Shortly after Osama [tag]bin Laden[/tag] was identified as having orchestrated the attacks of 9/11, [tag]Bush[/tag] pledged to get the terrorist “dead or alive.” Six months later, after bin Laden proved to be elusive, the president said, “I truly am not that concerned about him.” With this in mind, it was hardly a shock when we learned — on the day before the 4th of July, no less — that administration officials quietly explained that the special CIA unit responsible for hunting bin Laden and his top lieutenants had been disbanded.
There was minimal political backlash, in large part because the administration successfully hid the story on a day in which very few people saw it. Nevertheless, yesterday, a proposal from Senate Democrats reversed the Bush gang’s move.
The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to reinstate a special CIA unit hunting for Osama bin Laden as it passed a $469 billion Pentagon funding bill. […]
Senators unanimously backed an amendment pushed by Democrats to add $200 million to reinstate an intelligence team dedicated to finding bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader behind the September 11 attacks.
Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska blasted the amendment as a politically motivated “slam at the intelligence community,” but urged fellow Republicans to go on record supporting it.
Sometimes, it’s just impossible not to find Stevens amusing, isn’t it?
Of course, his having “blasted” the Dems’ measure didn’t stop the Senate from approving it unanimously, presumably because no one wanted to be on record voting against it. When it comes to national security, it’s just another example of Dems cleaning up Bush’s messes.
And speaking of bin Laden, Greg Saunders raised a point that I’ve been mulling over this week.
An odd thing about the President’s recent speeches on 9/11 is how much he’s been quoting Osama Bin Laden. From today’s speech: “The fighting in Iraq has been difficult and it has been bloody, and some say that Iraq is a diversion from the war on terror. The terrorists disagree. Osama bin Laden has proclaimed that the ‘third world war is raging’ in Iraq. Al Qaeda leaders have declared that Baghdad will be the capital of the new caliphate that they wish to establish across the broader Middle East.”
There’s just something fundamentally strange about the president saying, “If you don’t believe me, believe bin Laden.” Bush added:
“[T]he enemy has a propaganda strategy. Osama bin Laden laid out this strategy in a letter to the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, that coalition forces uncovered in Afghanistan in 2002. In it, bin Laden says that al Qaeda intends to ‘[launch],’ in his words, ‘a media campaign… to create a wedge between the American people and their government.’ This media campaign, bin Laden says, will send the American people a number of messages, including ‘that their government [will] bring them more losses, in finances and casualties.'”
As Greg noted, it starts to sound an awful lot like the president is suggesting that anyone who questions the White House’s war-on-terror strategy is “guilty of falling for terrorist propaganda.”
In summary, Bush believes we have to catch bin Laden, except when we don’t, and we should believe what bin Laden says, except when we shouldn’t. It’s an odd rhetorical strategy, isn’t it?