Stop me if you've heard this one before. According to a report in Time magazine, the CIA has yet another theory that Osama bin-Laden is either dead or at death's door.
This is about the second or third time U.S. intelligence sources have come up with the news that bin-Laden is dead or near death. It's the same reason, kidney disease. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in 2002 that bin-Laden was seriously ill and required a kidney dialysis machine. Then the CIA said that bin-Laden was probably already dead.
All of those announcements were usually followed by a new videotape of bin-Laden looking no worse for the wear. He's been looking pretty good, considering the terrorist leader has spent the last six or seven years hiding out in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan and being hunted by an international force, United States intelligence and military units and the Pakistan military.
How hard Pakistan was really trying is up for debate. The Islamic fundamentalist Taliban, which has had a resurgence recently in Afghanistan, has taken over part of northern Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan. They have persuaded or bribed local tribal leaders to support and protect them. That gives them and al-Qaida easy access to military and terrorist operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
We should have caught and killed or caught and put on trial bin-Laden years ago. After the attacks of 9/11, the world rallied around and supported the invasion of Afghanistan, where the al-Qaida terrorists had been harbored and trained and was supported by the Taliban regime.
The invasion of Afghanistan to remove the Taliban and quash al-Qaida was justifiable and successful. Then, the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq. For the last five years the United States has been spending about $8 billion a month in Iraq with not much progress to show for it. What could have been a true war on global terrorism shifted to the U.S. blunder in Iraq.
In Afghanistan, even with far fewer troops for support and far less money, the new government is hanging on. In Iraq, the fractured government is in disarray and the civil war continues. And the U.S. death count nears 5,000 with thousands of U.S. soldiers wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, wounded or displaced.
The war in Iraq has not made a dent in global terrorism. In fact, it has had the opposite effect. It has spawned new terrorist groups and given Muslim extremists a new recruiting tool. It has given credibility to a leader in Iran who normally would have been a joke. It has driven Iraq and Iran into partnership, which cannot be good news for the U.S. in the long run.
We had our chance to bring bin-Laden to justice for the evil deed he committed. Now we have to rely on rumors and hope for his demise. Is bin-Laden dead or near death? Does it really matter anymore?
