'In terms if' - major headache

[peteryoung]

So I think what happened in terms of losing the support of people and losing the sympathy of people was not the fight against al-Qaida, which people sympathize with," he said. "I think the fact is that most people around the world did not see a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida

The use of 'in terms of' here puzzles me again. The only way by which I could understand it is to interprete it like this: "With regard only to the fact that we've lost support and sympathy of people (and ignoring the fact that, say, we've captured many terrorist leaders), we'd reach the conclusion that what happened is not really the fight against al-Qaida.

But this just doesn't seem to make much sense to me. To fully understand 'in terms of' seems really a daunting challenge for me. I've learned that 'in terms of' means 'with respect to', but while I can readily understand a sentence like this:
The two groups are very similar with respect to age.
or
The two groups are very similar in terms of age.
,
when it comes to a sentence like that mentioned first, things just don't seem the same any longer. Would anyone please help me understand that sentence ? Any reply'd be apprecited

Originally Posted by peteryoung

So I think what happened in terms of losing the support of people and losing the sympathy of people was not the fight against al-Qaida, which people sympathize with," he said. "I think the fact is that most people around the world did not see a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida

The use of 'in terms of' here puzzles me again. The only way by which I could understand it is to interprete it like this: "With regard only to the fact that we've lost support and sympathy of people (and ignoring the fact that, say, we've captured many terrorist leaders), we'd reach the conclusion that what happened is not really the fight against al-Qaida.

But this just doesn't seem to make much sense to me. To fully understand 'in terms of' seems really a daunting challenge for me. I've learned that 'in terms of' means 'with respect to', but while I can readily understand a sentence like this:
The two groups are very similar with respect to age.
or
The two groups are very similar in terms of age.
,
when it comes to a sentence like that mentioned first, things just don't seem the same any longer. Would anyone please help me understand that sentence ? Any reply'd be apprecited

Yes, it has the same meaning as "in regard to", "in respect of", "respecting" etc.

[peteryoung]

Thanks, M56. So you mean my first interpretation is right?