Corrected/edited:
Argh -- Good points. The Bushites and Cheney/Rumsfeld neocons SHOULD have done everything to kill Usama and blow him to a gazillion hydrocarbon molecules, but he apparently survived Tora Bora's pounding. He was probably burned badly -- his recorded voice after Tora Bora sounded as if his lungs had been damaged by hot fumes, and the fact that he has not shown his photogenic face since Tora Bora suggests that he was seriously injured. The fact that the Taliban and Al Qaida hangers on have migrated into the autonomous Waziristani regions of Pakistan seems to indicate that bin Laden was taken there by loyalists and that one of many patrons has provided for his care and shelter.
Could UBL be dead, as the French suggested? It is a possibility. If anyone has information on that, it would be a welcome bit of information. It is consistent with the news, but so could a UBL in renal failure or a UBL in a coma. Could UBL be fully recovered and boffing his multitude of wives? Again, the administration disbanded the UBL unit, so one would think that he is alive and boffing away, all with the administration's blessings, or he is so out of commission, that there was no need for the unit to continue operating. In either case, the American people need to know what has happened to the wives of bin Laden and their scion.
Now we are all fairly sure Ayman Zawahiri, the Cairo doctor who became the theological head of Al Qaida is in Waziristan (or shifting back and forth between Herat, Kandahar and Waziristan?), but what to do with the information?
Probably monitor the borders and pathways and hillsides, which one bets we are doing. But how can we get the Pakistanis to allow the US and NATO to invade Waziristan? Pakistan is a nation of 200mm people with a rift between the nation's fundies and the nation's secularists. Apparently we haven't found a way to take the battle to Waziristan without throwing Pakistan's delicate balance of power into chaos. (What would you do? And what would be all of the expected effects of that COA?)
As for Iraq, the decision to invade or not to is water under the bridge. As for Iran and North Korea, the prospect that Bush will do what the Cheneyite neocons would have desired -- to invade those countries -- is looking less and less likely. North Korea never was a near term threat and should be put on a short leash (which the administration seems to have quietly done). Iran could have been moderated and pacified and brought into the US effort in the early stages of GWOT before the 2002 January SOTU if Condi Rice had had any balls (Oh, I forgot -- she was never born with any balls!). She should have told Cheney and Rumsfeld to stuff their neocon traps and get off the phony "Axis of Evil" rhetoric they were feeding POTUS and directed the GWOT effort to be exactly what you suggested a fight to neutralize the islamists at all costs. She was supposed to do her job of balancing out the issues and differences between DOS and DOD at the NSC meetings. The record shows she was cowered by Cheney and Rummy, and wanted to make Dubya happy. So she took her 3rd rate PhD in Russian studies and let the NSC debate be shaped by the neocons. (Gong that girl off the stage!)
