Osama bin Forgotten

Where Is Osama bin Laden? Day 1,461 and Counting

By Michael Tomasky
The American Prospect
Thursday, September 8, 2005

It's the fourth anniversary of September 11 - and Osama bin Laden is still at large.

This September 11 will mark the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States. The media will focus on the ceremonies at the former World Trade Center site, the Pentagon, and other cities and towns around the country that will honor the dead. The Bush administration, meanwhile, will do its best to remind Americans that today's George W. Bush - except for the Watergate-era Richard Nixon, the most unpopular two-term president, at this point in his tenure, since scientific polling began in the 1940s - is the same man who led the country through tragedy.

In truth, the anniversary should be the occasion for a thoroughgoing discussion of how America has combated terrorism in the last four years. And on that front, even the disaster Bush has created in Iraq takes a back seat to one overwhelming fact: By the time night falls on September 11, Osama bin Laden will have been at large for 1,461 days.

America vanquished world fascism in less time: We obtained Germany's surrender in 1,243 days, Japan's in 1,365. Even the third Punic War, in which Carthage was burned to the ground and emptied of citizens who were taken en masse into Roman slavery, lasted around 1,100 days (and troops needed a little longer to get into position back in 149 B.C.).

Yes, yes: It can be harder to find one stateless man than to defeat an army whose troop movements can be tracked. And that would be a good excuse - if the Bush administration had bothered to make capturing bin Laden a priority.

[For the rest of the article go to: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105Y.shtml]