U.S. intelligence failures are jeopardizing the war on terror. David Kay, the former head weapons inspector in Iraq, acknowledged that much when he resigned two weeks ago. “It turns out we were all wrong,” Kay told a Washington Post reporter, referring to American pre-war intelligence. “And that is most disturbing.”

Weapons inspectors have searched for months and Iraqi scientists have had every opportunity and reason to come forward and reveal possible caches of illicit weapons. And yet we have found nothing. We have found no evidence that Saddam Hussein colluded with al-Qaida in carrying out the 9/11 attacks and we have discovered no evidence that Iraq posed an immediate threat to our national security.

In the aftermath of Kay’s harrowing announcement, we do however know about the sorry state of our intelligence agencies: they were unable to unveil the true nature of Iraq’s weapons programs prior to the decision to go to war. On the cusp of battle, we failed to discover that Saddam’s regime had been plagued by corruption, hindered by containment policies and weakened in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Saddam had lost touch with the political reality of his nation to such an extent that just weeks prior to the American led invasion, he had been busy giving his Minister of Information transcripts of his romance novels.

This begs an all-important question: how can we expect to win the war on terror, which relies primarily on intelligence estimates, when the intelligence estimates we have are grossly inadequate? The obvious answer is that we can’t.

In the long run, Saddam Hussein’s deposition is probably a positive thing. Clearly he harbored a grudge against our nation and at least desired to obtain illicit weapons. What Kay’s findings demonstrate, however, is that our containment policies were working – Saddam was unable to develop weapons of mass destruction, thus our immediate invasion was unnecessary and costly. It was the wrong course of action. This is especially true if one considers that the war in Iraq diverted our attention away from al-Qaida, North Korea and Afghanistan.

In the case of Afghanistan, this negligence is particularly egregious. Just because the Afghans have ratified a constitution does not mean that our work there is finished. U.S. troops still have a strong presence in the region and much of the country is still controlled by warlords. This is not to belittle the progress we have made, but by focusing the majority of our efforts, planning and resources on Iraq – a nation that did not constitute an immediate threat to our national security – we have squandered a valuable opportunity to put the bulk of our efforts behind rebuilding Afghanistan, a process that actually is of paramount importance to our immediate national security.

In other words, things aren’t looking so good. We are now embroiled in a nation-building project that has exacerbated the pervasive sense of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. Although we have successfully rounded up a bevy of international terrorists, al-Qaida is a group that thrives off anger, frustration and hatred. The members themselves are disposable as long as the idea behind the movement lives on. That is what our leaders have yet to recognize: our intelligence failures in Iraq and the unnecessary war that subsequently ensued has merely fueled their fervency and given them time to replenish their ranks.

Worse still, we have lost what little credibility we had with the rest of the world. The war on terror is a transnational fight and thus cooperation is imperative; we can’t possibly expect to thwart terrorism if other nations don’t trust us. Everything we do from here on out will be viewed with skepticism and suspicion.

Last Friday, the president addressed various concerns about this recent intelligence debacle. He said he wants to “know all the facts” about our failures. This is good. Unfortunately he stopped short of advocating an independent investigation. This is yet another travesty – one that is likely driven by election year politics.

The fact is that terrorism is by far the greatest scourge of this nation today, the most clear and present danger facing America at the dawn of the 21st century. Sept. 11, 2001, should have been a wake-up call for our government agencies. Instead, President Bush has maintained the status quo. As the commander and chief of this country, the onus was on him to remedy our intelligence problems and increase our safety and security. He has failed.

At this point, excuses are simply unacceptable. We Americans are paying the price for this administration’s negligence with our lives. We have suffered through enough dithering, enough political spin and party line explanations. Change is imperative – our security is being jeopardized. And if the president won’t act now, then that change must come in the form of a new president. Bottom line.