Don't Try to Catch Bin Laden
Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 11:15 pm
Inside the Oval Office
President Bush gives journalists a "heads up" about the mid-term elections, among other things.
by Fred Barnes, The Daily Standard
09/13/2006
WE NOW KNOW WHY the Bush administration hasn't made the capture of Osama bin Laden a paramount goal of the war on terror. Emphasis on bin Laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism. Here's how President Bush explained this Tuesday: "This thing about . . . let's put 100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work."
Rather, Bush says there's a better way to stay on offense against terrorists. "The way you win the war on terror," Bush said, "is to find people [who are terrorists] and get them to give you information about what their buddies are fixing to do." In a speech last week, the president explained how this had worked--starting with the arrest and interrogation of 9/11 planner Khalid Sheik Muhammad--to break up a terrorist operation that was planning post-9/11 attacks on America.
...At the outset of the interview, which occurred the morning after his speech to the nation on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Bush declared: "I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions."
An unusual aspect of the session was the president's request for some of his remarks to be considered off the record. Nevertheless, several of these comments were reported anyway, including his observation that he senses a new spiritual awakening in the country. That view, he indicated, is at least partly based on the many times average citizens tell him they are praying for him.
Read the rest here.
President Bush gives journalists a "heads up" about the mid-term elections, among other things.
by Fred Barnes, The Daily Standard
09/13/2006
WE NOW KNOW WHY the Bush administration hasn't made the capture of Osama bin Laden a paramount goal of the war on terror. Emphasis on bin Laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism. Here's how President Bush explained this Tuesday: "This thing about . . . let's put 100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work."
Rather, Bush says there's a better way to stay on offense against terrorists. "The way you win the war on terror," Bush said, "is to find people [who are terrorists] and get them to give you information about what their buddies are fixing to do." In a speech last week, the president explained how this had worked--starting with the arrest and interrogation of 9/11 planner Khalid Sheik Muhammad--to break up a terrorist operation that was planning post-9/11 attacks on America.
...At the outset of the interview, which occurred the morning after his speech to the nation on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Bush declared: "I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions."
An unusual aspect of the session was the president's request for some of his remarks to be considered off the record. Nevertheless, several of these comments were reported anyway, including his observation that he senses a new spiritual awakening in the country. That view, he indicated, is at least partly based on the many times average citizens tell him they are praying for him.
Read the rest here.