Just Explain How

One of the familiar talking points the Democrats are using right now is about how the administration has not caught Osama bin Laden. They love to invoke Tora Bora and the missed opportunity to kill him there. They also say they will get him if they get elected.

Maybe that would be more than a talking point for generating sound bites if they'd just explain how they intend to do it.

The Washington Post has a long article that explains the difficulties involved in hunting down a single man in a remote area. There are a number of gratuitous swipes at the administration, but overall it details a lot of the almost insurmountable problems this kind of hunt entails.

But in the last three months, following a request from President Bush to "flood the zone," the CIA has sharply increased the number of intelligence officers and assets devoted to the pursuit of bin Laden. The intelligence officers will team with the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and with more resources from the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies.

The problem, former and current counterterrorism officials say, is that no one is certain where the "zone" is.

"Here you've got a guy who's gone off the net and is hiding in some of the most formidable terrain in one of the most remote parts of the world surrounded by people he trusts implicitly," said T. McCreary, spokesman for the National Counterterrorism Center. "And he stays off the net and is probably not mobile. That's an extremely difficult problem."

Intelligence officials think that bin Laden is hiding in the northern reaches of the autonomous tribal region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This calculation is based largely on a lack of activity elsewhere and on other intelligence, including a videotape, obtained exclusively by the CIA and not previously reported, that shows bin Laden walking on a trail toward Pakistan at the end of the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, when U.S. forces came close but failed to capture him.

Many factors have combined in the five years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to make the pursuit more difficult. They include the lack of CIA access to people close to al-Qaeda's inner circle; Pakistan's unwillingness to pursue him; the reemergence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; the strength of the Iraqi insurgency, which has depleted U.S. military and intelligence resources; and the U.S. government's own disorganization.

Part of the problem with anything of this nature is the fact that there are several bureaucracies involved. Nominally, these are part of the executive branch, but in actuality they operate with their own built-in way of doing things and their career bureaucrats. Political appointees come and go. One only has to look at the disastrous failures within the CIA over many administrations to understand that. If you read through this article and discount the statements that are patently bureaucratic infighting, you come away with a picture of a monumental task.

Then try to explain how you would do it differently. Justify your answer.

Other Links to this Post

1. AGITPROP: Version 3.0, Featuring Blogenfreude — Sunday, 10 September , 2006 @ 3:24 pm