Osama Bin Laden

By Dave LIndorff

There are so many things wrong with Obama’s “New and Improved”
Afghanistan War that it’s hard to know where to begin, but I guess the
place to start is with his premise.

If America needs to be fighting in Afghanistan because Al Qaeda
planned and launched the 9-11 attacks from there back in 2001, as the
president claimed in his lackluster address to the cadets at West Point
last week, then we would have to assume either that Al Qaeda is still
there, or that if we were not there fighting, that Al Qaeda would be
back to plan more attacks.

By Dave Lindorff

Most Americans are blissfully in the dark about it, but across the
Atlantic in the UK, a commission reluctantly established by Prime
Minister Gordon Brown under pressure from anti-war activists in Britain
is beginning hearings into the actions and statements of British
leaders that led to the country’s joining the US invasion of Iraq in
2003.

Even before testimony began in hearings that started yesterday,
news began to leak out from documents obtained by the commission that
the government of former PM Tony Blair had lied to Parliament and the
public about the country’s involvement in war planning.

Britain’s Telegraph newspaper over the weekend published
documents from British military leaders, including a memo from British
special forces head Maj. Gen. Graeme Lamb, saying that he had been
instructed to begin “working the war up since early 2002.”

By Dave Lindorff

President Barack Obama has staked his presidency on winning his “necessary” war in Afghanistan. Coming into office, one of his first acts, on Feb. 18, was to boost US troop levels in that country by 17,000, bringing the total number of soldiers and Marines in the country to about 57,000, to which one must also add 74,000 private contractors who are doing jobs normally done by uniformed military, and about 33,000 other soldiers from NATO countries and Australia. That’s 164,000 foreign soldiers fighting against Taliban fighters.

Guess who Bush never mentioned at his final press conference? Eric Boehlert writes:

Noticing anything missing from that list? Like the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, which for years, we were told, was the administration's top priority since bin Laden was behind the terrorist attack that killed more than 3,000 Americans.

Since the press conference though, I haven't seen or heard any press reports mention that glaringly obvious gap in Bush's list. Instead, reading off the White House play sheet, the press no longer thinks bin Laden matters.

Lapdogs to the end.

UPDATE: A check of the transcript shows that Osama bin Laden, the man who defined Bush's presidency, was never mentioned by either Bush or anyone in the press corps during the president's expansive, 45-minute farewell press conference.

By Dave Lindorff

Before the odor of burned gunpowder has left the air of the Taj
Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, the US is lecturing India not to go off
half-cocked and attack Pakistan, simply because all of the attackers in
the terrorist assaults in that city arrived by boat, apparently from
neighboring Pakistan. US officials, including Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, are calling on India to engage in a “transparent” and
“thorough” investigation into the attacks to establish who was
responsible.

How different this is from the American government’s response to the 9-11 attacks in the US!

One interesting aspect of Ron Suskind's revelations about former Iraq Intelligence Chief Tahir Jalil Habbush was the urgent need on the part of the Busheviks to keep Habbush quiet so no one would know that he told us before the invasion that Saddam had no WMD's.

Habbush did nothing wrong, and in fact cooperated completely with the U.S. But Bush kept him hidden in Jordan (even though the only person he had to fear, Saddam Hussein, was also in U.S. hands) and paid him $5 million in "hush money."

This week we also learned of another prisoner who cooperated fully with the U.S., but was also locked away - apparently for the sole purpose of keeping his story out of the media. His name is Salim Ahmed Hamdan, better known as Osama Bin Laden's driver.

By Dave Lindorff

In the category of yawn-inducing stories that we knew all about
before they happened, comes word that the jury of senior uniformed
officers sitting in judgement of Osama Bin Laden’s chauffeur in the
first Bush-league military tribunal to actually go to a hearing at
Guantanamo Naval Station found the prisoner, Salim Hamdan…

Drum roll please…

Guilty of supporting terrorism.

I pause here for gasps of astonishment.

It’s awfully silent…

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the entire Republican administration don’t seem to care about capturing Osama bin Laden but Democrats, led by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), continue to demand answers on the whereabouts of the man who claimed responsibility for the 2001 attacks on our country.

Dorgan has offered as an amendment to the 9/11 Commission recommendations, a simple bill that demands accountability from the Bush administration on bin Laden and mandates "a report to Congress on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the leadership of al Qaeda."

The North Dakota Senator pointed out that we just passed the 2,000-day mark since September 11, 2001 with Osama still at large, while listening to repeated assertions from the White House that they do not care about capturing the terrorist leader.

In a speech on the Senate floor designed to counter Jon Kyl's (R-AZ) arguments in favor of the Bush-McCain Doctrine of escalating the Iraq war, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) turned his attention to the people who actually attacked our country on September 11 and charged the Bush administration with abandoning that mission.

Citing testimony given to the Senate last week by John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence, Dorgan spelled out how the preoccupation with a pointless war in Iraq has taken all focus off actually neutralizing the biggest threats to our nation. Here's an except from Dorgan's floor speech on Monday:

Robert Gates received approval from the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday on his nomination to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and will proceed to a full Senate confirmation vote. This will likely happen as soon as Wednesday's Senate session.

Here's some interesting notes from Tuesday's Senate hearings…

The closest thing to a bombshell came when Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) asked the nominee point-blank "Mr. Gates, do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq?"