Let's use one of the Dems' own "Real Security" promises to show how empty their rhetoric is. Now I'm not an apologist for the military in regards to Bin Laden. They had their chance at Tora Bora, but blew it because they put the wishes of their Afghani co-fighters above our objectives. But the rhetoric coming out of the likes of Hillary, Reid, and one of my Senators Jack Reed are laughable. In their "Real Security" platform, as well as many, many speeches over the past year, they have stated the Bin Laden should be "eliminated" and have complained vigorously and questioned why such a seemingly simple thing hasn't already happened. The Democrats seem to think that they can just place an order with the military to "eliminate Bin Laden" and it will happen overnight. Well, Dems, war isn't like a video game. Let's look at the facts...
Bin Laden is most likely on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, on the Pakistani side. There's a reason for that. First, the border is about 2240 km (or about 1400 miles) long. Second, the majority of the region is mountainous. We're not talking about Vermont type ski mountains, but the 10,000 - 18,000 mile high versions. And the balance of the land is rocky and practically impassable.
So Bin Laden will gravitate towards the roughest terrain. He will stay on the Pakistani side, because he knows that Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf is on very shaky ground with much of his own population, who would not look kindly (to say the least) on Musharraf for allowing foreign fighters into Pakistan to go after Bin Laden. Musharraf must also be prudent and secretive with his own military strikes, because those tribal peoples populating the region where Bin Laden is hiding are not his political allies either. In fact, Pakistan has virtually ignored the region for decades because whenever they sent their military in to do anything, the natives killed them.
The Pakistani military is not even close to being as capable or as sophisticated as the United States military, so what are the Democrats' suggesting that we do with our superior forces - go right in? If we did that en masse, on Pakistani territory, Musharraf would be overthrown in an instant. And the people taking control from him would be our enemy the Islamofacists - Bin Laden's supporters. Then those nuts would control Pakistan's nuclear weapons. That is almost a certain way to start a regional thermonuclear war. It's not a realistic option.
So let's then say that we have intelligence that Bin Laden is in a ten square mile area. Within that area are a few high mountains and many caves. It would take a huge military team to search that area and prevent anyone from escaping. And the chances of missing the one cave where Bin Laden is is great. So what do you do? We can't invade with the necessary forces unless we want to be in Islamabad for many years protecting Musharraf from overthrow. Bombing would be ineffective unless we had the precise location, and again it is another country's territory. I suppose, if you didn't care what happened after, and if you knew the approximate area where Bin Laden was, you could lob a few nuclear bombs at him and eliminate the mountains completely. Is that what the Democrats are suggesting?
The solution is good intelligence and small secretive surgical strikes with special forces. The Democrats (with help from not a few Republicans in Congress along the way) crippled the intelligence community starting with the Church Committee in 1975. It will take a decade to get it operating properly. And much of the intelligence community, especially within the State Department, is more interested in protecting their turf and defeating Bush than getting better. I've been a proponent of giving the State Department and the CIA what would effectively be a personnel enema, flushing out all of the bad ones. Start from scratch, or as from scratch as you can. Without something like that, the intelligence community might never get to be where we need it to be, outside of the Defense Department. But it hasn't been done yet, and probably never will be. So getting the intelligence community up to where we need it will take probably longer than ten years, if it ever gets better at all.
We are trying as hard as we can to get Bin Laden. But our options are few. We need precise intelligence, but the same Democrats who are complaining about not getting Bin Laden are the ones who almost irreparably broke our intelligence infrastructure in the first place, and are allies of the people within the State Department and the CIA who have been undermining the Bush Administration since Day 1. For the sake of our country, we can't let those people win. They've had their chance before, and they've blown it. 3000 Americans died on 9/11 because of them and their school of "realism".
What would seem to be an easy proposition - "eliminate Bin Laden" - is not as simple as it seems if you look at all of the facts. The Democrats hope you won't. They could do no better that the Administration on this, and probably, with people like Murtha calling for a retreat, alot worse.