BY SUNDARI IYER
Washington, Sept. 7: US President George W. Bush has not quite five months to make good on his seven-year-old vow to get Mr Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" before his successor inherits the hunt for the terrorist mastermind.
But the vastly unpopular President rejects suggestions that he’s making any special effort to nab the elusive Saudi-born extremist ahead of the November 4 elections that will decide who succeeds him.
"I read some of the headlines that said, ‘Bush orders special hunt for Osama Bin Laden’ a little bit of press hyperventilating: after all, that’s what we’ve been doing since September 11, 2001," he told Sky television in June.
In January, however, he seemed to accept the idea that it might not happen on his watch, telling Fox News: "He’ll be gotten by a President." If he regrets not capturing Bin Laden, it hasn’t stopped Mr Bush from mentioning the Al Qaeda leader in an applause line attacking his Democratic foes’ commitment to the so-called global war on terrorism. "When it comes to the war on terror, our Democratic leaders should pay more attention to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and spend less time heeding the demands of MoveOn.Org and Code Pink" activist groups, he says. And the White House has rejected Democratic charges that Mr Bush diverted resources from the Afghanistan war to go after Saddam Hussein in Iraq, enabling bin Laden to slip away to the Afghan-Pakistan border.
While his status is not publicly known, White House rivals Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have been at it hammer and tongs over which of them would be more likely to oversee the terrorist chief’s capture. —AFP
