Osama bin Forgotten

I know you don't need me to tell you that the Bush administration has let OBL slip off the radar.  But a revealing comment was made by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen in an interview with Justin Webb of the BBC yesterday.  So I'll let him tell you for himself.

We're giving Pakistan a ton of dough, and a good bit of that is supposed to be going toward hunting down al Qaeda and so forth.  I would think that capturing OBL would be a significant part of that quest, at least from our end.

But check this out:

WASHINGTON DC: In an interview a few hours ago with Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff revealed [...] that Osama Bin Laden is now so unimportant, or so low down a list heavy with other concerns, that he did not even get a mention when Admiral Mullen held talks in Pakistan a few days ago.

Not mentioned? That is what he told me. America's senior soldier, holding meetings close to where the nation's top enemy is located and nobody mentions his name? Truly the world has moved on...

[...]

My colleague Matt Frei interviewed President Bush a few hours ago and neither mentioned Bin Laden: he has disappeared mentally as well as physically...

Why would we continue to go after bin Laden?  There couldn't possibly be any profits for defense contractors or oil companies in that!  

I'm sorry for my brevity and lack of links here, but my baby daughter is probably going to wake up soon, so i can't be on here forever...

•  Tip jar

  Thanks for reading.

  by skralyx on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:11:44 PM PDT

  •  well, we cant get too far in dealing with

    someone we created and the movement that follows him which we used to give guns and money to, can we? isnt that working against ourselves? hrumph hrumph hrumph

    by TAPayne on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:19:30 PM PDT

•  Osama bin Pushin' up daisies? n/t

  by Guy Incognito on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:14:03 PM PDT

  •  One can only hope. n/t

    by skralyx on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:14:55 PM PDT

    •  Pushing poppies, you mean. n/t

      by The Totalizer on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 01:17:16 PM PDT

  •  That may very well be true...

    In one of Bhutto's last interviews she mentioned OBL was dead, but then I think that was recanted.

    Someone knows something about OBL, but if OBL is dead, Georgie and Dickie don't want us to know because they need him alive (even if only mythically) to keep their 'ter'raist' meme going so they can drag out an audio tape and a still photo to say he's still alive (I notice none have current video of him for several years) because they use him as the boogey man to scare Congress Critters into passing legislation that gives up our rights without our permission, over our loud protests.

    I'm not forgetting Georgie's "comedy" when he was looking under furniture for OBL, and he's known since at least that far back the fate of OBL or where he is located if he's still alive (but I privately think he's dead).

    Sometime after Georgie and Dickie are out of office we'll find out OBL's fate and find out that Georgie and Dickie and maybe a couple of their top evil cohorts have known all along what happened to OBL.

    by NonnyO on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:40:49 PM PDT

    •  Absolutely

      they need him alive (even if only mythically)

      You're right, of course -- the neocons, being of the intellectual(sic) pedigree of Leo Strauss, the Big Lie must be maintained. Interestingly, not many people know what Phillip Zelikow, the man Bush appointed to oversee the 9/11 commission, did his academic work on 'public myths'(see his wiki page)

      by Guy Incognito on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:45:51 PM PDT

•  I Don't Recall, Think It Was Bill Maher

  but he said of a Democratic was in office during and after 9/11 FOX Noise would have a scroll across the bottom of the screen 24/7 with the years, months, days, minutes, and second OBL has been alive after the attacks.

  So what do we have now, well we do have the Heritage Foundation with a countdown clock on their home page of the time left until FISA expires. And no I am not making that up .....

  by webranding on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:18:35 PM PDT

  •  I think in the next Presidential election

    we should try, as the progressive netroots, making The American Enterprise Institute and The Heritage Foundation a far bigger issue and highlighting just how nuts they are and just how much of the GOP's craziness comes from them when the GOP starts scaremongering about national security.

    They have been so wrong they deserve the disinfectant of sunlight.

    These viper pits are coming up with things that hurt the country, but have pretty much been unscathed for doing it.

    I bet most Americans have never heard of them, and they should. Because they are like the petri dish the plague comes from.

    by LeftHandedMan on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:27:34 PM PDT

    •  Petri Dish Is Of Course The Perfect Analogy

      it is where so many of their ideas get developed, focus group tested, and launched into the "MSM" via "research" reports and interviews from these so called "experts." Then the next thing you know they are turned into laws.

      

      by webranding on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:31:36 PM PDT

•  every penny to

  Pakistan offsets funding to the Muj and Lashkars in Kashmir.  SO it's all funding Islamic Ghazis of one stripe or another.

  by Salo on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:23:44 PM PDT

•  If they didn't think he was so important

  we wouldn't have gotten a steady stream of "wanted dead or alive'. I know a lot of people point to Social Security privatization as the big first rock that started the collapse of George W. Bush into 30% land, but I think Bush hyping his 100% certainty of capture, and then not getting, and then dropping altogether, Osama Bin Ladin was what set the stage.

  For many people in the mushy "I don't vote, I just complain when I don't like what happens, and then I don't vote later either" crowd, this 'what the fuck' was the 'what the fuck' that started to shake the scales from their 'go along because the man on the tv says so, and besides, everybody has a plastic flag and bumpersticker now' eyes I believe.

  One of the things that drives me the most crazy about my country is, for all the Broderite talk of "partisanship" ruining the country, its not partisanship, but apathy, that really screws us up.

  Its people who don't give a damn, don't care, and don't do anything that often make the difference that allows the GOP to scam their way into office with razor thin margins and claim mandates, because if the right scares people into staying home, or voting out of fear for them, either way they get an extra little grasp at winning.

  Some of the biggest "bipartisan passionately dis-involved moderates" I know became "far-left radicals" (by Broderite definition) because Osama was still sending out tapes years after 911, and it was spun as a reason to keep the Bushies around.

  by LeftHandedMan on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:24:01 PM PDT

•  If you kill your enemy there is no more reason

  for war.   And, after all, war is big business for the friends of Bush/Cheney et al.   If they have their way, we will be at war forever, or, according to McCain, in Iraq for 100 years (he is 71 right now.)  71 and senile, running around singing "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."

  by twinpeaks on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:46:32 PM PDT

•  Any news from the 'Supersize Me' dude? nt

  by Guy Incognito on Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 12:47:54 PM PDT