Many experts believe that the U.S. is not winning the war on terror despite President George W. Bush's claim that it is.

Al Qaeda has suffered setbacks, but America may have lost ground in the long-term fight, experts claimed.

This is a belief shared by a lot of experts as well as many inside the U.S. government, according to the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.

Bush cited the following achievements in the war on terror in a series of recent speeches: having removed terrorist sanctuaries, disrupted their finances, killed and captured key operatives, broken up terrorist cells in America and other nations, and stopped new attacks before they're carried out.

Experts also acknowledge that an all-out effort by the United States and its allies has succeeded in making life difficult for Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, and has probably disrupted any plans they had for further terrorism on the scale of the attacks in 2001.

But anti-terrorism experts believe that the U.S. may have lost ground since 2001 despite successes that have been mostly tactical and short-term gains - the equivalent of winning the first few battles in a long war.

"Even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude we are winning," John F. Lehman Jr., a former Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan, warned in a recent article for the U.S. Naval Institute.

"It looks worse to me," said Bruce Hoffman, a former director of terrorism studies at the Rand Corp. who teaches at Georgetown University and the U.S. Military Academy. "Al Qaeda is still alive and kicking. It's just changed its modus operandi. We've often painted a picture of Al Qaeda in retreat. I'm not sure it isn't Al Qaeda on the march."

The Los Angeles Times quoted experts as listing the following factors to make the point that the U.S. is not winning:

-- Although disrupted and dispersed, Al Qaeda, the initial focus of the "global war on terror," has been succeeded by a looser network of affiliates and homegrown terrorists - like those who carried out bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005 - who could grow to be just as dangerous;

-- The war in Iraq has become a training ground for Islamic extremists from Saudi Arabia and other countries, and some have returned home with expertise in urban warfare and explosives. Some experts fear the Persian Gulf's oil terminals could be among their next targets;

-- Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon have damaged the image of the U.S. in much of the Moslem world and made it easier for terrorist organizations to win recruits. The wars and controversies over U.S. treatment of detainees also have made it more difficult for allied governments to cooperate with American counterterrorism programs.

-- Most Americans do not believe the United States is winning the war on terrorism. A survey by the Foreign Policy magazine showed that 84 percent of more than 100 experts polled earlier this year said they did not believe the United States was winning the war on terrorism. In a Los Angeles Times poll, fewer than one- fourth of Americans said they believed the nation was "winning"; more than half said it was too soon to tell.

Source: Xinhua