| Mike Pirtle: Lurking bin Laden frightening |
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By: MIKE PIRTLE, Post Publisher
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Posted: Sunday, September 27, 2009 7:32 am
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Something that really scares me is the amount of time since 9/11 that Osama bin Laden has bad to linger out there in the Afghan/Pakistan mountains area and plot against us.
Now for the first several months after the heinous attacks, bin Laden bin running. We now know we had him in our grasp a number of times, but make poor tactical decisions, specifically twice relying on native troops instead of our own, that allowed him to escape.
But, war isn’t easy, neat nor smoothly managed.
The only reason we haven’t been able to at least figuratively nail Osama’s ears to the barn is we became distracted.
For reasons now questionable, we invaded Iraq and unfortunately that war became our focus.
Bin Laden then skulked about the harsh terrain somewhere in or between Afghanistan and Pakistan all these years, occasionally coming out of some hole to taunt us via Arabic news media that plainly has no problem dealing with and carrying the propaganda message for a cold-blooded murder of innocents.
At the end of last week, bin Laden was threatening our European allies with various tales of impending doom and other foolishness.
Still, the fact remains bin Laden is the one who actually masterminded and saw to fruition that terrible day in 2001. He is the one with the perquisite resources of finances, sympathetic high-level Middle East officials and leaders and some knowledge of Western culture actually to do what many in their religious or nationalistic fanaticism would like to do.
Most with enough hate to commit the unthinkable aren’t able; Osama was and maybe is.
Sure, we have killed many of his key co-conspirators, but he has had a frightening amount of time hidden away to be plotting.
We know it took years to put 9/11 into place. Was it more than eight years?
That fear of repeat cranked up for me Friday with the Associated Press news that an Afghan immigrant wanted to carry out a New York City terror attack involving hydrogen peroxide bombs to coincide with the Sept. 11 anniversary before federal authorities foiled the plan, a U.S. prosecutor said Friday.
The 24-year-old Afghan-born man received explosives training from al-Qaida and bought large quantities of hydrogen peroxide and nail-polish remover at beauty supply stores to make bombs, possibly to detonate on New York City commuter trains, the AP reported.
Apparently, the would-be terrorist was going to copycat the attacks in London subway system, using pretty ordinary chemicals to produce weapons.
Federal authorities claim to have evidence of associates helping the man and information he was feverishly working on his diabolical plan right before Sept. 11 this year.
Right, wrong, and way you want to look at it, a lot of these people bear us evil intentions.
They don’t wear a T for terrorist on their foreheads so we can’t just pick them out of the vast majority of their common religious and national populations.
While good intelligence and police work can obviously thwart a lot of these attacks, it seems unlikely we will stop them all and, sooner or later, no matter our efforts, leadership or policies, we will be hit again.
Our single best move to stop the threat would be a captured and humiliated bin Laden but all this time later he still taunts us from the shadows. |
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