WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN?
He could be at the RNC, for all Bush knows
Remember the days after September 11th, 2001, when President Bush got all Clint Eastwood on us? (This was after his initial yellow-bellied reaction to the attacks). Remember "we'll get Osama dead or alive" and "we will smoke them out of their holes"?
Well, it's been almost three years since that fateful Tuesday, and the man responsible for planning, financing and coordinating the attacks, the leader of al Qaeda, is still on the loose. Bush has gotten him neither dead nor alive. Osama lives, and if you think he's not a threat, ask anyone in Madrid this past March 11th.
To be fair, a number of top Qaeda leaders have been killed or captured under the Bush Administration: Mohammed Atef and Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, to name two. But the Big Cheese is still out there.
We had him on the run, in early '02. We had him trapped in the caves beneath Tora Bora. Did we smoke him out? Nope. Bush opted not to send the Marines in to kill the guy responsible for 9/11, explaining that the American people would not tolerate casualties for that sort of mission.
Say what? The guy left a hole in the skyline of my city. Give me a machine gun, I'll go get the reprobate myself. Marines trained to kill? I'm sure they were dying to go.
Instead, Bush sent them to Iraq, a country with a) no WMDs, 2) no link to al Qaeda and c) a leader so dangerous he was spending his free time writing romance novels. Now chaotic Iraq is a perfect place for terrorists to go; with no functioning central government, al Qaeda can do as it pleases. (And if you think I'm making this up, or being partisan, you should read the 9/11 Commission Report).
Bush had three years to catch a six-five Arab on dialysis, and he couldn't do it. Couldn't catch him, couldn't kill him, couldn't even find him. He can talk all he wants this week about how great he's doing in the War on Terror, but winning the War on Terror without a dead or captured Osama Bin Laden is like winning the fight against the Dark Side with Darth Vader still at the helm of the Death Star.
If he's going to exploit my wounded city for political gain, he might at least catch the guy responsible for the wound.
—Greg Olear
Editor, LARGEREGO
August 31, 2004
Editor, LARGEREGO
August 31, 2004
"We are a nation in danger." |