THE GRAVEST THREAT

Republicans like to talk about the "grave threat" posed to the U.S. by Al Qaeda and other terrorists. I don't discount the notion, but in my view the gravest threat to the nation is posed by Bush-Cheney.

Maureen Dowd:

None of the Bushies’ actions in defiance of law and convention, none of the money or blood spilled in Iraq, have helped these so-called tough guys get the one guy they really need to get. That is truly galling.

W. and Vice don’t even act upset about Osama’s still being on the loose. Having played down his significance after they missed their chance to get him in Tora Bora, they continue to act as if it’s no big deal when he hurls more threats.

Torquemada Cheney was torturing logic again in a speech to a conservative think tank in New York. “Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, we simply stirred up a hornets’ nest,” he said. “They overlook a fundamental fact: we were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway.”

Yeah, Dick, because they weren’t in Iraq, either.
...
The White House has always seemed less compelled to capture Osama than to use him as a pretext for invading Iraq and as a political selling point. Karl Rove, coming out of his “please don’t indict me” crouch, tried to chase away the taint of the Abramoff scandal with a new round of terror-mongering for 2006: “We need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of this moment. President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for many Democrats.”

So why did the White House set aside the gravest threat of all?

UPDATE: The NYTimes is reporting that Two years after the Pakistani Army began operations in border tribal areas to root out members of Al Qaeda and other foreign militants, Pakistani officials who know the area say the military campaign is bogged down, the local political administration is powerless and the militants are stronger than ever."

Tags: Bush-Cheney, Osama Bin Laden