Seeking to rally support for the war, President Bush is pointing to U.S. intelligence asserting that Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to form a terrorist unit to hit targets outside Iraq, and that the United States should be first in his sights.
The information, which Bush was to cite Wednesday in a commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, was declassified by the White House on Tuesday. It expands on a classified bulletin the Homeland Security Department issued in March 2005.
The bulletin, which warned that bin Laden had enlisted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his senior operative in Iraq, to plan potential strikes in the United States, was described at the time as credible but not specific. It did not prompt the administration to raise its national terror alert level.
Bush, who is battling Democrats in Congress over spending for the unpopular war in Iraq, will highlight U.S. successes in foiling terrorist plots and use the intelligence to argue that terrorists remain a threat to Americans, said Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser.
Interesting how it never even enters his mind that Americans might instead look to this information and remember this president saying "I really am not all that concerned about him" in the context of Bin Laden just six months after the 9/11 attacks. It never enters his mind that Americans might wonder just why a guy on dialysis living in caves has been so elusive -- and whether it has anything to do with the fact that he is so handy for Bush to trot out every time it serves his political needs to have him on the loose.
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