{"id":8425,"date":"2006-09-11T09:45:29","date_gmt":"2006-09-11T13:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8425.html"},"modified":"2006-09-11T09:45:29","modified_gmt":"2006-09-11T13:45:29","slug":"bin-laden-trail-has-gone-stone-cold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bin-laden-trail-has-gone-stone-cold\/","title":{"rendered":"Bin Laden trail has gone ‘stone cold’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six months after the 9\/11 attacks, the president who once vowed to get Osama [tag]bin Laden[\/tag] “[tag]dead or alive[\/tag]” suddenly found the terrorist pass\u00e9. Far from a commitment to bringing bin Laden to justice, [tag]Bush[\/tag] announced<\/a>, “I truly am not that [tag]concerned[\/tag] about him.”<\/p>\n

Were it just another rhetorical misstep for the president, it would have been merely disconcerting. The more serious problem is that the administration’s policy mirrored<\/a> Bush’s lackadaisical attitude about the man who orchestrated the murder of 3,000 Americans.<\/p>\n

The clandestine U.S. commandos whose job is to capture or kill Osama bin Laden have not received a credible lead in more than two years. Nothing from the vast U.S. intelligence world — no tips from informants, no snippets from electronic intercepts, no points on any satellite image — has led them anywhere near the al-Qaeda leader, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.<\/p>\n

“The handful of assets we have have given us nothing close to real-time intelligence” that could have led to his capture, said one counterterrorism official, who said the trail, despite the most extensive manhunt in U.S. history, has gone “stone cold.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a stunning example of allowing politics to dictate national security policy, Bush ordered the CIA just three months ago — just in time for the midterm elections — to “flood the zone” and sharply increase the number of intelligence resources devoted to pursuing bin Laden.<\/p>\n

Of course, as the WaPo noted, after years of ignoring the terrorist mastermind, “no one is certain where the ‘zone’ is.” It is, in other words, too late.
\n
\nAs the preparations for a war with Iraq began, special operations troops were directed away from the hunt for bin Laden. But even before much of the shift, the WaPo noted that “bureaucratic battles slowed down the hunt for bin Laden for the first two or three years.”<\/p>\n

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s sense of territoriality has become legendary, according to these officials.<\/p>\n

In early November 2002, for example, a CIA drone armed with a Hellfire missile killed a top al-Qaeda leader traveling through the Yemeni desert. About a week later, Rumsfeld expressed anger that it was the CIA, not the Defense Department, that had carried out the successful strike.<\/p>\n

“How did they get the intel?” he demanded of the intelligence and other military personnel in a high-level meeting, recalled one person knowledgeable about the meeting.<\/p>\n

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then director of the National Security Agency and technically part of the Defense Department, said he had given it to them.<\/p>\n

“Why aren’t you giving it to us?” Rumsfeld wanted to know.<\/p>\n

Hayden, according to this source, told Rumsfeld that the information-sharing mechanism with the CIA was working well. [tag]Rumsfeld[\/tag] said it would have to stop.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, five years after 9\/11, even if the trail had not gone completely cold, there is no one leading the search for bin Laden at all. “There’s nobody in the United States government whose job it is to find Osama bin Laden!” one frustrated counterterrorism official shouted. “Nobody!”<\/p>\n

Bush recently expressed some regret for his “dead or alive” rhetoric, suggesting it was somehow inappropriate. Frankly, so long as it reflects a real, productive policy, I’ll talk Bush’s pseudo-cowboy talk over careless disregard any day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Six months after the 9\/11 attacks, the president who once vowed to get Osama [tag]bin Laden[\/tag] “[tag]dead or alive[\/tag]” suddenly found the terrorist pass\u00e9. Far from a commitment to bringing bin Laden to justice, [tag]Bush[\/tag] announced, “I truly am not that [tag]concerned[\/tag] about him.” Were it just another rhetorical misstep for the president, it would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}