Bush targets bin Laden, again

President George W. Bush, who rarely mentions the world's leading terrorist by name, announced on Thursday at the swearing-in-ceremony for new Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, that stopping Mr. bin Laden from attacking America again is the "greatest challenge of our day," reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

Nowhere to be found despite a $25 million bounty and one of the largest manhunts in history, bin Laden sparked attention when intelligence reports recently linked him to efforts by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – the terrorist leader in Iraq – to bring the terror war to America's soil, says the Herald.

Bush's calling him out by name raises obvious questions: Where is he and why hasn't he been caught? For that, there is no easy answer.

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said in December that "the trail has gone cold" and at the time US officials largely agreed. Bin Laden is thought to have slipped back and forth across the isolated border between Afghanistan and Pakistan since a US-led coalition in 2001 toppled the Taliban regime, which had given him sanctuary in Afghanistan.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week, Army General John Abizaid, chief of US Central Command, said that "bin Laden and the Al Qaeda senior leadership have been our priority target since Sept. 11," reports the Associated Press on Friday. But, AP quotes Gen. Abizaid as saying: "It's important for all of us to know that military forces do best in attacking the network as opposed to looking for a specific person."

Current and former government officials say "There is no doubt that the Bush administration wants bin Laden 'dead or alive,' as the president said shortly after Sept. 11, 2001," reports AP. But whether it is destroying a network, or seeking a specific individual, "skills and dollars may fall short of desire."

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Bush did offer a partial explanation on why it now is so difficult to hunt down bin Laden, reports the Washington Times.

'If Al Qaeda was structured like corporate America, you'd have a chairman of the board still in office, but many of the key operators would no longer be around -- in other words, the executive vice presidents, the operating officers, the people responsible for certain aspects of the organization have been brought to justice,' he said.

'There's more work to be done. And it's a matter of time. As far as I'm concerned and as far as the CIA is concerned, it's a matter of time before we bring these people to justice,' the president said.

Two US intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matters are classified, said that since [2001] the administration had twice temporarily diverted unmanned spy planes and other intelligence assets from the Afghan-Pakistani border to Iraq, once to support the US-led invasion and more recently to help find terrorist leaders there and protect Iraq's Jan. 30 elections.

Whether or not bin Laden is captured, the seeds he has sown must be dealt with, warned Interpol secretary-general Ronald K. Noble this week at an international conference on terrorism meeting in Lyon, France, reports AP. It was the largest gathering of police in history, says AP.

When Al Qaeda or bin Laden makes a statement of intent, e.g., to use biological weaponry, (noting that the group had posted instructions for making such weapons on the Internet) Mr. Noble told officials the threat automatically escalates and no longer could come not just from "from Al Qaeda but from any terrorist organization," he said.

And then there's the commentary by Timothy Gartan Ash in Thursday's Guardian. It must certainly go down as one of the most positive and optimistic assessments of the role of Osama bin Laden by a non-terrorist.

History may look at bin Laden as having started a " democratic revolution in the Middle East," writes Mr. Ash.

Blowback from the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq says the wars became a recruitment tool for Al Qaeda and militant jihadists. Ash has a different take on the blowback from bin Laden.

Referring to what he calls "One of very few universally valid laws of history ... the law of unintended consequences," Ash suggests that the ferment initiated in the Middle East by the destruction of the twin towers in New York had the opposite effect intended.

Not at all tongue-in-cheek, he asks:

Would there be demonstrators for Lebanese independence on what people have already called 'liberation square' in Beirut? Would there now be a serious beginning for a Palestinian state, elections (however flawed) in Iraq and even tiny palm shoots of democratic reform in Egypt and Saudi Arabia? And would the democratization of the wider Middle East be a central preoccupation of American and European policy?

... But we do know what George Bush's foreign policy looked like before September 11 2001: build up US military strength but avoid Clintonian foreign entanglements; concentrate on great power relationships, especially the rivalry with China. There was precious little talk of spreading democracy back then.

That would be a rather useful "unintended consequence of Osama bin Laden," quips Ash.

Also...
• The al Qaeda hunter ( CNN)
• Blair races time to keep terrorism suspects in jail ( Sydney Morning Herald)
• Somalia's secret dumps of toxic waste washed ashore by tsunami ( Times of London)

• Feedback appreciated. E-mail Jim Bencivenga .