During a 2004 interview with Canadian television, president Bill Clinton criticized the Bush administration for shifting resources from the hunt for Bin Laden to Iraq and subcontracting the search to the Pakistanis.

Why did we put our number 1 security threat in the hands of the Pakistanis with us playing a supporting role and put all of our military resources into Iraq, which was, I think, at best, our number 5 security threat. After the absence of a peace process in the Middle East, after the conflict between India and Pakistan and all the ties they had to Taliban, after North Korea and their nuclear program…But we basically are dependant on him to find bin Laden, to find al-Zawahiri, to break in and find the computer people and give it to us because we got all our resources somewhere else in Iraq.

After failing to capture bin Laden during the battle for Tora Bora in 2002, the administration is still depending on Pakistan to bring bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, his top deputy, to justice. But yesterday, during talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suggested that Pakistani troops are no longer hunting for bin Laden and Zawahri:

The 100,000 troops that we are using … are not going around trying to locate Osama bin Laden and Zawahri, frankly. They are operating against terrorists, and in the process, if we get them, we will deal with them certainly.

While Bush has argued that catching bin Laden is “not a top priority use of American resources,” bin Laden continues to seek nuclear weapons and inspire jihadists. Unfortunately, by outsourcing the hunt for bin Laden to a reluctant ally and starting a war that has recruited and inspired jihadists, the Bush administration continues to undermine America’s security.

This entry was is filed under Incompetence, Corruption. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.