7/3/2006 CIA Closes Unit Dedicated to Capturing bin Laden

[Old and In the Way]

In case anyone thinks George W Bush gave a shit-

http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=3513

CIA Closes Unit Dedicated to Capturing bin Laden
by RonChusid
July 3rd, 2006 @ 9:03 pm

There is another sign that George Bush is not serious about capturing Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.” The New York Times reports on the closing of a unit established in 1996 to attempt to capture bin Laden.

Osama bin Laden is also the subject of a report in Constorium News today claiming that “CIA analysts concluded that Osama bin-Laden’s release of a videotape four days before Election 2004 was a covert attempt by the terrorist leader to influence American voters to give George W. Bush a second term.” Reportedly this information comes from a passage in Ron Suskind’s book The One Percent Doctrine. I almost brought the book with me on vacation, but it didn’t make the final cut and therefore I’ll have to look up the passage next week.

George Bush’s inept reaction to 9/11 certainly helped bin Laden, both in helping with his goal of eliminating the secular Iraqi dictatorship and in tremendously helping with recruitment for al Qaeda. I look forward to reading Suskind’s evaluation of bin Laden’s interest in the 2004 election. The belief that bin Laden desired to help the reelection of George Bush does contradict other material I have read on bin Laden which suggests that he sees all American politicians as equally evil and didn’t care who won.


And remember, as Fred Barnes said in 2006:

HOST: Alright Fred, you and a few other journalists were in the Oval Office with the President, right? And he says catching Osama bin Laden is not job number one?

BARNES: Well, he said, look, you can send 100,000 special forces, that's the figure he used, to the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and hunt him down, but he just said that's not a top priority use of American resources. His vision of a war on terror is one that involves intelligence to find out from people, to get tips, to follow them up and break up plots to kill Americans before they occur. That's what happened recently in that case of the planes that were to be blown up by terrorists, we think coming from England, and that's the top priority. He says, you know, getting Osama bin Laden is a low priority compared to that.



Here's what Bush said 6 months after 9/11....and notice General Richard 'Asleep at the Wheel' Meyers says as well:

Has bin Laden bin forgotten?

America's ever-shifting attitude towards bin Laden tells us far more about the confused war on terror than about bin Laden himself.

by Brendan O’Neill

POSTED APRIL 25, 2002 --

‘The goal has never been to get bin Laden’, said General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on 6 April 2002. President George W Bush might have declared on 17 September 2001 that bin Laden was ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ – but Myers told CNN that a far more important aim than bin Laden’s head on a platter was the ‘capture, killing and scattering’ of ‘mid-level al-Qaeda operatives’ 1. ‘The goal was never after specific individuals’, he claimed 2.

But four days later, on 10 April 2002, army secretary Thomas White said that one of America’s ‘strategic objectives’ in Afghanistan is ‘to get bin Laden…and we are pursuing that’ 3. Asked if the war on terror could only be hailed a success once bin Laden was found, White said yes – claiming that ‘no one said it was going to be easy’ 4.

‘I truly am not that concerned about him’, said President George W Bush on 13 March 2002, after being asked the million-dollar question ‘where is bin Laden?’ once too often 5. ‘Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he’s alive at all’, said Bush, brushing bin Laden off as ‘a person who has now been marginalized’ 6.

http://cursor.org/stories/binladenforgotten.htm

[Duppers]

1. the NYTimes link

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/washington/04intel.html?pagewanted=prin

[Old and In the Way]

2. Thanks...probably should have posted that in my OP.

[texpatriot2004]

3. Thank you for this reminder about BushCo history with

OBL. Facts are so good to have eh.