Where Is Osama Bin Laden?

Enquiring patriotic minds would like to know. Almost five years have come and gone and the man reportedly behind the worst mass murder in our nation's history is still walking free. Timothy McVeigh must be spinning in his grave. Not that I care if he's spinning, it's just a metaphor.

Damien, Demons and Dubya - New York Times:The president had a truly terrifying bogeyman in Osama but instead conjured up a fake nuclear villain in Saddam. He has played down bin Laden, first diverting the resources needed to capture him and now diverting the money needed to protect against his likely targets, letting homeland security funds be moved from New York and Washington. (Jon Stewart said Monday on "The Daily Show" that Omaha got a lot of homeland security money because it was under threat by the "renowned Midwestern terrorist Omaha bin Laden.")

As Mike Crowley of The New Republic notes, the F.B.I. does not even mention 9/11 in its "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" profile of Osama. The poster, updated in November 2001, says bin Laden is wanted in the bombings of the United States Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 200 in 1998, and "is a suspect in other terrorist attacks." No word of the nearly 3,000 killed on Sept. 11.

Fearing that their monopoly on Washington power could be coming to an end, with voters grumpy at Republicans over Iraq, gas prices, Medicare, Social Security, corruption, wild spending and general incompetence, Bush strategists have revived the gay marriage Frankenstein to scare the base into turning out for midterms. (That bride of Frankenstein had better be female.)

Same-sex marriage is far less spooky than the 17 severed heads recently found in a village northeast of Baghdad, or the terror suspect accused of conspiring to behead the Canadian prime minister.

Osama been Forgotten isn't even on an active Ten Most Wanted? Why not? Why aren't we expending every effort to bring him to justice? Boy, we really fixed Iraq , didn't we?

With our marines needing refresher courses in "core values" and with Dick Cheney promoting values like torture, government snooping and pre-emptive war, it rings hollow to opportunistically proselytize on family values. (Mary Cheney, the gay daughter of the vice president, told interviewers recently that her father opposed the marriage amendment.)

As a Times reader who sometimes e-mails me put it: "The 'values' voters turn out to be opinion voters. They believe that God hates homosexuals, that superstition trumps science every time, that all those foreigners ought to be sent back where they came from, and that all government programs are wasteful and immoral, except, of course, for the government programs which benefit them. Those are opinions, not values, and willfully ignorant opinions at that."

Opinions are like a**holes. Everyone has one and everyone thinks theirs smells the best. Maybe IQ tests should be required to vote. If you can't do basic deductive reasoning you shouldn't be allowed to vote. Heck, for that matter IQ tests should be required of the candidates.

At this point I'm desperate for anything to help us to get back on the path to honor and the prestige this country used to enjoy.

Tags: Maureen Dowd, opinion voters, Osama bin Laden,