Bin Laden a Bush weapon

March 31, 2004
Bin Laden a Bush weapon
PV Vivekanand



The frenzy in the American hunt for Osama Bin lll and the way Washington is going about it with a no-holds-barred approach clearly indicate that having Bin Laden under American custody — or to establish that he is no more — in time for the presidential elections in November is the top-most priority for President George W Bush. In fact, it could be Bin Laden's fate that would determine whether Bush remains in the White House for another four years.
AMERICAN soldiers are on an unprecedented do-or-die mission thousands of kilometres from home: Catch Osama Bin Laden. However, not many of them might have given it a second thought that their mission is not as much important as averting the "biggest threat" to the national security of their country as ensuring the political future of their president.
It does not need a magic ball to see that George W Bush's chances of re-election in November depend largely on images of Bin Laden in American custody flashed throughout the US similar to those of Saddam Hussein or vivid signs that the Al Qaeda leader — America's number one enemy — continues to elude capture and thump his nose at the mighty US military and intelligence network.
Recent reports had said that Bin Laden had been "cornered" on the wild mountainous frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan and it was only a matter of time that the elusive Al Qaeda leader was caught. The reports were quickly denied, however.
What has not been widely reported was that the mission to capture Bin Ladin or at least produce evidence that he had been "eliminated" is that orders have gone out of the White House: Get Bin Laden at all costs and well ahead of the presidential elections.
US military officers have spoken of a “renewed sense of urgency” that is fuelling the search for Bin Laden.
Pakistan has thrown its military and intelligence weight behind the American soldiers combing the tough and unforgiving terrain on the Pak-Afghan border. It has deployed some 7,000 soldiers on its side of the border to back up the American forces on the Afghan side.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff is definitely under American pressure. Otherwise he would not have authorised a military action that led to the death of nine Pakistanis in a shootout and arrest of some 25 tribals last week near the border in a sweep through three villages. Soldiers conducted house-to-house searches and blew up houses to punish unco-operative villagers who refused to hand over suspects.
Islamabad said the operation was launched after militants had ignored a Feb. 20 deadline to surrender
However, experts, including Pakistani analysts said, Musharraf, who has always remained committed to a longstanding understanding to respect the autonomy of the tribal territories, would not have allowed such action to take place unless without American presure.
Applying such pressure on Musharaff is only a reflection of Washington's anxiety to stage a dramatic capture of Bin Laden and turn it into political capital for Bush in November. Washington could not but be aware that such pressure carries high risk in Pakistan.
It does not an expert Washington watcher to see the connection .
Liaqt Baloch, deputy president of the conservative Islamic party Jamaat-I-Islami of Pakistan, has argued that the military assault is designed to produce an intelligence success ahead of the US elections in November. “There’s a strong link between the activity in the tribal areas and the US election,” he said. “This isn’t anti-terrorism; it’s just a political action to bolster support for Bush in the United States.”
Musharraf himself has hinted at the pressure being applied by Washington by telling religious leaders that Pakistan had to co-operate with the US to avoid becoming a target of the war on terrorism.
It has also not been lost on observers that the US adopted a low-key approach to revelations that Pakistan's AQ Khan had clandestinely sold nuclear know-how to Libya, Iran and North Korea, particularly that the last two are indeed among the "axis of evil" coined by Bush himself.
Given Bush's ardent public drive against "weapons of mass destruction"and nuclear proliferation, it would have been unthinkable for Washingto to have accepted Pakistani explanations and actions following the revelations. But then, Pakistani assistance is vital to the US quest to nab Bin Laden and to have raised an issue with Pakistan in any serious manner over the nuclear embroglio would have seriously set back its hopes of getting the Al Qaeda leader in the run-up to the presidential elections.
Commentators around the world are unanimous that with Saddam Hussein in Amercian custody, catching Bin Laden would be the most significant election boost for Bush.
Indeed, the way in which the Bush administration is throwing everything it has into the "get-Bin-Laden" campaign clearly shows how worried Washington strategists are over the prospect of the Al Qaeda leader remaining elusive when Americans vote in November.
The Pentagon has done a 180-degree turn in strategy. It has pulled out Task Force 121, the elite squad which co-ordinated the capture of Saddam and other bigwigs in pre-war Iraq, and assigned with the new mission of catching Bin Laden.
Task Force 121 it consists of Army Delta Force soldiers and Navy SEALs, transported on helicopters. The unit is credited with last December’s seizure of Saddam. The task force is deploying in strategic locations, practising missions and wait ing for intelligence to provide the locations of targets.
Many of the American soldiers now being sent to Iraq are National Guard members or reservists whereas soldiers with fighting experience are assigned to Afghanistan.
The units in Afghanistan are given everything technically possible to help them reach Bin Laden, including the firepower, intelligence help and plenty of money to woo poor Pakistan and Afghan villagers in the targeted areas.
Heavily bearded Delta Force soldiers and Navy Seals in local dress have been seen in villages close to the border with Pakistan, and Britain is sending in SAS detachments, reports The Independent of London.
It has also been confirmed that Pakistani soliders have sealed off mountain passes and are continuing sweeps in the wild tribal areas of northern and southern Waziristan on the border.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported from from southern Waziristan this week that tribesmen in the area had said that Bin Laden was not in the region.
Southern Waziristan has been cited many times as the most likely hideout of Bin Laden and his supporters.
However, according to the BBC, most tribesmen argue that it would be impossible to remain out of sight in this inhospitable region for long.
South Waziristan, often called Pakistan's Wild West, is a mass of mostly arid mountains and hills, and is difficult to live in. It has a population of about one million, almost all of them Waziris, who are described as one of the most warlike tribes living along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
The American and Pakistani operations in pursuit of Bin Laden are given high media exposure, and the security forces make no secret of their presence in the region.
Obviously, they are hoping that increasing military activities and hyped up reports, coupled with misleading and confusing information planted among the tribals in the area , could trigger electronic communications among Bin Laden's supporters and thus give some inkling to his whereabouts.
However, Bin Laden is not believed to have gone near an active mobile phone since the day he managed to evade capture and flee from the Afghan moutains in 2002 after the US forces took control of the country.
He is believed to have a several-layer "security" ring of supporters whose job is to remain alert for any "alien" movement in their designated areas. Word is passed on mouth to mouth and is relayed back and forth and this makes it doubtful whether the US forces' hope that intercepted electronic traffc would lead them to Bin Laden.
It is nothing new. That was the case since the Afghan war. The added element now is the sense of urgency that has been given to efforts to catch Bin Laden, possibly alive so that he could be paraded in front of cameras and give the very lifeline that Bush is seeking in his race for re-election.
Why should Bin Laden be the key to a second term in the White House for Bush?
Well, it is not as much a relief that Bin Laden has been removed as a "security threat" to the US that would count among American voters: It is Bush's image of having achieved "success" in leading the US, and indeed the rest of the world, in the war against terrorism that would be relayed through Bin Laden's capture. Equally importantly, it would help partly do away with the negative fallout of the growing disbelief among Americans that their president was genuinely convinced that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to the US.
Bush did get a lift in rating after the capture of Saddam but it did not last long, but having Bin Laden under US custody would definitely guarantee the president's re-election if only because he would be portrayed as a hero fighting a world full of terrorists hostile to the US posing real and imaginary threats.
The series of revelations of intelligence doctoring under the stewardship of the so-called neo-conservatives in Washington and reports that they had planned the war that toppled Saddam even before Bush entered the White House have done massive damage to the incumbent president's hopes of re-election.
According to the Independent:
"If the Bush administration can metaphorically place the Al Qaeda leader's head on a pole along Saddam Hussein's, it will also have a powerful answer to critics who argue that the Iraq war, far from advancing the campaign against terrorism, was a distraction and diversion of resources from it."
Americans are also questioning whether the "elimination" of Bin Laden would make their country safe.
Even Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet does not believe so. He says the threat posed to the US will remain high, with or without Al Qaeda.
Questions are also raised why the Bush administration has failed to prove that Al Qaeda was behind the Sept.11 attacks, particularly that a German court has ascertained that the plot for the assaults was hatched in Germany and not Afghanistan as Washington had asserted.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which lists Bin Laden as among the 10 most wanted men, makes no reference to the Sept.11 attacks while offering $25 million in reward for his capture.
It says on its website that Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the Aug.7, 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Dar es Salam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, which killed over 200 people. "In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world," it says.
Obviously, the US does not have material evidence that Bin Laden had plotted the Sept.11 attacks.
These points are being increasingly raised in US and Canadian media.
Noted commentator Eric Margolis writes in the Toronto Sun:
"We are still not even sure Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11, as Bush claims. If the Bush administration was so totally wrong about Iraq's secret weapons and links to Al Qaeda, why is its information any more reliable about the shadowy Bin Laden?"
Margolis notes that the main legal evidence cited so far by the US against Al Qaeda comes from a former fugitive member who embezzled its funds. "Interestingly, much of the phony "evidence" about Iraq came from another convicted embezzler, Ahmad Chalabi," writes Margolis, is a syndicated foreign affairs columnist and broadcaster, and author of War at the Top of the World - The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Tibet.
What the Americans — and indeed the rest of the world — know today is that although it applauded the Sept.11 attack, Al Qaida may not have been actively involved in planning or financing the assaults.
However, notes Margolis, there is evidence that Al Qaida was behind bombings of some US targets abroad, like the USS Cole and attacks in East Africa. "The 9/11 plotters were largely from Saudi Arabia and operated from Germany. Yet 9/11 was the pretext the US used to invade Afghanistan," he writes.
Margolis is convinced that "if before November elections Al Qaida finally manages to stage a devastating attack on the US mainland, as its number two, Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, threatens, Bush will face popular outrage and be sliced and diced by Democrats."
"Luckily for the US, what's left of Al Qaida has so far produced more hot air than explosions," he writes. "Hopefully, the alleged dangers from Al Qaida will be no more substantial than Iraq's infamous but non-existent `drones of death,' which, Bush comically warned, were about to fly off Iraqi vessels and shower America with pestilence."
Another source of concern for many is the tight veil of secrecy that the administration has drawn around pre-9/11 intelligence findings and the course of events running to the attacks.
Obviously aware of the scepticism in the air, Bush has finally agreed to answer in private all questions raised by a government commission investigating the Sept.11 attacks, as announced by the White House this week.
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has accused Bush of "stonewalling" investigations of the Sept.11 attacks. Kerry's allegation is backed by revelations that the administration has not been fully co-operating with the investigating commission.
The 10-member commission had been seeking to question Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney about what the administration knew before the attacks. The two are seen to have been trying to stall the request and put off answering questions.
Bush had agreed to meet privately for an hour with the chairman and vice chairman of the commission, but said it was unnecessary for him to testify publicly. Cheney also has said he would meet with some commissioners.
Bush has now dropped the one-hour limit,
The importance that the Bush administration attaches to capturing Bin Laden was underlined by a visit that Defence Secretary Ronald Rumsfled in late February and the planned visit this week of Secretary of State Colin Powell.
With the drop in Bush’s poll ratings, his the Republican camp is also seeking to show off an apparent victory to keep public attention diverted from the quaqmire that the US has entered both in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They want that victory fast and definitie before November.
US military officials say that they plan to intesify the search and the ongoing spring offensive will climax in April or May. They are planning a “hammer-and-anvil” effect to trap Al Qaeda fighters between US forces operating from the Afghan side and Pakistani troops advancing along the north-western Pakistan border.
Will Bin Laden be caught between the hammer and anvil before Nov.5?
Unlike some of his military commanders who have voiced confidence that Bin Laden would be caught soon, Rumsfeld is non-committal: "I don't believe it (capturing Bin Laden) is closer or farther at any given moment."
Indeed, giving the hunt for Bin Laden the high media hype it is given now might prove to be the Bush camp's undoing if the Al Qaeda leader slips through the net.
(with input from wire agencies and website sources).