President Bush famously announced after Sept. 11 that America would catch terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.”
Five years later, it hasn’t happened, and this week the CIA announced it was disbanding a secret unit charged with finding the al-Qaida leader and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who are believed hiding on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This isn’t the right signal to send to America’s enemies. If there’s one terrorist America needs to catch or kill, it’s bin Laden. CIA officials claim the unit is no longer needed because bin Laden is on the run and no longer wields operational control over a far-flung terrorist movement. But he undeniably remains a potent symbol for that movement. And other experts think the CIA assessment is flat wrong: The first head of the bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer, said a flurry of bin Laden audiotapes in recent months “means their command and control over al-Qaida is probably stronger than we thought it was.” Peter Bergen adds that the messages show that the terror leader feels “extremely unconcerned” about being caught. “The heat is not on,” he said.
Why in the world not?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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33 Comments
This is not “cut & run”, it’s “fumble & stumble”.
who’s to say that there isn’t still a covert operation that is still working on finding binladen? Maybe by ‘officially’ disbanding the team they think that binladen will become more visable and therefore a better target. Ahhh, the act of misdirection…
It could be that the goverment doesn’t want to catch OBL as long as he is on the loose he can bee used as a bogey man by the powers that be.
you children be good otherwise binladen will come and eat you in the middle of the night!
An interesting take Julie. But I kinda doubt it.
I don’t think this admininstration was ever truly serious about catching or killing bin Laden. Just how hard can it be to find a 6 foot 5 arab dragging around a dialysis machine? Bin Laden alive and free is a far greater asset for furthering bush’s handlers true foreign and domestic agendas.
In short, ya don’t catch the “boogeyman”. You keep everyone worrying that he is under their bed. THAT’s the misdirection.
Ahhh the curse of slow typing……:)
dangit JR! I like wearing my rosecolored glasses!!!
Julie,
Pretty much, but I agree that we haven’t stopped the hunt completely. You could be right that this disbanded unit is only a cover for more covert ops. On the other hand, with his hands full with Iraq, more trouble in Afghanistn, Iran, and now North Korea, I’m sure W has his hands too full to concentrate on bin Laden.
We’ve known for some time that OBL has been in Pakistan. How could anyone miss a 6 foot something guy toting around a dialysis machine? But because of our “relations” with Pakistan, we haven’t done much about it. And I just don’t think OBL is of major concern to Bush.
Still, I’d be happy if proven wrong. :)
LOL JR! My usually fast typing is even slower than usual today. You beat me to it!
Don’t feel bad RD. Dingus beat me to it first!
I remember bush even saying a few years ago that he really didn’t think about bin Laden too much. Quite a step down from his post 911 “dead or alive” rhetoric.
Jihad, jihad, jihad against the devil himself Osama Yo Mama. OYM will be destroyed by team america, along with the whole country of Afghanistan, or what’s left of it. Osama Yo Mama is doomed by the jihad of Bush “the glorious”! May his reign last a thousand minutes.
Killing or capturing bin Laden and Al Ziwahiri are important symbolic victories in the war on terror. Each day that they are free encourages potential Al Qaeda recruits.
Stepping down on our efforts to get them is a very bad idea/policy move if you ask me.
It would have made more sense to invade Pakistan than Iraq.
I think Musharraf knows that if the U.S. invaded Pakistan it would destablize his government and he would ultimately lose power. An alternative to invading Pakistan might be asking Musharraf to go get bin Laden and hand him over to us. I bet he might do it, if he knew what was at risk if he failed. We could tell our ally, “yes, you helped us, but we need more from you. And our friend, India, might be willing to help us, if it is too much trouble for you.”
OBL is responsible for the deaths of nearly 3000 of our countrymen and we’ve disbanded the unit looking for him? What is wrong with this picture? We distroyed Afghanistan looking for him. Why haven’t we pulled Pakistan out by the roots? Capturing OBL should have come way before attacking Iraq.
Fact is, BushCo can’t catch him. What a putz.
If you really believe that our military is giving up on capturing OBL, then you deserve the cut-and-run liberal military policy of Jimmy Carter (remember the failed mission?) and Bill Clinton (first World Trade Center bombing w/o response). You won’t have to worry about separation of church and state if the extremist Moslems win the war on terrorism, because YOU WON’T HAVE A CHOICE. I hope for the sake of America and the free world that you cut-and-runners can get over your hate for Bush long enough to focus on fighting terrorism before it is too late.
My, my, some days there are more insane rants than one can count.
The Taliban thrived because Pakistan supported it. Bin been hiding in Pakistan. Pakistan spread nuclear technology to any and everyone. Pakistan’s our buddy, hard to figure.
Reagan actually armed and bank rolled the Taliban and bin Laden. This is known as “blowback”.
Well gipr,
The header does not suggest, nor has any poster mentioned the MILITARY giving up the hunt for bin Laden. The military goes where it is sent. In this case to Iraq instead of in pursuit of bin Laden.
bin Laden. Remember him? The guy BEHIND the attacks? That name has been mentioned more on this thread than by bush the last 5 years.
It’s ok, you on the right turn every criticism of bush into de-facto criticism of the military.
gipr? Did bush not shortly after 911 promise bin Laden “dead or alive” and then just a few years ago comment that he really did not think that much about bin Laden anymore?Why is that? I’ve posted MY take. What’s yours?
See gipr? The very reason bin Laden must never die or be captured is to stoke and exploit the irrational fears and blind jingoism of folks like you.
SO by being a scared little sheep and not demanding accountability from your beloved bush, it is actually YOU who is responsible for bin Laden still being at large.
Correct Joe – Reagan called them “freedom fighters”
“If you really believe that our military is giving up on capturing OBL,” Blah, Blah Blah, Blah. Tough talk from a conservative…go figure. Show me the bastard’s head.
More of the same old conservative shit.
Well, let’s see, where are those perps from the first WTC bombing? Oh, that’s right. Serving time.
Yet OBL is living well (relatively) in Pakistan. Hmmmmm Food for thought.
I’m not so sure it’s that Bush can’t catch OBL. I think it’s more a won’t. After all, the entire Bush family is friends with the Royal Saudies. Who was it again that bailed Jr out of his failed oil business? The Royals may have banished OBL, but blood is thicker…
I’d rather live next door to a Muslim than Fred Phelps.
This article suggests that there may have been more of an operational relationship between Al Qaeda and the London bombers than we’ve been told. Before, the story was that the London bombers were inspired by Al Qaeda, but not directly associated with it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/06/AR2006070600559.html
In early 2002, the Pentagon pull the 5th Special forces group from Afghanistan, they are unique in the military due to they spoke many of the languages native to the region. Their sole mission was to search for, kill or capture Bin Laden. In the six months they were there they managed to develop leads, form a network of connections and befriended area people. They were the best hope of finding Bin Laden, they were pulled and put into Iraq.
Though he is seen as a simple figure head of Al-Qaeda and his capture or killing would not permanently stop Al-Qaeda. It would be a symbolist blow that would signal to both Al-Qaeda and their enemies that the terrorists truly are not safe in their actions.
The mastermind behind the first World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef, is behind bars for life. He was from Kuwait. So who do you think Clinton should have bombed in retaliation, Giper?Clinton sent missiles to Afganistan in 1998 after the terrorists bombed our embassy in Africa, my son happened to be in Pakistan at the time and it almost cost him his life.
The idea that this unit has been disbanded to lure OBL into a false sense of security is crazy. In order for this to work then the US would have to advertise this turn of events and ensure that OBL heard it. Then he would have to believe it.
Imagine you were hunted for 5 years and the person who was hunting you said one day they were going to stop. Would you believe them? Would you believe that someone would spend 5 years searching for you and then just give up? No you wouldn’t. And you wouldn’t change anything you were doing because you don’t believe them.
When OBL comes out of hiding to say na na na na na na, Bush will have his boys at the ready!
Unless something changes drastically, OBL will die of old age. If Bush couldn’t find him under the desk or behind the couch…
steve-you have got to be kidding, as bush has never had our military strategically placed. XXX has got it right. bin Laden will die of old age or renal failure. bush couldn’t find him if he was hiding in a hall closet at the white house.This announcement pretty much proves that this whole administration has been about occupying an Arab country for it’s resources and chipping away our freedoms and proving George Orwell was only two decades off when he wrote “1984″.
Bush is fully aware that if he should stumble over Osama, most of his ability to scare the American population into voting Republican will vanish. He’s doing his best not to let anything like that happen. Why do you think we’re concentrating our forces on where we know he’s not?
I have often wondered about the seeming symbiotic relationship between shrub and obl. The timing of obl’s “press releases” also seemd just too convenient. In any event, the following article raises some interesting points.
CIA: Osama Helped Bush in ‘04By Robert ParryJuly 4, 2006
On Oct. 29, 2004, just four days before the U.S. presidential election, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden released a videotape denouncing George W. Bush. Some Bush supporters quickly spun the diatribe as “Osama’s endorsement of John Kerry.” But behind the walls of the CIA, analysts had concluded the opposite: that bin-Laden was trying to help Bush gain a second term.
This stunning CIA disclosure is tucked away in a brief passage near the end of Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders. Suskind wrote that the CIA analysts based their troubling assessment on classified information, but the analysts still puzzled over exactly why bin-Laden wanted Bush to stay in office.
According to Suskind’s book, CIA analysts had spent years “parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, [Ayman] Zawahiri. What they’d learned over nearly a decade is that bin-Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. …
“Their [the CIA's] assessments, at day’s end, are a distillate of the kind of secret, internal conversations that the American public [was] not sanctioned to hear: strategic analysis. Today’s conclusion: bin-Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reelection.
“At the five o’clock meeting, [deputy CIA director] John McLaughlin opened the issue with the consensus view: ‘Bin-Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President.’”
McLaughlin’s comment drew nods from CIA officers at the table. Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, suggested that the al-Qaeda founder may have come to Bush’s aid because bin-Laden felt threatened by the rise in Iraq of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; bin-Laden might have thought his leadership would be diminished if Bush lost the White House and their “eye-to-eye struggle” ended.
But the CIA analysts also felt that bin-Laden might have recognized how Bush’s policies – including the Guantanamo prison camp, the Abu Ghraib scandal and the endless bloodshed in Iraq – were serving al-Qaeda’s strategic goals for recruiting a new generation of jihadists.
“Certainly,” the CIA’s Miscik said, “he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years,” according to Suskind’s account of the meeting.
As their internal assessment sank in, the CIA analysts drifted into silence, troubled by the implications of their own conclusions. “An ocean of hard truths before them – such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin-Laden would want Bush reelected – remained untouched,” Suskind wrote.
One immediate consequence of bin-Laden breaking nearly a year of silence to issue the videotape the weekend before the U.S. presidential election was to give the Bush campaign a much needed boost. From a virtual dead heat, Bush opened up a six-point lead, according to one poll.
Symbiotic Relationship
The implications of this new evidence are troubling, too, for the American people as they head toward another election in November 2006 that also is viewed as a referendum on Bush’s prosecution of the “war on terror.”
As we have reported previously at Consortiumnews.com, a large body of evidence already existed supporting the view that the Bushes and the bin-Ladens have long operated with a symbiotic relationship that may be entirely unspoken but nevertheless has been a case of each family acting in ways that advance the interests of the other. [See “Osama's Briar Patch” or “Is Bush al-Qaeda's 'Useful Idiot?'”]
Before al-Qaeda launched the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks against New York and Washington, Bush was stumbling in a presidency that many Americans felt was headed nowhere. As Bush took a month-long vacation at his Texas ranch in August 2001, his big issue was a plan to restrict stem-cell research on moral grounds.
Privately, Bush’s neoconservative advisers were chafing under what they saw as the complacency of the American people unwilling to take on the mantle of global policeman as the world’s sole superpower. The neocons hoped for some “Pearl Harbor” incident that would galvanize a public consensus for action against Iraq and other “rogue states.”
Other senior administration officials, such as Vice President Dick Cheney, dreamed of the restoration of the imperial presidency that – after Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal – had been cut down to size by Congress, the courts and the press. Only a national crisis would create a cover for a new assertion of presidential power.
Meanwhile, halfway around the world, bin-Laden and his al-Qaeda militants were facing defeat after defeat. Their brand of Islamic fundamentalism had been rejected in Muslim societies from Algeria and Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Bin-Laden and his lieutenants had even been expelled from the Sudan.
Bin-Laden’s extremists had been chased to the farthest corners of the planet, in this case the caves of Afghanistan. At this critical juncture, al-Qaeda’s brain trust decided that their best hope was to strike at the United States and count on a clumsy reaction that would offend the Islamic world and rally angry young Muslims to al-Qaeda’s banner.
So, by early summer 2001, the clock ticked down to 9/11 as 19 al-Qaeda operatives positioned themselves inside the United States and prepared to attack. But U.S. intelligence analysts picked up evidence of al-Qaeda’s plans by sifting through the “chatter” of electronic intercepts. The U.S. warning system was “blinking red.”
‘Something So Big’
Over the weekend of July Fourth 2001, a well-placed U.S. intelligence source passed on a disturbing piece of information to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who later recounted the incident in an interview with Alternet.
“The person told me that there was some concern about an intercept that had been picked up,” Miller said. “The incident that had gotten everyone’s attention was a conversation between two members of al-Qaeda. And they had been talking to one another, supposedly expressing disappointment that the United States had not chosen to retaliate more seriously against what had happened to the [destroyer USS] Cole [which was bombed on Oct. 12, 2000].
“And one al-Qaeda operative was overheard saying to the other, ‘Don’t worry; we’re planning something so big now that the U.S. will have to respond.’”
In the Alternet interview, published in May 2006 after Miller resigned from the Times, the reporter expressed regret that she had not been able to nail down enough details about the intercept to get the story into the newspaper.
But the significance of her recollection is that more than two months before the 9/11 attacks, the CIA knew that al-Qaeda was planning a major attack with the intent of inciting a U.S. military reaction – or in this case, an overreaction.
The CIA tried to warn Bush about the threat on Aug. 6, 2001, with the hope that presidential action could energize government agencies and head off the attack. The CIA sent analysts to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, to brief him and deliver a report entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.”
Bush was not pleased by the intrusion. He glared at the CIA briefer and snapped, “All right, you’ve covered your ass,” according to Suskind’s book.
Then, putting the CIA’s warning in the back of his mind and ordering no special response, Bush returned to a vacation of fishing, clearing brush and working on a speech about stem-cell research.
Al-Qaeda’s Gamble
For its part, al-Qaeda was running a risk that the United States might strike a precise and devastating blow against the terrorist organization, eliminating it as an effective force without alienating much of the Muslim world.
If that happened, the cause of Islamic extremism could have been set back years, without eliciting much sympathy from most Muslims for a band of killers who wantonly murdered innocent civilians.
After the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda’s gamble almost failed as the CIA, backed by U.S. Special Forces, ousted bin-Laden’s Taliban allies in Afghanistan and cornered much of the al-Qaeda leadership in the mountains of Tora Bora near the Pakistani border.
But instead of using U.S. ground troops to seal the border, Bush relied on the Pakistani army, which was known to have mixed sympathies about al-Qaeda. The Pakistani army moved its blocking force belatedly into position while bin-Laden and others from his inner circle escaped.
Then, instead of staying focused on bin-Laden and his fellow fugitives, Bush moved on to other objectives. Bush shifted U.S. Special Forces away from bin-Laden and al-Qaeda and toward Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
Many U.S. terrorism experts, including White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, were shocked at this strategy, since the intelligence community didn’t believe that Hussein’s secular dictatorship had any working relationship with al-Qaeda – and had no role in the 9/11 attacks.
Nevertheless, Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, ousting Hussein from power but also unleashing mayhem across Iraqi society. Soon, the Iraq War – combined with controversies over torture and mistreatment of Muslim detainees – were serving as recruitment posters for al-Qaeda.
Under Jordanian exile Zarqawi, al-Qaeda set up terrorist cells in central Iraq, taking root amid the weeds of sectarian violence and the nation’s general anarchy. Instead of an obscure group of misfits, al-Qaeda was achieving legendary status among many Muslims as the defenders of the Islamic holy lands, battling the new “crusaders” led by Bush.
Back in the USA
Meanwhile, back in the United States, the 9/11 attacks had allowed Bush to reinvent himself as the “war president” who operated almost without oversight. He saw his approval ratings surge from the 50s to the 90s – and watched as the Republican Party consolidated its control of the U.S. Congress in 2002.
Though the worsening bloodshed in Iraq eroded Bush’s popularity in 2004, political adviser Karl Rove still framed the election around Bush’s aggressive moves to defend the United States and to punish American enemies.
Whereas Bush was supposedly resolute, Democrat Kerry was portrayed as weak and indecisive, a “flip-flopper.” Kerry, however, scored some political points in the presidential debates by citing the debacle at Tora Bora that enabled bin-Laden to escape.
The race was considered neck-and-neck as it turned toward the final weekend of campaigning. Then, the shimmering image of Osama bin-Laden appeared on American televisions, speaking directly to the American people, mocking Bush and offering a kind of truce if U.S. forces withdrew from the Middle East.
“He [Bush] was more interested in listening to the child’s story about the goat rather than worry about what was happening to the [twin] towers,” bin-Laden said. “So, we had three times the time necessary to accomplish the events. Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked.”
Though both Bush and Kerry denounced bin-Laden’s statement, right-wing pundits, bloggers and talk-show hosts portrayed it as an effort to hurt Bush and help Kerry – which understandably prompted the exact opposite reaction among many Americans. [For instance, conservative blog site, Little Green Footballs, headlined its Oct. 31, 2004, commentary as “Bin Laden Threatens U.S. States Not to Vote for Bush.”]
However, behind the walls of secrecy at Langley, Virginia, U.S. intelligence experts reviewed the evidence and concluded that bin-Laden had precisely the opposite intent. He was fully aware that his videotape would encourage the American people to do the opposite of what he recommended.
By demanding an American surrender, bin-Laden knew U.S. voters would instinctively want to fight. That way bin-Laden helped ensure that George W. Bush would stay in power, would continue his clumsy “war on terror” – and would drive thousands of new recruits into al-Qaeda’s welcoming arms.http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/070306.html
V.L.R.B!!!
Hey, Win1, I love the way you conservatives rewrite history to match your preconceived ideas.
Bill Clinton not only “did do anything” after the first World Trade Center, his team tracked down, tried, and convicted the perpetrators.
His people also stopped a car bomb coming in from Canada to attack LA on New Year’s Eve 1999.
Do the names Ramzi Yousef or Ahmad Ressam mean anything to you?
No . . . probably not.
Bush and Bin Laden remind me of Elmer Fudd & Buggs Bunny, guess which is which.