Every few days, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nevada) puts out the “Bin Laden Tick Tock,” jabbing President Bush for his failure to capture the terrorist leader six years after 9/11’

At the same time, though, Democrats seem determined to curtail Bush’s ability to thwart terrorists – by banning harsh interrogations, restricting his ability to tap overseas terrorist communications and expanding legal rights for terrorist detainees.

They also have tried repeatedly to force Bush to hastily withdraw from Iraq, even though Osama Bin Laden himself declared it to be the central front in Al Qaeda’s war on America.

Democratic rhetoric commonly alleges that Bush endeavors to maintain a “climate of fear” in the country in order to expand executive power and curtail civil liberties.

As Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., put it during debate Monday on terrorist surveillance, “this is an administration that scares its people, but does not protect them ... and tries to take away the rights of its people.”

Yet the recent disclosures of former CIA agent John Kiriakou support the administration’s contention that the harsh interrogation – specifically, “waterboarding” – of Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubayda in 2002 furnished information that “disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks” and “saved American lives.”

As The Washington Post reported on Dec. 9, congressional leaders were given about 30 secret briefings on interrogations – with detailed descriptions of waterboarding – and only one member of Congress objected to the procedure.