A Reuters article entitled “Bush success vs. al Qaeda breeds long-term worries” starts out by saying:

Even as al Qaeda tries to rebuild operations in Pakistan, experts including current and former intelligence officials believe the group would have a hard time staging another September 11 because of U.S. success at killing or capturing senior members whose skills and experience have not been replaced.

And to illustrate this seemingly positive news, columnist David Morgan quotes a few experts, such as a guy who claims that al Qaeda is delighted to be on the receiving end of this “success”:

“If you’re looking at it from the cave, or wherever al Qaeda is hiding at the moment, you have to be pretty happy with the way the world is moving,” [former CIA agent Michael Scheuer] said.

Yes, the world rarely looks more sunny than from deep within a cave.

Morgan notes that although “Islamist groups have killed about 1,600 people in 53 attacks overseas since 2001,” the current trend is encouraging: “The number and lethality of the attacks have fallen off since 2004.”

So naturally, Morgan concludes the article on a positive note:

But IntelCenter chief executive Ben Venzke said the chance of an al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil has grown based on the militant network’s increasing references to the American homeland in public messages.

“Our leading thinking is that we are closer now to an attempt at a major attack in the United States than at any point since 9/11,” Venzke said.

As James Taranto points out:

There is no denying Venzke is right. If an al Qaeda attack is in the future, then it is closer now than at any point since 9/11. Venzke has stumbled onto something profound: the linear and sequential nature of time.

There are other disturbing implications as well. If you survived 9/11—and this is true no matter who you are—you are more than five years closer to death now than you were then.