dead or alive. . . or not

WASHINGTON (July 4) - The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.


So, if you can’t beat ‘em (or “smoke ‘em out”), then pretend you don’t have to. That’s leadership, don’t you think? Is it really about how al Qaeda is now decentralized, or is it that the bin Laden Unit served as an uncomfortable reminder of not only the utter failure of this administration to capture OBL since 9/11/01, but of the fact that the CIA hand-delivered to President Bush a clear warning about the coming attacks a month before they happened?

Seems to be just another in a long line of instances where this administration punishes those who inconveniently get it right.

And, this didn’t happened yesterday, by the way. The unit was disbanded last year, after other resources, like Delta Force, were pulled from the hunt for bin Laden to focus on the Iraqi insurgency.

The Bush “strategy” in this “war on terror” has indeed created al Qaeda franchises all over the world, but I find it hard to believe that anyone with something other than the fortunes of the Republicans at heart could believe that it is no longer important to capture bin Laden (or, as importantly, to know exactly what he is up to)—he still has great symbolic meaning, and, if nothing else, a really fat wallet.