A January 16 Wall Street Journal editorial falsely asserted that "[n]ot a single man, woman or child has been killed by terrorists on U.S. soil since the morning of September 11." In fact, shortly after September 11, 2001, letters laced with anthrax were mailed through the U.S. Postal Service. As the Journal previously reported, those letters “killed five people, sickened 17 others and crippled mail delivery for months.” Indeed, the January 16 Journal editorial mentioned “the anthrax panic” that occurred “in the weeks after 9/11” but did not note the fatalities caused by those attacks. In an article on its website about the attacks, the FBI noted that “the nation was terrorized in what became the worst biological attacks in U.S. history.” A separate article on the FBI website called the anthrax attacks “the worst case of bioterrorism in U.S. history.”

From the Journal editorial:

By his own standard, Mr. Bush achieved the one big thing he and all Americans demanded of his Administration. Not a single man, woman or child has been killed by terrorists on U.S. soil since the morning of September 11. Al Qaeda was flushed from safe havens in Afghanistan, then Iraq, and its terrorist network put under siege around the world. All subsequent terror attacks hit soft targets and used primitive means. No one seriously predicted such an outcome at the time.

The Administration's achievement goes beyond lives saved to American confidence restored. Memories fade fast. Recall the fear about imminent strikes, the anthrax panic and the 98-1 Senate vote for the Patriot Act in the weeks after 9/11. Americans yearned for leadership that this President provided. He calmed the fears and urged tolerance at home, saying on that memorable evening, “We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them.”

His most controversial and difficult decision, the war in Iraq, was consistent with his post-9/11 doctrine to regard “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism ... as a hostile regime” and pre-empt threats to America from rogue regimes and proliferators. The failure to discover WMD gave opponents the opening to claim the war was fought on false premises, but Bill Clinton, Democrats on Capitol Hill and every major intelligence service also believed Saddam had WMD.