bin Forgotten yet Again

Friday I held my breath, along with most other thinking folks, when Osama took to the airwaves in a last minute attempt to elect George W. Bush. Fortunately, it looks like his video didn't do much either way, and that particular October surprise fizzled.

Now, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair are suggesting that bin Laden could easily be sitting in a US jail--or lying prone in a coffin--had it not been for several months of bungling by the incoming Bush team back in 2001. Check their article out--they cite Kabir Mohabbat as their source, and contend that the Bush team didn't so much as take their eye off the ball but completely shut them prior to September 11th, whereupon the rules of the game morphed rather quickly. For this, Counterpunch awards Bush an "F" for the War on Terror.

Cockburn, to be sure, is enigmatic. In this piece from last July, he rips John Kerry and suggests that four more years of Dubya could make the empire tumble (which he considers a good thing). For this, Steve Gilliard rips into him, accusing he and Ralph Nader of "hoping nobody notices that they're rich." Gilliard then lays off the personal stuff and hits the real nail on the head, comparing "let Bush ruin it" to the Communist gambit in 1930's Germany. They paid the price for that.

So, perhaps this article on Bush's failure is a way to balance out the rhetoric. I've been hoping to see Cockburn criticize the dauphin a bit more. However, if all goes as I expect tomorrow, it will be president-elect Kerry who will be on the receiving end of Al's sharp pen. And, good for that. As I've said, a Kerry victory tomorrow is the first step, not the end of the line.