As you probably already know, the big show on Sunday was the Bill Clinton-Chris Wallace showdown on Fox News Sunday.

The crystallizing moment of the exchange was:

WALLACE: Do you think you did enough, sir?

CLINTON: No, because I didn't get him.

WALLACE: Right.

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now.

They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried.

So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.

This is a point that LiberalOasis has explored since 2003:

It was unfair to hyperbolically lambaste Clinton for failing to end terrorism -- especially with factual distortions.

And it would be unfair to hang every Al Qaeda attack on Bush.

What is appropriate though, is questioning if the Administration is doing everything it can to stop Al Qaeda for good.

...by the latter years of his term, the Clintonites were well aware of the enormity of the threat. And working hard to stop it until the very last day...

... The Bushies, of course, responded by ignoring the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman national security commission that was established under Clinton.

And so the question now is Bush doing everything he can?

Since then, we've learned from Richard Clarke that Clinton was personally obsessed with getting Bin Laden, while the Bushies thought, before 9/11, that Clarke was too obsessed.

We've learned that before 9/11, the Bushies' prioritized money for missile defense, when Democrats were insisting on renewing the focus on terrorism.

And we've learned from Ron Suskind that Bush derisively shrugged off the famous " Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US" memo, by telling the briefer, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

But did the attitude and strategy of Bush and his fellow neoconservatives fundamentally shift after 9/11? Let's see...

This year, Bush shut down the CIA station focusing on Osama bin Laden, which was created under the Clinton Administration in 1996:

This month, Bush told conservative reporters that sending large numbers of special forces to get Bin Laden is "not a top priority."

And on Friday, Bush offered support for Pakistan's peace deal with Qaeda-friendly militants, the sort of appeasement so often derided by him and his allies.

The McClatchy Newspapers already reported that the deal was making matters worse in Afghanistan. And on CNN's Late Edition yesterday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai further confirmed it:

Unfortunately, since the agreement was signed, we saw more violence in Afghanistan exactly at the border areas with north Waziristan of Pakistan. Our governor, a very prominent Afghan, was assassinated with a suicide bombing. Other attacks took place in the area.

So, we have a deliberate strategy on the part of Dubya not to prioritize Al Qaeda, and instead, prioritize Iraq.

Or more accurately: not prioritizing the defeat of the terrorist threat, and instead, prioritizing the neocon project of exerting illegitimate, unilateral influence across the Arab/Muslim world at gunpoint.

And how has that worked out?

From Sunday's NY Times:

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate ... completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism .... since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government...

...it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, "Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement," cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report "says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," said one American intelligence official.

It was great to see the misinformation about Clinton's record on terrorism continue to be debunked.

But as far as Democratic prospects in November, and beyond, are concerned, it's more important to move beyond defending Clinton's record and take the offensive in discussing Bush's record.