We’ve gone almost a year without hearing from Osama bin Laden.
So, where is he? Is he dead or alive? And, if alive, why can’t anyone catch him?
These aren’t exactly new questions, but they are certainly worth revisiting. It is now more than four years after 9/11. Four years after Tora Bora, the last place that the U.S. government can say with certainty where bin Laden was.
There are the recent remarks by CIA Director Porter Goss to ABC’s “Good Morning America.” He was asked why his agency couldn’t find bin Laden or al-Zawahiri.
“They don’t want us to find them and they’re going to great lengths to make sure we don’t find them. And I assure you we’re applying a lot of efforts to find out where they are. And I don’t want to get into the depth and the details, but we know a good deal more about bin Laden and Zarqawi and Zawahiri than we are able to say publicly,” Goss said.
The commander of US forces in Afghanistan was even more explicit about bin Laden Thursday. “Our working assumption is that he is alive today,” Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry told Pentagon reporters.
Not a whole boatload of information for the taxpayers footing the bill. If we could trust Congress to ask the right questions — and give us truthful answers — this might be a reasonable time for some cost accounting?
“As opposed to the terrorists that want us to find them — who jump out doorways saying ‘take me to Cuba!'”
/sarcasm
I thought this was a step in the right direction. Hope they got the right guy though.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1205/p04s02-wosc.html
I’d rather get the #2 or 3 guy before bin Laden. He appears to be more of a face-man.
I’ve always loved “we aren’t able to say”… which doubles as a nice veil to protect them further from public scrutiny and hide their incompetence.
If he’s dead, and I believe he is, it is in our best interests not to make this information known.
The problem with fighting terrorist organizations is that, due to their ‘cell’ structure, killing the leader just produces more leaders and more individual organizations.
As Gary said, we’re much better off getting the coordinators than the leader. Granted they can be replaced too, but somone who can get people to do things at the same time is much more important than someone who pumps out more videos than Madonna… and nothing more.
How can you not catch a guy sheep-riding his way from caves to caves?
I once was involved in finding an 8 year old kid in the Smokies. We hiked the trails and had 5 choppers and 5 small slow aircraft to find someone who wanted to be found. He was found 56 old hours later when he stumbled into a primitive camp area where there were people stopped for the night.
Eric Rudolf evaded capture for what like 4 years hiding in the woods. They only caught him when he had to start dumpster diving for food.
My point is that its tougher than it looks.
All the money we spend on military technology and no one thought about caves?!!!
Is this the best our government can do?
What we need here is creative thinking. We need attack bears!
Thousands of beefed up 20 year old men storming around the middle east and we can’t find an old man who walks with a cane and is always sick. *sigh*
>How can you not catch a guy sheep-riding his way from caves to caves?
Well basically the answer to that is, you divert your resources to a bogus war in Iraq then dont mention bin Laden any more, and hope the short attention span America public forgets all about him.
Does it matter whether he’s dead or alive?
What is worse? Bin Laden dead and martyred, or never caught and rendered effectively immortal by his own legend? If never caught, then he’s the guy who was never beaten.
– ME –
No one leaves the family alive.
Bib Laden will only be martyred if the U.S. continues to act like they have. His stature only grew after the American led invasion of Iraq and subsequent horrors of Abu Graib became apparent. Showing the world the ugliness of dubiety’s policies and actions is what has driven people into the Al Adelaida field.
If the Americans stopped kicking down doors, allowing civilian security agents immunity from prosecution, talk about bombing Al Jazeer, and supporting the corruption of the current Iraqi government then they would stop the martyring of bin Laden.
By my count, we are making darn good progress. We have captured or killed the #2 Al-Qaida man at least 5 times, and the #3 man at least a dozen times. Same thing in Iraq… “the insurgency is in it’s last throes” as of about a year ago, with Al-Zarquawi reported cornered and injured at least 5 or 6 times. So stop with your whinning and get with the program: stay the course… since our program is working, and if you can’t see that you are either an idiot or a traitor. And please ignore the man behind the curtain.