MB Civic

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/11/opinion/11krugman.html?_r=1&oref=login&pagewanted=print

Krugman wonders why “Osama’s free, but Afghanistan isn’t.” In doing so, he notes that, immediately after 9/11, Bush used phrases like “dead or alive” and “smoke him out.” Yet in March 2002, Bush said, “I truly am not that concerned about him” – and rarely mentioned OBL for the next four years (until Bush needed a “bogeyman” again). Krugman further points out that OBL escaped “because the Pentagon refused to use American ground troops to cut him off” in Tora Bora, and that, early in 2002, “the administration began pulling key resources…off the hunt” for OBL “in preparation for the invasion of Iraq.”

Yet Krugman seems unable to connect the dots. Because if one starts from the premise that the attacks of 9/11 were a staged event in which OBL was not the mastermind, but simply a “member of the cabal” (i.e., “in cahoots” with Bush/Cheney et al), all the pieces fit together perfectly: it explains the early Bush bravado (since OBL knew he was safe from Bush, but Bush had to “look tough” in the beginning), the Bush disinterest by by 2002 (since the phony “connection” between OBL/Al Qaeda and Iraq/Hussein had been made, and the public’s focus was on the latter), the “easy escape” from Tora Bora (since they never planned to capture OBL anyway), and the reassignment of “key resources” from OBL to Iraq.

Peace.