Porter Goss

Great oped in the Mpls Star Tribune today on Porter Goss's comments in Time that he has an excellent idea where Osama Bin Laden is.

So CIA Director Porter Goss has "an excellent idea" where Osama bin Laden is, does he? He said that very thing to Time magazine. Well, great! Glad to hear that after more than three years, billions of dollars, thousands of American lives, countless sleepless nights and the turning of our country upside down, the head of the CIA knows where the perpetrator of 9/11 is. We can now all breathe a sigh of relief.

According to Goss, only the U.S. respect for the sovereignty of other nations prevents us from having Bin Laden in a cell. That's right. Because we respect other nations so much, we won't conduct operations in them without permission.

And yet, multiple countries, including Italy, Sweden and others, have claimed that the United States has kidnapped people from within their own borders and taken them who knows where. And yet, out of respect, we won't go get Bin Laden?

Is it just me, or is something wrong with this picture?

Unfortunately, we've been told before that the government knew where Bin Laden was. We had him in our sights at Tora Bora. We'd have him in a matter of days if not hours. We'd get him any time now. What was true then is true now: Talk is cheap.

It's easy to claim all sorts of things. I have the numbers to the next lottery, but I'm just not in the mood to buy a ticket. I also have the secret formula for turning lead into gold but I don't like the color. Anybody else?

Yeah, Porter, I'm sure you have an excellent idea where Osama is. But I would be much happier if you would spend less time telling the media and more time going to that place where he supposedly is and blowing him to kingdom come. Just to break up the monotony.

Maybe if the CIA had done so two years ago, President Bush would have stayed focused on Al-Qaida, rather than diverting our resources into the Iraqi quagmire. Now we have 1,700 dead, and counting, and more than 13,000 maimed for our troubles.

Just in case you're not buying this guy's story on how the U.S. has gone into other countries to kidnap people. This is from today's WaPo:

Italian authorities on Thursday issued arrest warrants on kidnapping charges against 13 U.S. agents who allegedly grabbed a radical Muslim preacher off a street here two years ago and covertly flew him back to his native Egypt, where he later claimed he was tortured.

The warrants, approved by an Italian judge , are the culmination of a two-year investigation by prosecutors and police in Milan into the Feb. 17, 2003 disappearance of Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, an Egyptian cleric who has been a longtime surveillance target of Italian counter-terrorism police.