Dan Froomkin wonders what has happened to . . . uh . . . who’s that guy again . . . Osama . . . something?
Since the beginning of 2003, in fact, Bush has mentioned bin Laden’s name on only 10 occasions. And on six of those occasions it was because he was asked a direct question.
. . .
Not once during that period has he talked about bin Laden at any length, or said anything substantive.
During the same period, for comparison purposes, Bush has mentioned former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on approximately 300 occasions.
There’s more good stuff in Froomkin’s report. Go take a look.
Interestingly enough, the Army Reserve has been showing ads on TV here in Memphis. The ads consist of shots of an empty cubicle… and empty student’s bedroom (dorm room, I think), an empty mechanic’s workstation, etc., and over the picture is superimposed a caption of what the missing person’s doing…”Training Iraqi policemen”, “Studying tropical diseases in Guatemala”, “Spending a weekend learning to fight terrorism”…. One of the captions reads “Hunting down Osama Bin Laden.”
I’m of mixed emotions when I see that one. I don’t want to cast aspersions on the service of any Guardsman or Reservist in Afghanistan (which is where we should be if we should be anywhere, not in Iraq) but there’s nothing I see anywhere that convinces me that any U.S. Army reservist is hunting down Osama. Last I heard he’s in Pakistan, and there’s maybe a few CIA and FBI working with the Pakistanis in that search….
I’m not an expert on the Reserve, but it doesn’t seem like they are the folks best suited to track down Bin Laden.
Of course they really aren’t intended to nation-build in Iraq, either.