US concedes hunt for Osama bin Laden has gone cold

[UpInArms]

http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/s1224362.htm

United States forces hunting for Osama bin Laden say he appears to have relinquished day-to-day control over the al Qaeda terrorist group.

The top American commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Barno, has told a briefing at the Pentagon that there's NO indication that bin Laden is dead or seriously ill.

He also declined to repeat a prediction he made in January that bin Laden would be brought to justice by the end of the year, and conceded the US military did not know where he was.

...more...

[goodboy]

1. lowering the bar, so when they trot him out on Nov. 1st it'll hit us hard.

[Buck Rabbit]

14. Trail as cold as a meat-keeper.

Think they'll haul out Skinny or Fat Osama?

[goodboy]

26. if he's dead...what then?

[nine30]

20. Exactly. Osama due out Oct 27th.

They will pull him out of a Spider Cave or whatever on Oct 27, and FOX is going to cover that live. He will be given a clean shave and a rectal exam on camera. His "Trial" will take place from Oct 28th through Oct 30th. He will then be executed by Lethal Injection, Nov 1st, at the Federal Prison in Tere Haute, IN.

And Nov 2nd, Bush will lose by a Landslide ( 28 % of the popular vote)for deceiving the nation YET again.

[HereSince1628]

22. That's Terror Haute ...well _not_ yet, but it could be.

[Mokito]

52. Nov. 1st would be too late...no time left to put a spin on it.

[cvoogt]

2. Osama's in Iraq!!

That's it. He'll turn up in Iraq and be called Saddama.

[CO Liberal]

5. No - He's In The "Undisclosed Location"

Along with Dick Cheney, Jimmy Hoffa, Elvis Presley, and the Bush Recovery.

:-)

[jdj]

36. not to mention the aborted fetus of W. and Robin Lowman Garner.

[Fridays Child]

7. Didn't you get the memo? He moved to northwestern China.

http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?catid=139&newsid=49561&ch=0&datte=2004-10-11

[Demit]

3. had to be a deal with either the Saudis or the bin Ladens...

that is, if the whole thing wasn't a setup from the start--remember, he was on the CIA payroll at one time. Stinks to high heaven, if you ask me.

[soleft]

4. But the hunt for Zarqawi is red hot

[AlCzervik]

8. Zarqawi-the poor mans Bin Laden

one legged, rumored dead boogey man and perp of all bad things in Iraq.

[goodboy]

13. that's good...poor man's binladen.

[Sterling]

47. We have always been at war with east asia

They keep changing boogiemen?

[goodboy]

50. it is an essential tactic to get the people to accept

totalitarian rule. An amorphic shadowy entity...

[LibDemAlways]

15. Yep, Zarqawi sure gets around, doesn't he?

Awfully camera shy, though.

[AlCzervik]

17. well i know one place he isnt

http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/terrorists/fugitives.htm and never has been. Must be an oversite....sure.

[Chico Man]

35. Zarqawi: WalMart's version of Bin Laden (nt)

[Zorra]

6. Why hunt for him when he's already in a holding tank on the Chinese-Paki

border near K2, awaiting transportation to his "capture site" in Saudi Arabia, where he will be "captured" on Oct. 25?

[The_Casual_Observer]

9. It's plain and simple, they don't know where he is

These clowns spend all their time filling out time cards, auditing time cards, eating donuts, filling out vacation requests, taking breaks, attending meetings. They don't have the time, interest, budget, or desire to go after UBL.

[Barrett808]

10. Maybe the biggest October Surprise possibility is off the table

I think we'd know by now if BFEE had Osama in its grasp.

[Roon]

11. I made this point in another thread

Every day that gets closer to election, the less likely people are going to fall for it if they were to trot him out.

[AndyTiedye]

18. We Can Only Hope Theyre Not Evil Enough To Do the Biggest October Surprise

:nuke:
:nuke:
:nuke:

[Barrett808]

23. Oh, I think they're evil enough

I just don't they can do it without getting caught. With the CIA leaks they're facing...

[MADem]

12. He's probably living in Musharref's guest house

...getting waited on hand and foot, and bitching about the cable reception. You know how the smartest criminals live next door to the police station??? It would not surprise me if he is the guest of some high level Pakistani general, or living in splendor in Saudi Arabia.

Speaking of the Saudis, Bandar didn't do too good a job lowering those gas prices, did he? Remember how weewee told us during the 2000 debates that HE would "jawbone" the Saudis to keep prices in check? Well, I guess they listened to his jawboning, and said to themselves "That's the jawbone of an ASS!"

[karlrschneider]

19. HAHA...you just reminded me of a funny thing many years ago when I was

working at the Tulsa PD to pay for college. One night some guys put on white coveralls and broke into a finance office, turned on all the lights and 2 of them vacuumed the carpets while 2 others in the back cracked the safe...a couple of our cop cars drove by and the burglars
waved at them...they had hours to rip the joint off. :D :eyes:

[MisterP]

30. I LOVE the nickname "weewee" for the Chimperor; it describes him so well

as does Führer Chimp. *sigh*

[4_Legs_Good]

16. Watch out for this kinda thing to lower expectations for a big nab

of either Osama or Zarqawi.

But all in all, it's pretty sad. 3.5 freaking years of hunting and the guy is still at large. Talk about a failed administration.

david

[camero]

21. Hunt gone cold, Bush not concerned n/t

[noamnety]

24. zarqawi is the new bin laden

I heard a clip of a bush speech today, and I think he said zarqawi about 7 times in the course of 2 minutes.

From that I deduced: this week they are trying to teach America that Zarqawi is very very very important. Next week they will catch him.

[Toby109]

28. No, next week they will have him cornered

in Fallujah but al-Zarqawi will escape when the U.S. sends the Iraqi National Guard in to nab him instead of doing the job themselves.

[Carolab]

38. YEAH

AND THEY'LL HAVE ALL THE STUPID BUSHIES BELIEVING HE MASTERMINDED 9/11 WHILE HE WAS IN IRAQ TOO.

[Nicholas_J]

25. Not only this

But recent articles indicate that the administration has no idea where al Qaeda is keeping the money it uses to fund its terrorist operation, and that even though the Bush Administration claims to have captured 75 percent of Al Qaedas leaders, the captured people have no knowledge about the financial operations of the terrorist organization, This means that this information is limited to an extremely small number of people, and perhaps only fully known by bin Laden himself.

This means that when the Bush Administration chose to turn away from efforts to capture bin Laden, they lost their best chance to put an enormous dent into Al Qaeda operations, and in fact, might not be having to be sitting and waiting for the next major attack on the U.S. Terrorism woud of course still continue, but in a smaller, more regional and more contained manner.

This one article from September 29 th talks about U.S. failure to understand Al Qaeda financing:


U.S. Struggles to Understand Al Qaeda
Finances

Two members of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission, which investigated the 2001 attacks, told a Senate hearing that U.S. officials and the international community had managed to choke off some of the militant network's financing, but said stopping the flow of funds had proved impossible.


Commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton and Commissioner Slade Gorton said the complex web of raising and moving money, the mix of terrorist and legitimate funds, and problems of international cooperation were among the obstacles to stopping terrorist financing. "Since the Sept. 11 attacks and the defeat of the Taliban, al Qaeda's budget has decreased significantly," they said in joint testimony to the Senate banking committee."Although the trend line is clear, the U.S. government still has not determined with any precision how much al Qaeda raises or from whom, or how it spends its money," they said.


The Sept. 11 Commission said in its final report, which was published in July, that al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, were largely funded by diverting money from Islamic charities, generating some $30 million per year. They said the Sept. 11 attacks probably cost between $400,000 and $500,000.


http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=928426&tw=wn_wire_story

There are any number of possibilities of how Al Qaeda keeps its money hidden. It could use the Islamic Hawala system which relies on personal contacts based on personal relations with the people who run this remittance system. They could actually purchase large quanties of pre-paid cash atm cards, which are avaialble in 10,000 dollar denominations. One could carry a million dollars in a very small stack of credit card sized items. Then there is cash. For Al Qaeda's interests, the best currency would be the Euro. A million dollars in U.S. twenty dollar bills would weigh over 100 pounds, The same amount in 100 dollar bills would weigh twenty pounds, but the same sum in 500 Euro notes would weight about 4 pounds. One person could easily carry this sum inside a portable radio, or even distributed in a large number of jacket pockets.

Anyway, given the average period of time between Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. Citizens (a little over three years) George Bush's decision to forgo efforts to capture bin Laden and his closest lieutenants, may prove to have been the most dangerous decision made by the Bush Administration. Given the fact that since the administration has been able too find out nothing about Al Qaeda's finances from the supposed 75 percent of Al Qaeda leaders they have captured, it seem all too likely that k owledge of the financing of Al Qaeda operations is limited to an extremely small number of members of the organization, perhaps only to bin Laden alone.
Thus had bin Laden been captured, rather than Saddam Hussein, a serious dent would have been made in Al Qaeda's ability to operate, and terrorist operations may likely have been greatly reduced in frequency and size. They may also have been become a regional problem rather than a global one.

I essence, George Bush's decision to leave bin Laden free to plan his next attack has likely put American citizens into far greater danger than having reduced it.

BUsh has been relying on the statistical likelihood of Al Qaeda attacks based on the average of frequency of these attacks on U.S. citizens. Had bin Laden and his closest allies been captured in the area of Tora Bora, it is likely that we would no longer be waiting for the next September 11th.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

27. Have they looked in the White House basement yet?....

...How about the Pentagon?

[0rganism]

29. Bush: "I don't know where he is. I have no idea, and I really don't care."

"It's not that important. It's not our priority." - George W. Bush, March 13, 2002

"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden." - George W. Bush, October 13, 2004

Memory is always the first thing to go.

[llmart]

31. I thought he also said Osama was "marginalized"?

What a flip flopper.

[TexasChick]

32. BUSH: "I never said any of these things..."

That's just a figment of your imagination. There's no transcripts and no videos of this. My reality is made up, you see, I can make it whatever I want and you will follow, let me finish, you will follow and believe what I say...repeat after the Fuhrer, "Der Fuhrer never said such things." </sarcasm>


Jennifer

[BiggJawn]

33. As cold as Cheney's deep freeze.

Anyone got a bookmark to that "Pick when you think they'll drag out OBL's corpse" thread? I can't remember if I picked 10-27 or 10-25 in the pool...

[sonicx]

34. "Octerber Surprise" can't surprise anyone...

if everyone thinks it will happen. that's why they are downplaying him.

[teryang]

37. Principle of the so-called search

Don't follow the money. You might might find something the administration doesn't want you to know.

I'm convinced that he was on the not so secret "Pakistani" airlift out of Khost approved by Rumsfeldt (who denied knowledge of this event) and which permitted the escape of thousands of terrorists from Afghanistan.

[jackieforthedems]

39. He's Probably At Bush's Ranch

in Crawford, kicking back. Lol!

[VegasWolf]

41. Jackie, that is horribly politically incorrect! We all know the bin Laden

- bush connections. Do you really think he is at
the bush ranch, laying back, drinking margaritas,
eating chaulpas, swinning in the pool, all because
his family has money. Well? Wait a minute, You're a genius.


New Information Shows Bush Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional

[jackieforthedems]

44. Dear Vegas

Well, it's hard to say, isn't it?! :evilgrin: :shrug:

[VegasWolf]

45. Yes, or some of those words to that effect :)!

New Information Shows Bush Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional

[proReality]

40. My guess...OBL is in an undisclosed bunker w/ Cheney n/t

.

[durablend]

42. Nah...he's bunking with Karl Rove

2x the evil genius to get * (re)(s)elected

[VegasWolf]

43. Bunking? Is that what the neocons call gay love? n/t

New Information Shows Bush Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional

[tlcandie]

49. France with Perle?

:shrug: He surely disappeared all of a sudden and to FRANCE no less!

[leesa]

46. Didn't we nearly have him just a few weeks ago? Not enough payola, eh

Maybe that OBL they used in the fake "I did 9-11" movie is getting too big for his britches.

[Gloria]

48. I think that if Osama were around, the Bushies would be doing more

of the "compassionate conservative" schtick. Instead, it's all fear, fear, fear/terror....If they had him, they would be more relaxed about that and go after the Democratic issues to bring in the sensitive ones straddling the fence. Just my thoughts....

[olddad56]

51. Maybe Bin Laden is working on his video endorsing Bush.

[Matilda]

53. I have been told he's in Bangladesh.

Can't prove this, but a friend of ours, an Indian lady who holidays
a few times a year in Australia, has told us this.

She's a Brahmin, i.e. high up the social scale, and well-connected
politically, and says he left Pakistan some time ago, and "everybody
knows" he's in Bangladesh - denied of course by the Bangladeshi
government. She also says the Americans have been told, but have
done nothing about it.

It does make some sense - if he does what he did in Sudan, and
supplies much-needed facilities such as a hospital perhaps, or new
roads, he'd be very welcome, I'm sure.

Perhaps the Americans have made their own enquiries, and are just
waiting for the right moment.

[saigon68]

54. He also declined to repeat a prediction he made in January

Another IDIOT----- Lieutenant General David Barno---- who needs to retire.

[Supersedeas]

55. well that is a telling concession--crickets from the Broadcast folks