Mr. Speaker, the more President Bush entangles this country of ours in the Iraq occupation, the less committed it seems he is to the real national security threat we face, global terrorism, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Over the holiday weekend, when few people were paying attention, it was reported that the CIA has closed down ``Alec Station,'' its special unit that was charged specifically with tracking down and capturing Bin Laden.

We've sure come a long way since the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when the President promised to get him, dead or alive. So much for Sheriff Bush. The tabloids are doing a better job of hunting down Tom Cruise's baby than this administration is at finding bin Laden. But this latest decision is of a piece with the Bush approach to bin Laden.

In the fall of 2001, he had bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora, but the President let him get away by relying on local warlords rather than moving American troops in to finish the job.

And a few months later, at a White House press conference, the President's cavalier approach to bin Laden was on full display. ``I don't know where he is,'' the President said. ``I just don't spend that much time on him. I truly am not concerned about him.''

Well, 300 million other Americans are concerned, and they want to know why we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars to occupy and foment civil war in Iraq, but we can't maintain a single intelligence operation office devoted to apprehending the man responsible for the murder of thousands of Americans. And this from a President who has never missed an opportunity to wave the flag of 9/11, to exploit that tragedy in order to score political points and justify the reckless use of American power in Iraq.

The evidence is clear. This President is not serious about fighting terrorism. If he were, he wouldn't have diverted energy and resources away from the struggle in order to chase this white whale in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein, as we know by now, was not an ally of bin Laden's and was not a threat to U.S. security. But by invading Iraq, President Bush has turned that devastated country into a jihadist breeding ground and made all of us less safe. The Iraq war has created terrorists rather than stopping them.

There is only one answer. It is time to bring the troops home and end the occupation of Iraq. Then we can redirect our resources, military and otherwise, toward finding bin Laden and pursuing a true counterterrorism strategy, a counterterrorism strategy that instead of invading countries willy-nilly, makes use of multilateral partnerships and strong intelligence capabilities.

That, in addition to toppling the Taliban, would be the proper way to respond to 9/11. That would be the right strategy to meet the national security challenge of our time.