Robert Baer, a celebrated former CIA field officer, confounded politicians and socialites alike in Washington yesterday with the publication of his very provocative article at TIME.com entitled When Will Obama Give Up the Bin Laden Ghost Hunt?
Their bewilderment, of course, stems from the fact that President-Elect Barack Obama has made capturing or killing bin Laden a top foreign-policy objective, which presumes that the al-Qaeda leader really is just lying in wait – purportedly in the mountainous regions of Pakistan – to launch another spectacular attack against the United States.
But Baer contends that recent videos of bin Laden inciting fear and loathing in the American people with his litany of hackneyed apocalyptic threats are all fake. In particular, he cites the uncontroverted fact that bin Laden would never have dyed his beard – as it appeared he had done in some of those videos.
More to the point, he claims that half of his former colleagues at the CIA believe bin Laden is dead, while the other half suggest he is alive … but only to cover their asses in case he pulls a Lazarus.
Yet, with all due respect to Baer and the gullible Washingtonians who are greeting his article with wary relief, here’s what I wrote about the misguided hunt for bin Laden over a year ago:
[W]hat seemed to have been a stunning victory in Afghanistan is being undermined by a resurgent Taliban – making this war now seem almost as half-assed and lacking in purpose as the war in Iraq. And, to add insult to the mess America has made of both wars, al-Qaeda terrorists remind us almost daily that they remain as great a threat today as they were on 9/11….
Finally, earth to the CIA: Osama bin Laden is not only irrelevant; he’s dead!
Frankly, it’s now easy to see how group-think American intelligence, and herd-like American media, misled us to believe that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs. After all, how else does one explain the CIA confirming, and media outlets reporting, that the dye-bearded Osama look-a-like who’s starring this week in al Qaeda’s annual 9/11 mockumentary is, in fact, a resurrected bin Laden…?
[9/11 Remembered, The iPINIONS Journal, September 11, 2007]
Case closed…?
Related Articles:
9/11 Remembered
When Will Obama Give Up the Bin Laden Ghost Hunt?
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