Bush orders one last go at Bin Laden
On top of Gordon Brown and George W. Bush’s joint warning to Iran, there’s a bit of other news on the Anglo-American cooperation front. The Times of London reports that Bush has asked Britain’s elite special forces to aid in a final, reinvigorated effort to capture Osama bin Laden, who is presumed to be hiding ...
On top of Gordon Brown and George W. Bush's joint warning to Iran, there's a bit of other news on the Anglo-American cooperation front. The Times of London reports that Bush has asked Britain's elite special forces to aid in a final, reinvigorated effort to capture Osama bin Laden, who is presumed to be hiding in northern Pakistan:
On top of Gordon Brown and George W. Bush’s joint warning to Iran, there’s a bit of other news on the Anglo-American cooperation front. The Times of London reports that Bush has asked Britain’s elite special forces to aid in a final, reinvigorated effort to capture Osama bin Laden, who is presumed to be hiding in northern Pakistan:
The Special Boat Service (SBS) and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been taking part in the US-led operations to capture Bin Laden in the wild frontier region of northern Pakistan. It is the first time they have operated across the Afghan border on a regular basis.
Now, besides the obvious question (if the Brits can’t trust themselves with sensitive al Qaeda information, why should the United States?) what is perhaps most interesting about this story is the effect Bin Laden’s capture would have on the 2008 presidential campaign. Who benefits most: John McCain or Barack Obama?
Nailing the world’s most wanted man might help to save Bush’s legacy, but I’m not so sure that either candidate would score a clear victory. After all, are the differences here, at least in rhetoric, all that different? In a speech this past weekend John McCain vowed to capture al Qaeda’s leader. Barack Obama has advocated a beefed-up military force along the lawless Afghanistan-Pakistan border and criticized Bush for failing to nab Osama.
And would putting Bin Laden behind bars really alter the fundamentals of this race? At the end of the day, McCain will still support a war that 64 percent of Americans don’t agree with and Obama will still be the candidate of a political party that can’t shake its reputation as being weak on security.
Readers, what do you think?
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