The latest fallout from Operation Iraqi Freedom: France - who opposed the war - stands accused by Italian diplomats of having concocted bogus information to "prove" that Iraq was trying to get its hands on yellowcake uranium from Niger.

No, that is not a misprint (though it could be bullshit, considering the source). In a move worthy of the bumbling Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther movies, France allegedly sought to feed false information to Britain and America, hoping they would take it. Said one Italian official: "Their aim was to make the allies look ridiculous in order to undermine their case for war."

One supposes that, when enough time had gone by, the rug could be pulled out from under the "evidence," and the war effort would collapse. And it might well have worked, too, except that the Bush Administration was hell-bent on war with Saddam Hussein. Any and all warning signs on questionable intel were completely ignored by their "intelligence" people in the rush to grasp at straws, and whatever qualms anyone might have had with the Yellowcake went by the same wayside.

This disturbing revelation - though, again, it could be horsepucky - follows on the heels of President Bush's colossal faux pas at the Republican National Convention. In his big, muchly-anticipated speech, he let slip that we might not be capable of winning the War on Terror.

Of course, the reelection machine went into overdrive, and by the next day Bush was backpedaling something fierce on that one. But I think there was a grain of personal truth in that candid moment.

While he tries to put on a brave face and look firm, strong and determined to protect America from a very real threat, I think Bush is very aware of how badly the War on Terror is going. And I also think he knows all too well that the fault lies both with, and around, him.

Put at some length: so long as we have a toothless Secretary of State who's far out of step with his boss, a Secretary of Defense who thinks we can win wars and lock down the territory afterwards with too few people and too much technology, a National Security Advisor who's living in moo-moo land, a Vice President who exudes corporate corruption, an Attorney General who thinks civil rights are for moral deviants, and a Pentagon full of neocon weirdoes who harbor some frightening ideas on what constitutes "victory" in this matter, we will not win this war - ever.

That's not to say that we aren't getting anywhere. In fact, it's rather ironic that while the Bush people accuse John Kerry of wanting to return to the pre-9/11 days of treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue, it seems our greatest achievements have come from the law enforcement side of the program. Increased security and better cooperation between agencies have resulted in no further attacks on our soil, and it seems that a month doesn't go by that we - or one of our allies - don't catch a major Al-Qaeda figure.

But when it comes to the "war" part of the program, we're screwing the pooch without a condom. Two wars later, we have achieved "victory" over two hot zones where troops are still being shot and killed by a "pacified" populace. Major enemies from both deposed regimes are still on the loose, and causing trouble. Our prewar intelligence is being shown up as a Frankensteinian fraud. And let's not even get into how Rumsfeld's military can't play nice with defeated prisoners (or the poor schlubs who got picked up along with them and indefinitely held for it).

Most important of all - rather then destabilizing Al Qaeda, these wars have invigorated it. They have sent more converts than ever before to their ranks. And they have given the organization the time and energy needed to rework its structure and become that much harder to deal with.

And need we remind folks once more that, despite a huge manhunt and a very large bounty on his head, Osama bin Laden is still at large?* How on earth could we be letting a man who needs constant dialysis treatments slip through our fingers?

It almost seems as though we don't care about what's behind us, so long as we go "forward": forward to the next regime we think needs knocking over, that is. But in the process we ignore what we have left behind, forgetting that it could always rise up and stab us in the back.

Clear back in January of 2002, I had this to say:

"if this is a war, why isn't it being fought like one?. (The War on Terror) is looking less like a carefully crafted, strategically minded campaign against international terrorists and the countries that harbor them, and more like an extended series of fly-by-night police actions against people we've had on our hit list for years. We started down the road with a certainty in our step that was good to see, but now we seem to have become drunk on cheap victory and fallen asleep on watch."

The bad news is that, more than three years later, we haven't woken up. Bush was at least man enough to admit that he "miscalculated," but that's much too little and far too late. I don't see how another four years of this nonsense is going to be any better, even if folks do get shuffled around a bit.

Is Kerry the man to win it, then? Maybe, maybe not. But there's a chance that seeing Bush go down in defeat this November - as rightly deserves to happen, for several reasons - will cement in Kerry's mind the mistakes made by the soon-to-be-previous administration. With any luck, those mistakes will not be repeated in the next four years.

But you never know: Kerry remains untested in this regard. All we do know is that Bush has been tested for the better part of four years, and despite a good start, and a few good innovations, has done a pretty crummy job in a very important aspect - the use of force when "diplomacy" fails.

And I don't see him getting any better with another term under his belt, either.

* To be fair, I'd like to make it known that I believe Osama bin Laden is dead. I think everything we've heard from him since our war in Afghanistan has been courtesy of a sound-alike on a scratchy tape. But I'm not going to completely count him out until we get word that his grave has been found.

I'm also not going to put it past Bush & co. to have been sitting on the whereabouts of that grave until, oh, this October...?