OK, time to get our framing hammers out and build a nice big frame for the news, this time coming out of Saudi Arabia, that Osama Bin'Laden may have died.
1.) Osama Bin'Laden did not die in Tora Bora, when the US could have delivered a fatal blow not only to him but to a large amount of his lieutenants. We "outsourced" the raid on Tora Bora to tribal leaders, who let him walk. Were they bribed? Did they lose their nerve? Did they let him go deliberately? It really doesn't matter. He walked, and was able to pull the strings on his organization for five more years.
2.) Osama Bin'Laden died in Pakistan, where a separate peace between the Taliban and Pakistani tribal leaders has been reached, turning the lawless province of Waziristan into a safe haven for the allies of Al'Qaeda. General Musharraf's protestations that he had been threatened with being "bomb(ed) back to the Stone Age" if he did not cooperate with US efforts to "git" the Taliban and Al'Qaeda, are empty at best, disingenuous at worst. By rights we SHOULD HAVE bombed Pakistan to the Stone Age. Pakistan has been shown to be a less-than-helpful ally and perhaps should be seen as a "double agent" which has actively thwarted attempts to round up the Al'Qaeda machine. The Afghani Front should have also included Pakistan and Kashmir. The Pakistanis are NOT our friends and never have been. Yeah they have nukes. So what? We have nukes too. And we should have made abundantly clear to Musharraf that we would use them if theirs were used on our soldiers. Really, it's a joke. They would be crazy to use a nuke on us when they knew that we'd simply dust off and nuke the whole country from orbit. It's the only way to be sure, y'know.
3.) Osama Bin'Laden died a free man, without ever going before a US or, better yet, an international court for his many crimes against humanity. The butcher of 9/11, if he is dead, has breathed his last breaths in freedom, surrounded by his comrades. Whether he died of Typhoid, of kidney failure or some other malady is not important. He died a free man. We failed in our mission of bringing him back dead (by unnatural causes) or alive.
4.) We need to revisit the very well documented timeline about 9/11 that Michael Moore assembled. Yes, I know, "Michael Moore is a Big Fat Idiot." Yeah right, wingnuts. He's a Big Fat Idiot (sic) who meticulously documented his movie. (And furthermore, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot too, one who has a drug problem and went to the Dominican Republic as a sex tourist.) Bush and his people were more concerned with spiriting the members of House Bin'Laden living in the US out of the country, on the only planes that flew in the days immediately after 9/11. Bush has proven that he is beholden to Saudi interests and puts them before the interests of the US. Killing a member of one of the most powerful noble houses of Saudi Arabia, just below that of the House of Saud, would put Bush in a very difficult place with his Saudi friends. So he just let the bastard go.
To sum up, the frame goes like this:
Osama Bin'Laden died a free man, surrounded by his comrades, instead of in prison where he should have been. Bush held back for fear of offending his Saudi allies. He put Saudi oil over the interests of the United States in seeking justice for the victims of 9/11. And our Pakistani "allies" weren't allies at all, but a further hindrance to justice. Neither the Saudis nor the Pakistanis are our friends or have the interests of their "allies" in the US at heart. Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place. The right battleground was Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we did not fight those battles with anything resembling resolve. Meanwhile we have lost as many US troops in Iraq as we lost innocent civilians at the World Trade Center.
Or to be more concise:
Osama Bin'Laden died a free man because Bush put Saudi oil over justice for the victims of 9/11.
