U.S. must redouble its effort to capture or kill bin Laden

It was the word “comfort” that made the recent report on the leading international terrorist, Osama bin Laden, so disturbing.

It’s no secret that bin Laden is alive — he has shown himself to the world for the past nine years though video and audio pronouncements and messages to his followers — but reading a story that said he was living in “relative comfort” in a house, rather than a cave, provides a different perspective in the search for bin Laden. Indeed, CNN, citing a NATO official as its source, reported that the architect of al-Qaida’s Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on America’s mainland, and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are believed to be in hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan.

“Nobody in al-Qaida is living in a cave,” the official told the cable news network. He declined to be named because of the sensitivity of intelligence matters involved, CNN reported.

If it’s true that the terrorist organization’s top leaders are living in relative comfort and are protected by local residents and some members of Pakistan’s intelligence services, then the U.S. and its allies in the war on global terrorism have no choice but to launch an all-out campaign to capture or kill bin Laden. His freedom is viewed by members of al-Qaida and other terrorist groups around the world as a sign of America’s weakness.

As long as Western intelligence officials kept insisting that bin Laden was holed up in a cave in the mountain region between Pakistan and Afghanistan and was ailing with kidney disease, his freedom was not viewed with great despair. After all, what could the world’s leading terrorist do without sophisticated communications systems and without ready access to members of his inner circle?

But, if he is living in a house in one of the tribal areas of Pakistan and is being protected by the locals and Pakistani intelligence officials, then his freedom is, in fact, salt in this nation’s wounds from the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. Nineteen Islamic terrorists hijacked three American commercial airliners, flying one into the Twin Towers in the heart of Manhattan and another into the Pentagon; the third crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

Invasion of Afghanistan

The attacks claimed 3,000 lives, prompting President George W. Bush to order the invasion of Afghanistan, where the Islamic extremist Taliban government had provided bin Laden and his associates a safe haven. It was from Afghanistan that the Sept. 11 attacks were planned and launched in training camps operated by al-Qaida.

The U.S. coalition ousted the Taliban leaders and chased bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and others into the mountains. There are reports that the coalition forces had the terrorists cornered when President Bush ordered a redeployment of U.S. forces to Iraq in 2003.

Since then, bin Laden has stayed several steps ahead of the U.S. and its allies.

This latest report, if credible, suggests that he enjoys support from the Pakistanis and that the central government in Islamabad doesn’t consider his capture or death a matter of great urgency.

It’s up to the Obama administration to do what former President Bush failed to do: Get rid of this scourge.

An election day surprise certainly would stop the Republican political juggernaut in its tracks.