Do you know someone who's planning to vote for George W. Bush this fall? Ask them why Bush let Osama get away, and why now the Bush Administration is admitting that this failure has allowed Osama to plan a new attack on America.
Last year, they were saying Osama was not worth worrying about. Today, they want you to be afraid, because they've screwed up. Big Time.
Ask them to read this New York Times story, for starters:
Bin Laden Is Said to Be Organizing for a U.S. Attack
Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants, operating from hideouts suspected to be along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, are directing a Qaeda effort to launch an attack in the United States sometime this year, senior Bush administration officials said on Thursday.
"What we know about this most recent information is that it is being directed from the seniormost levels of the Al Qaeda organization," said a senior official at a briefing for reporters. He added, "We know that this leadership continues to operate along the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan."
Counterterrorism officials have said for weeks that they are increasingly worried by a continuing stream of intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda wanted to carry out a significant terror attack on United States soil this year. But until the comments of the senior administration officials on Thursday, it was not clear that Mr. bin Laden and top deputies like Ayman Zawahiri were responsible for the concern.
Scary, isn't it? We used to be very concerned, according to
Colin Powell, in December 2001:
The Bush administration's focus remains on Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan, Powell said. U.S. Special Forces and Pakistani troops are searching caves along the Pakistani border for clues to the location of the al Qaeda leader. Powell said Bush intends to persevere for as long as it takes to track down bin Laden and destroy his terrorist network.
But something happened a few months later, and the White House lost interest:
Q: But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.
But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will.
--George W. Bush, White House Press Conference, March 13, 2002
And then ask why we have 140,000 troops in Iraq and a few thousand in Afghanistan. Maybe it's because we gave up?
Donald Rumsfeld, Abu Dhabi Television interview, April 28, 2003:
Well, the armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom, were designed to deal with armies, navies, and air forces, and they do that. They do it very well. They weren't designed to do manhunts. Now you just made the statement that [Bin laden and Mullah Omar are] still at large -- they're still free. I don't know that that's true. I don't know where Bin Laden is. He may be dead. He may be alive. He may be injured. He certainly is not out in the open, making video tapes and leading the Al-Qaida at all.
Or maybe he is. So, do you feel safer now than you did on September 12, 2001?
Bush let Bin Laden get away. Don't let him get away with it.
[cross-posted at Sid's Fishbowl]