Bin Laden's Victory - WaPo

[AnnieBW]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100880.html

Bin Laden's Victory

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; Page A23

NEW YORK -- I hear Osama bin Laden laughing. I heard him all day on Sunday and Monday as the mass murder of Sept. 11, 2001, was memorialized at the Pentagon and in that field in Pennsylvania and especially here, where the most people died and where countless cameras recorded it all for posterity and an abiding, everlasting anger. He laughs, the madman does, whenever George Bush says, as he has over and over, that America is "winning this war on terror." Bin Laden knows better. He has already won.

It is not merely that bin Laden has not been captured or killed and that videotapes keep coming out of his hideout like taunts. It is, rather, that his initial strategy has borne fruit. It was always his intention to draw the Americans into Afghanistan, where, as had been done to the Soviets, they could be mauled by the fierce mujaheddin. He tried and failed when he blew up the USS Cole off Aden at 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2000, killing 17 sailors and crippling the ship. But he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations when the United States responded to the Sept. 11 attacks by invading Afghanistan and, in a beat, then going to war in Iraq. It remains mired in both countries to this day.

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[The_Casual_Observer]

1. And it's only taken 5 years for MSM to write about this.

At this rate things might begin to change when I'm 80.

[Hardrada]

2. Why does Richard Cohen hate America?

He should go fight them over there.

[stopbush]

3. I have a rewrite for Mr Cohen:

It was always his intention to draw the Americans into Afghanistan, where, as had been done to the Soviets, they could be mauled by the fierce mujaheddin. He tried and failed when he blew up the USS Cole off Aden at 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2000, killing 17 sailors and crippling the ship because Bill Clinton wouldn't take the bait. But he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations when the "adults" in George W Bush's administration responded to the Sept. 11 attacks by invading Afghanistan and, in a beat, then going to war in Iraq. It remains mired in both countries to this day.