McClatchy: Bin Laden benefits from U.S. focus on Iraq

Bin Laden benefits from U.S. focus on Iraq
By Tom Lasseter and Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers


KABUL, Afghanistan — Six years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many presume that the man behind the murders of nearly 3,000 people is hiding in the tribal areas that straddle the Afghan-Pakistani border, not far from where he evaded American forces and their Afghan allies in 2001.

Osama bin Laden reappeared Friday after nearly three years in a rambling half-hour video that U.S. intelligence officials said appeared to be authentic and to have been made recently.

That bin Laden apparently has been able to survive says a lot about the problems the United States faces in bringing him to justice.

Among the factors working in his favor, according to local officials and American analysts, are conservative Muslim tribes with a tradition of protecting guests and a war-torn region of grueling terrain, seething anti-Americanism and poor intelligence-gathering.

At the same time, the Bush administration's campaign in Iraq has diverted troops, money and equipment from the hunt for bin Laden since late 2001, and Pakistani forces aren't able to operate effectively on their side of the border.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/19553.html

thinking person can see that..but those drowning their sorrows in kool-aid and greed can only see others dying for what they want.

away our resources for finding him, and now we continue to inflame Muslims and draw foreign fighters into Iraq to fight us infidels. Best favor we could have given the man who supposedly killed our citizens. Doesn't matter, though, because the 30-percenters have us by the balls.