Has anybody in the M$M talked about this Zarqawi story?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/


.....NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger. In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council. ‘People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of pre-emption against terrorists.’

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“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

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Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

"The reasons the intelligence service got for not shooting Zarqawi was simply that the President and the National Security Council decided it was more important not to give the Europeans the impression we were gunslingers," he said.

"Mr Bush had Mr Zarqawi in his sights for almost every day for a year before the invasion of Iraq and he didn't shoot because they were wining and dining the French in an effort to get them to assist us in the invasion of Iraq."

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_02_29_dish_archive.html#107837833223213964

LETTING ZARQAWI GO: I'm at a loss to understand how the Bush administration failed to act decisively to take out Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi when it had several opportunities to do so. This report is deeply disturbing. I wonder how killing Zarqawi could have conceivably impeded our bid to topple Saddam; and why the White House aborted the military operations.

>>>>cites MSNBC report here<<<<<<<<

The administration flubbed several subsequent opportunities subsequently - and hundreds are now dead as a result. Maybe there is some explanation here that I don't yet know. But it seems to me that if we blame Clinton for not getting Osama when he could have (and we should), then the blame on the Bush team for letting Zarqawi through the net should be just as intense. What exactly is the real excuse?