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bigtree

(85,919 posts)
Tue May 1, 2012, 11:30 AM May 2012

This thing about . . . Bush and bin-Laden


Bush, September 2006:

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."


from Think Progress, Sep 14, 2006: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2006/09/14/7472/barnes-osama/

Bush Tells Barnes Capturing Bin Laden Is ‘Not A Top Priority Use of American Resources’

Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes appeared on Fox this morning to discuss his recent meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office. The key takeaway for Barnes was that “bin Laden doesn’t fit with the administration’s strategy for combating terrorism.” Barnes said that Bush told him capturing bin Laden is “not a top priority use of American resources.”

Bush’s priorities have always been skewed. Just months after declaring he wanted bin Laden “dead or alive,” Bush said, “I truly am not that concerned about him.” Turning his attention away from bin Laden, Bush trained his focus on Iraq — a country he now admits had “nothing” to do with 9/11.

more: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8462.html
transcript:

HOST: Alright Fred, you and a few other journalists were in the Oval Office with the President, right? And he says catching Osama bin Laden is not job number one?

BARNES: Well, he said, look, you can send 100,000 special forces, that’s the figure he used, to the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and hunt him down, but he just said that’s not a top priority use of American resources. His vision of a war on terror is one that involves intelligence to find out from people, to get tips, to follow them up and break up plots to kill Americans before they occur. That’s what happened recently in that case of the planes that were to be blown up by terrorists, we think coming from England, and that’s the top priority. He says, you know, getting Osama bin Laden is a low priority compared to that.


Kerry weighs in:

Kerry faults Bush's Afghanistan strategy

"The administration's Afghanistan policy defines cut and run," Kerry said in remarks at Howard University on Thursday. "Cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is running amok across entire regions of the country. Cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man's land."

"The central front in the war on terror is still in Afghanistan, but this administration treats it like a sideshow," said Kerry, adding there are seven times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan.

"When did denying al-Qaida a terrorist stronghold in Afghanistan stop being an urgent American priority?" Kerry said. "How is it possible that we keep sending thousands of additional U.S. troops into the middle of a civil war in Iraq but we can't find any more troops to send to Afghanistan?"
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This thing about . . . Bush and bin-Laden (Original Post) bigtree May 2012 OP
why kill your best campaign boogeyman? zbdent May 2012 #1
Exactly Art_from_Ark May 2012 #2
That video is brilliant, Art. Uncle Joe May 2012 #3
Seems like that was the entire message of the 2004 GOP convention ... zbdent May 2012 #4

zbdent

(35,392 posts)
1. why kill your best campaign boogeyman?
Tue May 1, 2012, 11:39 AM
May 2012

Bush2004: "Osama bin Laden! 9/11! Terror, terror, terror! BOO!"

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