Here’s bin Laden, four and a half years after 9/11, thumbing his nose at the most powerful nation in the world, and saying, essentially, you can’t catch me.
For Bush and Rumsfeld, who had bin Laden dead to rights in Tora Bora and then outsourced the job to an Afghan warlord, every new bin Laden recording serves as a reminder of their colossal military blunder.
Now Scott McClellan, who is still on the payroll as the President’s spinner, can claim the tape proves that “we are on the advance” and that bin Laden is “on the run and under a lot of pressure.”
But that comment merely underscores McClellan’s ineptness as a spokesman and the Administration’s embarrassment at bin Laden’s continued success at eluding the U.S. This has got to be one of the longest marathon runs an enemy has ever been able to pull off—and one of the least effective advances by a country with every weapon at its disposal.
The substance of bin Laden’s statement was the same mixture of opportunism and fanaticism that has come to typify him.
Opportunism to hitch his propaganda offensive to Hamas’s fate.
Fanaticism to call for the Danish cartoonists to turn themselves over to Al Qaeda for punishment.
And fanaticism to call for armed resistance against the U.N. peacekeepers in the Sudan, who are doing what?
Simply trying to prevent genocide, that’s all.
I’m not surprised by bin Laden’s fanaticism, however.
9/11 was proof enough for me.
But I am surprised that Bush hasn’t been able to get him yet.
And that’s just another reason why Bush will go down in history as our worst President ever.