the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush's war on terrorism has emerged as a wasteful, misguided exercise that poses its own threat to U.S. national security, experts say.

A growing number of analysts and former U.S. officials say the global war on terrorism has undermined U.S. influence abroad, forced onerous costs in American lives and money in Iraq, and unleashed a huge government spending spree that has often funded projects unrelated to national security.

It has also produced a climate of fear in the United States that helped justify the war in Iraq and the curtailment of civil liberties at home, they said.

"The atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty, and the vagueness of the definition of the enemy, makes the country more fearful and more susceptible to being steered in irrational directions," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was U.S. national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s.

Congress has spent nearly $271.5 billion on homeland security since September 11, with money often going to projects that have nothing to do with security but that are important to politicians and their constituents, according to a survey by the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

"What's clear is that there is no focus whatsoever in the way we are fighting terrorism," said Veronique de Rugy, author of the AEI study.

...[T]errorism experts say the United States has yet to develop a clear understanding of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups, despite the war on terrorism and a total of $500 billion spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The most pernicious effect of the war on terrorism has been the Iraq war, which has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and damaged U.S. standing in the Muslim world for generation, experts say.

"Iraq has been vastly worse than anything terrorism's ever done," said Ohio State University political science professor John Mueller, author of a book about the war on terrorism titled, "Overblown."

More at Reuters News Service
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Cpl Jane McLaughlan and Staff Sgt James Rogerson, were left with horrific injuries when their Royal Military Police Land Rover crashed in May 2003.

They are suing the US Army for £1.2m in the first private action involving coalition allies in the Iraq war.

They came face-to-face with US military lawyers at a hearing in London.

The soldiers, along with a Kuwaiti interpreter who was with them at the time, say they have been let down by US allies in Iraq.

They are making their private claim under the US Foreign Claims Act, which provides compensation for death or injuries caused by non-combat activities of US military personnel.

The US military insists it has no record of the incident, despite a British report naming the US unit and driver involved.

More at BBC News

Funny how this incident and the friendly fire incident didn't make the American news.