the official line that Osama’s Al Qaeda is the single most important source of most of America’s national security woes.

Not to be confused with the actual line. Bush has never been serious about catching Osama, who's still making weekend videos from the comfort of his cave.

Makes you wonder whether Bush doesn't actually need Osama alive. Fighting nazism loses its punch once Hitler is dead.

Is terrorism still a dangerous threat to American security? Absolutely. Is concentrating mostly on Al Qaeda the best way to reduce the terrorist threat? Absolutely not. 

Which pretty much has NOTHING to do with Bush's "foreign policy," to use the term VERY loosely.  He let BinLadin go when he was cornered (theoretically so he could go into Iraq), because he needs a face to trot out whenever it's time to scare people again.

He has not concentrated on AlQaeda  militarily, legally, policy-wise, or in any other way except as a talking point.

Maybe I missed it in your piece, but how do YOU think Bush has been all tied up with AlQaeda?  I haven't seen any evidence of his attention on ANYTHING other than exercise and raising $$$$$$$$$$, and occasionally yelling out "BOO!  Osama's gonna get you!" 

Jan Knaus

The most interesting thing is Osama Bin Laden's obvious preference for the Bush administration.

It's very clear that his 'election video' commentary was deliberately intended to assist George W. Bush and push the election his way.

Let's face it. Osama Bin Laden is not an oblivious man. He doesn't go around releasing random videotapes discussing daffodils vs. geraniums.

He released his video in the context of the American election because he wanted to influence that election. He clearly played to the red meat crowd and pushed things Bush's way. To say that he was unaware of the effect of his video does not wash. He knew the effect and that was his intention.

So, the interesting question is... why does Osama Bin Laden love George W. Bush so much?

I think that Bush, Cheney and several others were so traumatized by 9/11 that they have been suffering from a form of post traumatic stress syndrome ever since. They really are frightened that some nursing mother is going to crash a plane with a bottle of milk. Every incident, no matter how important in the big scheme of things, revives their panic. They know that they are incompetent and are at a loss as to what sorts of meaningful steps could be taken to combat non-state actors.

Others like Rove, may not suffer from this (since they are not responsible for executing policy), and can thus use this panic for political purposes. Highly frightened people do not make rational decisions. Having a simple answer to a complex situation is one way to cope.

The idea that the current admin is too close to the situation and has lost the ability to make objective operational choices is a theme that could be explored as a campaign issue.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

What's so odd: the one is an opportunist who exploits the extremist religious views to further a somewhat incoherent political agenda.  The other one is - which one is the other one again?

I think that Bush, Cheney and several others were so traumatized by 9/11 that they have been suffering from a form of post traumatic stress syndrome ever since.

 What?  Traumatized?  They have loved every minute of 911, and have milked their catastrophic failure into a PR bonanza that is just finally starting smell bad enough that only the 33% of brain-dead lemmings don't notice the stink!

Traumatized?  How?  I just can hardly believe what you said, so I have to repeat it again...TRAUMATIZED?

The only Posst Taumatic Stress Disorder that they will have is HOPEFULLY when they are sitting in the Hague waiting for their trials on war crimes.

Jan Knaus

Valdron,

I think Osama was concerned that the Americans might elect someone competent who would actually try and do something about Al Quaeda.

Not only that, but one of the few who is likely to know exactly what to do about it.  Remember the grief that John Kerry took over approaching the war on terror "as a crime issue rather than a military one"?  Read John Kerry's The New War, and recall that it was Kerry's Senate Subcommittee investigation that not only led to the takedown of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (aka "the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International"), but also spearheaded what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal.  Then, for more fun and games, recall some of the names associated with that scandal and who were subsequently pardoned by BushXLI in the waning days of his administration.  Names Khorbonifar, Poindexter and Elliot Abrams (who has since resurfaced as BushXLIII's Mideast envoy).

Fortunately for Bush-Cheney fans, our conversation about military and criminal approaches to international terror was interrupted by a solid month of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (sic) instead.

That's where this post lost me too. Bush's rhetoric tends to focus on Al Qaeda, but I don't remember the last time he actually did something about them.

mike

So, the interesting question is... why does Osama Bin Laden love George W. Bush so much?

You know why.  Bin Ladin's plan, cunning and clear, was to do something so outrageous that the U.S. would launch an unwinnable war in the Middle East to gain revenge.  Hence the destruction of the World Trade Center on television yet. George W. Bush took the bait and started a war in Iraq. Bin Ladin had Bush on a string.

Osama's not finished yet. Bush wants to bomb Iran and its underground bunkered nuclear program.  How tight will bin Laden be holding the string, do you think?

Apparently the organization to trace in terms of the "Liquid Bomb" plot is Lashkar-e-Taeba, LeT for short. This is one of the groups Musharraf declared illegal in early 2002, but which then changed its name, and continued to operate, primarily in Pakistan, Kashmer, Indonesia, and particularly in India. The Indian Press is reporting security took down about 80 cells of this organization since the first of the year, and at this juncture hold them responsible for the recent train bombings in Mumbia. They also seem to be held responsible for the murder of Danny Pearl.

Reporting yesterday in British, Indian and Pakistani press claims US Intelligence was not willing to focus on this group because they did not seem to be focused on US targets. However LeT seems to now be the outfit running training camps in NE Pakistan with the support of al-Qaeda assets, and these camps seem to be where the British Muslims learned explosive tradecraft. In addition, it looks like the funds for the "Liquid Bomb" plot originated in GB as donations to a LeT charity raising money for Earthquake victims. Going to assist the Earthquake victims was used as cover for going to Pakistan for training for this plot.

Apparently US Intelligence has again been caught up short. The Indians are saying that because LeT is clearly close to factions in the Pakistani military and political structure, US intelligence has always been unwilling to accept Indian acquired intelligence about them, and equally unwilling to share materials with India. How true this is -- well it clearly needs to be assessed by our own reporters on the Intelligence biz -- and perhaps by some of our bloggers who have access to such information. What did impress me is that in a variety of ways this idea was in British, European, Pakistani, Indian and other Asian press in the past couple of days. It caused me to stack up some books, and go through indexes -- and to do a mite of googleing to get a fix on it all. Indeed, LeT is much larger than al-Quada, it is equally or perhaps better tied into western associates, it is tied to the elected political structure in Pakistan, tied to the ISI and the military -- and it is clearly responsible for many attacks.

So yea -- maybe what we need is a quick course on defining the enemy in all his dimensions. And oh yea, LeT seems to have nothing to do with Iraq, Iran or Lebanon.

I think the real connection between Bush and bin Laden is that they are both straw man figureheads for the shadow organizations behind them.

Bush needs bin Laden the way Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah need Israel.

I liked 'smokin' 'em out of their caves'. A good one 'When I'm talkin' about war. I'm really talkin' about peace'. No doubt many Americans went to the polls, or were led to their deaths, believing this political hogwash.

The Bush administration's leaders are firm disciples of the lowest common denominator theory of political communication.

They believe about 2/5ths of the American people are complete and utter morons. I don't know whether they are right, but that's what they believe. Interestingly enough, they see these same morons citizens as their "base".

The Bushies have devised a very simple story for the base. They stick to the story. The story they have created for these people goes something like this:

1. We are at war with the Arab Muslim terrorists.

2. "Arab", "Muslim" and "terrorist" are just three differnt words for the same group of people.

3. The Arab Muslim terrorists live far away in the sandy, non-Christian part of the world. They are foreign. They wear dresses, and rags on their heads.

4. The Arab Muslim terrorists attacked us on 9/11. We attacked them back. Afghanistan and Iraq are two places in Arab-Muslim-Terroristland we attacked.

5. Osama bin Laden is the king of the Arab Muslim terrorists.

6. The Arab Muslim terrosists also attack Israel, which God gave to the Jews a few thousand years ago, a few years after the world was created.

7. Saddama bin Laden is either the same guy as Osama bin Laden, or related to him somehow.

8. Saddama and Osama had nuclear bombs and anthrax which they have used to try to attack us.

9. Saddama, or maybe Osama, did attack us with anthrax a few years ago. We caught him red-handed.

10. We also caught another one of the Arab Muslim terrorists red-handed in America with a dirty bomb he got from Saddama.

11. We conquered Iraq and changed it into a democracy. Then a terrorist named Zarqawi tried to conquer it back. Zarqawi was the boss of all the Arab Muslim terrorists in Iraq. We killed him, and now Iraq is a democracy again.

12. A few patriotic Americans roughed up some Arab Muslim terrorists in a place called Ahboo Grape. The liberals forced us pubish them. But the patriots actually did the right thing, because everyone in Abu Grape had personally cut the head off an American.

13. Iran? Iraq? Same place isn't it - Iranq? Who can tell the difference?

14. Iranq had weapons of mass destruction. We found some, but they still have more. Now the guy who is hiding all the weapons of mass destruction in Iranq is a guy named "Akmady-Ninja" We might have to bomb him to get those weapons of mass destruction.

15. God willing, we will bomb them as long as the liberals don't stop us. Liberals love Arab Muslim terrorists because they hate America and hate freedom. They think they're so smart! But if they're so smart, why weren't they smart enough to find the nuclear weapons in Iranq like President Bush did?

16. The Arab Muslim terrorists all cover their women up in lumpy sacks. This makes it hard for Arab men to see their women's boobs. Arabs hate freedom.

17. The Arab Muslim terrorists want to turn us all into Arab Muslim terrorists. Then American men will no longer have the freedom to see their own women's boobs. Some Arab men have many wives. OK, that's pretty cool. But they cover up their wives' boobs too much - and that's not cool.

18. If the Arab Muslim terrorists conquer the world, we will no longer have the freedom to worship the ten commandments and keep America a Christian nation. Arabs hate freedom.

19. Some of the Arab Muslim terrorists live in Europe. Europe is also foreign, but it is in the non-sandy part of the world our forefathers came from.

20. Except for Tony Blair, Europe is about 50% Arab Muslim terrorists and about 50% prissy faggot Frenchmen who hate America and bent over to take it in the ass from the Nazis.

I think that was the point of this post: Bush needs Al Qaeda as a foil, but dares not ruin that foil by actually confronting it.

If Bush wanted OBL in the bag we could have had him years ago. As Ernest emphasizes, it does Karl Rove no good to capture bin Laden. Granted, it could provide an election bounce this year but in the grand scheme of things if OBL were taken down a significant portion of Bush's embattled persona would have to go away too.

If that were to happen he might even have to focus on something as trivial as a domestic agenda.

Bush added Lebanon to the list of fronts in the global war on terror yesterday (did he thereby declare war on Hezbollah without a direct provocation against the US from them?).

Where once we had just Afghanistan, we now have added Iraq, Lebanon, and Londonistan.

This is like an oncologist claiming great success because he has caused a cancer to metastzsize.

Yep, no question, the US took bin Laden's bait by grossly over-reacting and turning what should have been an easy political victory in the international arena into a political disaster. So, under different circumstances, did the French in Algeria, in response to terrorist acts perpetrated by the insurgents there.

They are not about to look the 9/11 political gift horse in the mouth for purposes of domestic power retention. Classic opportunistic behavior.

The rhetorical foreign policy strategy of the Republicans is far removed from their real foreign policy strategy. In some ways it is a mirror image; in other ways the rhetorical and the real share a lot in common.

The rhetoric is “Get Osama”. The rhetoric constructs a plausible if wildly untrue story line that Dan K sets out very nicely in 20 easy steps: Osama is a bad man and terrorist, directly connected to the war in Iraq, and we have to whack him because he makes weapons of mass destruction. It’s a simple satisfying story: concentrate on whacking the bad guy terrorists. Remember, a third of Americans bought the story, and still believe we found WMD in Iraq.

The real foreign policy strategy of the Republicans lies behind the curtain where the Great Oz pushes cranks and levers producing smokescreens and optical illusions. The real one invades Iraq, in effect building a terrorist factory along the banks of the Euphrates. The real one consistently alienates ever growing numbers of people in the Middle East and elsewhere, creating more and more potential recruits to anti-American terrorism. The real strategy does have an anti-terrorist component, but only as a part of this pro-terrorist policy of pissing off the world over Lebanon, Iran, etc.

While the rhetorical and the real are different, both share this: an admixture of arrogance toward the people they are pursuing and those they nominally would help, underestimating and de-humanizing them at every turn, combined with willful ignorance. Arrogance and ignorance make a dangerous brew. The ‘experts’ in the administration explicitly refuse to learn much about their adversaries or their allies, excluding from their inner circle those who actually know much about the world they try to convert and control.

It’s deeply disturbing to stand by and watch as the administration follows a strategy that day-by-day creates more anti-American critics than it creates pro-American allies, and seems to create more anti-American terrorists than it kills.

"The rhetorical foreign policy strategy of the Republicans is far removed from their real foreign policy strategy."

There it is.  While the trendy thing to do among Bush detractors is to lament on his lies, executive liberties, war-mongering; the inherent problem with this rationale is that it would ony be valid if Bush's said goals matched his clandestine goals.

People talk about the dismal failure of Iraq.  Yet Iraq is only a dismal failure if weighing the results against Bush's stated goals of fighting terrorism and spreading democracy.

Thing is, those were never Bush's real goals.

Granted, the administration may have carried feint hopes that peace and democracy would spread in Iraq.  Had it turned out this way it would have been merely a feather in their cap.  But peace and democracy are far from the true aims of this endeavor.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson we can learn from the Bush administration is that policy is not necessarily always designed to benefit everyone. In short, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove understand that their policies of coersion and domination are not the best or most efficient ways to defeat anti-American forces in the Middle East.

Many on the left highlight their own ignorance when they repeatedly opine that Bush and Cheney are clueless imbeciles who make the same mistakes over and over.

Newsflash: They're not actually trying to spread democracy or fight terrorism.  

The completely fabricated "Global War on Terror" proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.  It is merely a public relations stunt designed to legitimize their broader aims of economically undermining the nations of the Middle East.

Think of Lebanon.  The U.S. government will put together an assistance package that is likely to include the generous assistance of Halliburton and Bechtel.  Elsewhere, Iraq is so thoroughly destroyed that a)permanent U.S. military bases are likely to be a byproduct because the U.S. succeeded in eliminating any sovereign government that could oppose such an action, b) With its economic infrastructure in shambles any semblence of ruling authority will have no choice but to deal generously with American oil companies for dire need of money, and c)American companies like Halliburton continue to make millions of dollars for doing almost nothing.

And people actually believe Bush and Cheney's vision has failed??? 

Those that are truly 'with it' are not susceptible to Bush's clever ruse.

For the most part it does bother me. I believe the U.S. government has the right to act clandestinely (unbeknownst to the public, in other words) assuming, of course, that it does so for the betterment of the nation; and does not violate the Constitution in the process.

Bush, it seems, has neglected these tenets and his overall aims are for the betterment of a small few.

For my own two cents I believe this Congress has failed its job in an equal capacity. Congressional oversight is a vital part of our ruling structure and there has been a decided lack of it lately.