Quote:
Originally posted by dtw
Link to factual support for this?
I thought not.
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Dave, here's some factual support:
Here's transcript from bush's press conference in March 2003:
Kelly Wallace of CNN asked why he so rarely mentioned bin Laden, and whether bin Laden was, in fact, dead or alive.
President Bush:
"Well, deep in my heart, I know the man is on the run if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not? We haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.
"Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network is -- his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I've mentioned in my speeches, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death, and he himself tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.
"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. . . . I truly am not that concerned about him."
Here is Dick Cheney and Andrew Card on the topic:
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/01/27/bush.binladen/index.html
I pulled some quotes from the text
Some Bush administration officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have begun saying recently that the war on terrorism can be successful without catching bin Laden.
"Bin Laden by himself isn't that big a threat," Cheney said. "Bin Laden connected to this worldwide organization of terror is a threat. We're going to go after him, but we're also after the network."
More
"But understand that that's not the overall objective," Card said. "Our overall objective is to defeat terrorism, wherever it is around the world. And so, our objective is not to get Osama bin Laden."
this is from a Pentagon Press Conference
‘The goal has never been to get bin Laden’, said General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on 6 April 2002. President George W Bush might have declared on 17 September 2001 that bin Laden was ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ – but Myers told CNN that a far more important aim than bin Laden’s head on a platter was the ‘capture, killing and scattering’ of ‘mid-level al-Qaeda operatives’ 1. ‘The goal [in Afghanistan] was never after specific individuals’, he claimed 2.
Here's a Christian Science Monitor article (they are Right BTW)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0301/p01s02-usmi.htm
I could go on, there's a lot of evidence to support my claim.