Spiegel takes a look at what German commentators are saying about George Bush after yesterday’s speech and the secret report on Al Queda renewed strength.

A resurgent al-Qaida. A continuing lack of success in Iraq. Not much is going right for George W. Bush. The American president, German commentators argue on Friday, has no options left when it comes to the failure of Iraq.

A resurgent al-Qaida. A continuing lack of success in Iraq. Not much is going right for George W. Bush. The American president, German commentators argue on Friday, has no options left when it comes to the failure of Iraq.

Not much is going right in Iraq these days.

Europeans have never been terribly impressed with United States President George W. Bush’s grasp on reality. Indeed, it has long been accepted by many on the continent that Bush’s War on Terror is a farce and his invasion of Iraq a failure. Two announcements that hit the headlines on Thursday merely served to reinforce that anti-Bush image.

The first was an assessment by US counter-terrorism analysts saying that the terror group al-Qaida is “considerably operationally stronger than a year ago” and has “regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001.” In other words, despite the years of hunting down the group in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere, al-Qaida is back. President Bush, not surprisingly, used the report as evidence in support of his anti-terror strategy.

“The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on Sept. 11,” he said. “That’s why what happens in Iraq matters to security here at home.”

The second titbit from Thursday was Bush’s own Iraq progress report. In the assessment, a requirement imposed by Congress following mid-term election losses by Bush’s Republican Party, Bush claimed that progress was made on eight of 18 benchmarks. A further eight were deemed wanting and two were inconclusive. Shortly after the report was delivered, the US House of Representatives passed a bill calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq by April 1, 2008.

Read the rest at Spiegel