Musharraf Says Bin Laden Trail Has Gone Cold - Bush Very Pleased With Musharraf's Efforts

by Steve

A little over a month ago, a less haggard-looking Osama Bin Laden dropped into the eleventh hour of our presidential election and reminded all of us that he was not only still around, but also quite well versed apparently on current American culture, spouting references from Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911”. Far from looking like a man on the run and hiding in a cave like he was in the months after 9/11, Bin Laden looked like a man who had the time to be talking from what looked like a TV studio, speaking in a relaxed manner as if he wasn’t threatened by anything. There has been anecdotal evidence since then that the Kerry team felt that Bin Laden’s timely appearance crippled them over the final weekend.

Now, less than six weeks later, President Musharraf of Pakistan visits Bush today, and in essence tells us that Bin Laden is nowhere to be found, and is truly on the loose. He tells this to Bush, Cheney, Rummy, and Rice, our new foreign policy team in the second term, who provide no sense of alarm or dissatisfaction at this news. In fact, it seems like a collective sense of “ho hum” is now the new attitude from this administration at the news that after billions of dollars in intelligence spending and a catastrophic waste of a war allegedly against terrorism in Iraq, the man responsible for 9/11 is still running free apparently far from any imminent threat from anyone.

In less than two months, Bin Laden has managed to get out from under Musharraf's alleged hounding long enough to stop at a TV studio, and now vanish. By the way, how many TV studios do they have in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan anyway?

So Mr. “Dead or Alive” is quite well and in no fear of being captured by us or the Pakistanis anytime soon. But he did serve his purpose at an opportune time over a month ago, didn’t he? He just popped into that TV studio with that clean robe (gone are the fatigues), spoke calmly about current events, and managed to remind folks that we still had a war on terror going on, and left the implicit message at a strategic time that this was no time to change the commander in chief.

And now Musharraf says that Osama is gone, without a trace, just like that. Bush says that he is “very pleased” with Pakistan’s efforts against Al Qaeda, even as Musharraf says that there is no sign of Al Qaeda in an area that had been under close Pakistani scrutiny.

Ho hum indeed.