Image courtesy of Global Panorama under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Wednesday it was publicly revealed for the first time that the CIA now has fewer people manning the special ‘Osama Team’ – that special group begun in the mid-1990’s to track and eliminate Osama Bin Laden – than we did before the 9/11 attacks!
CIA operative Michael Scheuer has written a letter to the U.S. Congress which complains that the CIA has actually cut available personnel for the ‘Osama Unit’ – and rotates new people in and out so frequently that they do not have time to become current with all the latest intelligence before they move on to some other assignment.
Wasn’t catching Osama Bin Laden our “highest national priority’ after 9/11?
What of President Bush repeated pledge to “get him dead or alive”?
And what of Vice President Cheney’s repeated promises to “run him to ground”?
Why does our government never even talk about Osama any more?
Why did the President never mention Osama by name even once at the Republican National Convention?
Here – from yesterdays’s New York Times – is the crux of the problem:
“ The bin Laden unit is stretched so thin that it relies on
inexperienced officers rotated in and out every 60 to 90
days, and they leave before they know enough to be able to
perform any meaningful work, according to a letter the
C.I.A. officer has written to the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees.”
How can the Bush Administration allow this to be happening?
Michael Scheuer, by the way, is a hero for repeatedly having the guts to stand up to his CIA superiors on this. During the late 1990’s he pleaded with them for more aid – and has cited at least a dozen opportunities to kill Osama. All were passed up for various bureaucratic reasons.
Scheuer – distressed by the direction of the War on Terror – then wrote a book under the pseudonym ‘Anonymous.’ He also is cited repeatedly as ‘Mike’ in the 9/11 Commission Report.
This failure to capture or kill Osama is a national disgrace. He attacked us – and, make no mistake about it, he himself ran the entire mission. The 9/11 Report makes it clear: Osama personally recruited each and every one of the 19 murderers and he personally selected the three targets: the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Capitol.
Those who claim that Osama has been ‘marginalized’ are full of bunk. He is the leader – both operationally and symbolically – of America’s sworn enemy. And he keeps taunting us with new audio tapes that cause us to raise our alert level.
Yes, we are trying to get him. But are we trying as hard as we could to get him?
No, we are not.
We have not expended the money, the manpower and the national political will to get Osama that we spent to get Saddam.
Forget the campaign for a minute: this is a national disgrace and a smear on our national honor.
This SOB must be caught ASAP – and to do anything less is a moral crime.