In fact, evidence suggests that the war on Iraq has given other sorts of encouragement and aid to terrorists.

"The level of anger and frustration towards the United States is the highest we've ever seen, and expressed unanimously through all sectors, including pro-western liberals," says Marc Lynch, a professor of political science at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., and an expert on Arab public opinion. That anger was confirmed in a postwar survey conducted for the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which showed America's dismal standing in the Arab world.

Specifically, the survey found, "solid majorities" in the Palestinian Authority, Indonesia and Jordan -- and nearly half of those in Morocco and Pakistan -- say they have at least some confidence in Osama bin Laden to "do the right thing regarding world affairs." Fully 71 percent of Palestinians say they have confidence in bin Laden in this regard.

According to news reports, some al-Qaida members, effectively kept out of Iraq during Saddam's rule, have been entering the country to attack U.S. soldiers. Pointing to that ominous development, as well as the poll numbers indicating burgeoning respect for bin Laden among the masses in the Middle East, Cirincione says it seems "pretty obvious the warnings from counterintelligence analysts before the war are coming to pass, that the war has been a recruiting bonanza for al-Qaida."

At the same time, the fixation on Iraq has pulled intelligence resources away from the anti-terrorism campaign. "It's impossible to know what we're missing now," because of the emphasis on Iraq, says Metzl at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Human resources," and not just money, "need to be the focus of what we're doing," he says.

Beyond Iraq's borders, the war has had a similar effect of backfiring. The preemptive strike on Baghdad seems to have sent a dubious message to states like North Korea and Iran: Go get nuclear weapons, fast. Earlier this month, North Korea announced it had finished converting 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into plutonium, the clearest sign yet the communist government might be determined to begin producing nuclear weapons. At the same time, news that U.N. inspectors recently found enriched uranium in Iran, another member of Bush's "axis of evil," set off alarms among nuclear disarmament experts.

"Look at what's happened in past six months," said Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago. "Iran and North Korean are racing ahead to develop and deploy a nuclear arsenal. We haven't solved nuclear proliferation problem -- we've made it worse."

But in light of the Iraq invasion, said Dan Reiter, professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta, Iraq and North Korea believe they are doing "a rational thing" to preserve themselves.

Now the U.S. must invest heavily in diplomacy to block their efforts to build nuclear weapons, and some hawkish policy experts suggest that if they don't back down, further military action might be required.

Perhaps most worrisome to Americans is how the war, the Bush administration's preoccupation with it and the financial cost of it have undermined domestic security. For the past 12 months, "we've done virtually nothing in a non-military realm to substantially improve our security," says terrorism expert Stephen Flynn, author of the upcoming book "America the Vulnerable." "The war has been a substantial drain of the resources available to deal with homeland security."

The invasion itself cost approximately $100 billion. The cost of rebuilding Iraq could run approximately $45 billion over the next year alone. By comparison, the Department of Homeland Security, which employs 180,000 people, has a budget of $24 billion for the next fiscal year.

A chilling example emerged Wednesday: Just a day after the federal government warned of more al-Qaida suicide hijackings, the Transportation Security Administration proposed to cut $104 million from its air marshal program, the Associated Press reported. It was not known how many air marhsals would be taken off the job, but clearly, air security would be compromised.

"When we are faced with more priorities than we have funding to support, we have to go through a process of trying to address the most urgent needs," said agency spokesman Robert Johnson.

The federal budget shortfall has a dangerous trickle-down effect. The cost of the war and the Bush tax cuts have dried up federal aid available to states, cities and towns. They're already suffering from budget deficits, and now there are huge new expenses for anti-terror programs. But, says Flynn, "the administration has said to states and localities, 'You're on your own, protect your citizens and protect the infrastructure,'" he says. "The administration decided after 9/11 it was not going to provide any resources. Now with Iraq, and the billion dollar-a-week cost attached to it, the option of aiding states and localities has been cut off. It's impossible."

According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, America's cities have spent approximately $2.6 billion on homeland security needs since Sept. 11, and another $70 million per week while America was at a heightened state of alert during the war in Iraq. At the same time, the National Governors Association estimated states need to spend from $5 billion to $7 billion to meet their homeland-security needs. Many simply cannot afford it.

A senior national security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, Flynn has focused much of his work on the lax security standards that govern overseas shipping containers, 6 million of which arrived in 361 U.S. sea and river ports last year. He says the security challenges alone facing the country in the wake of Sept. 11 -- protecting chemical plants and other crucial infrastructure, increasing airline safety, monitoring maritime traffic more closely and tightening up the borders -- "would be all-consuming in their own right." But factor in the costly invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq, and "nobody at the top of the government is focused on these security issues, and they're without resources for the foreseeable future."

Already, police and firefighters have joined other local officials in begging for more support from Washington. And there are signs that the public, too, is beginning to see through the Bush strategy. According to a recent Program on International Policy Attitudes poll, less than half of Americans -- 45 percent -- now think the U.S. has found clear evidence that Saddam Hussein was working closely with al-Qaida.

For now, the White House is sticking to its script linking the war to terrorism and national security. "A free Iraq," Bush told reporters at his Thursday news conference, "will make America much more secure."

This story has been corrected since it was first published.

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