Bush Flip-Flops on Bin Laden
In the four years plus since the 9/11 attacks, the simplest way to gauge President Bush's changing political fortunes has been his changing attitude towards Osama Bin Laden. In the Bush playbook, the threat posed by Bin Laden is directly proportional to the threat to the President's political standing.
Trying to fight back the growing public outcry over his illegal domestic wiretapping program, President Bush used the Bin Laden bogeyman once again during his remarks Wednesday at the National Security Agency. Bush lashed out at his critics:
All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously. When he says he's going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it. I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously.
Bush, of course, did not take Bin Laden seriously in three years ago. Questioned about his silence regarding Bin Laden in the months following the American failure to capture the Al Qaeda chieftain in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, a nonchalant Bush on March 13, 2002 downplayed his significance:
So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you...I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.
Bush may have been embarrassed by his failure to capture Bin Laden in 2002, but by the fall of 2004, he faced the prospect of American voters who seemed to recall the murder of 3,000 of their countrymen. In the third presidential debate with John Kerry, a childlike Bush on October 13, 2004 tried for a "do over" of his statement two and a half years earlier:
Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden.
Which brings us full circle. In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush used the specter of Osama Bin Laden to rally what had been a faltering presidency. In a show of frontier bravado, Bush talked tough about Bin Laden just days after the 9/11 attacks:
There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, "Wanted: Dead or Alive."
Now, President Bush is worried about his approval ratings, which have dipped back into the 30's. It must be time to worry about Bin Laden again.
—Perrspective
08:24 PM Permalink
Sooo,, That Makes the War On Terror,,, ILLEGAL?
Bush Flip-Flops on Bin Laden.” ?
Oil~n~Greed does NOT Equate to War on Terror. It Equates To Criminal Behavior Tactics of Thieves?
And Here all along, People THOUGHT, President KERRY WAS The Flip Flopper.
HAHAHAAAHAAAA, ROTF LMAO
I will not rest until Osama binLaden is captured dead or alive. Except for my annual month long vacation, my monthly week long vacation and my daily nap.
With those exceptions, I will not rest until Osama binLaden is captured dead or alive.
It seems like I read, maybe in an excerpt from Bob Woodwards book, that after 9-11 Bush had to be talked into going after Bin Laden in Afghanistan by Powell and Tony Blair; that Bush's first impulse was to invade Iraq regardless of who was responsible. Anyone else remmeber that and have links or documentation. It seems like Bush has essentially used Bin laden as a useful thug when it serves his needs, instead of seeing him as both the brains behind 9-11 and an inspiration for the current crop of Islamic wackos.
Bin Laden is just the random "face of the enemy" that GW needs to have people believe that there is a threat. Use scare tactics again when his ratings go down or gets caught in the cookie jar. The only time he will get caught is when Osama pisses off the Saudi Royals or the Bush's have a falling out with the Royals too. I feel that Osama did not mastermind any of 9/11. Unfortunately our enemy is from within.
Question 1: Why do I see only interviews and specials of family members of ONLY flight 93. Wasn't there 3 other planes? What happened to those family members? Don't they matter? Question 2: The oil wells in Iraq kept pumping when we invaded. There was no government intact to watch over the pumping. Latest articles say that there are no monitoring devices to register how much oil is and has been pumping from those wells. Where is all that oil going? Didn't Exxon have a 2005 profit of 30 billion.
|
