Bush: Bin Laden helped me, book says

[Sarek]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/28/bush.binladen.reut/index.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Bush said his 2004 re-election victory over Sen. John Kerry was inadvertently aided by Osama bin Laden, The Washington Examiner newspaper reported Tuesday.

The al Qaeda leader had issued a taped diatribe against Bush the Friday before Americans went to the polls

Bush said there were "enormous amounts of discussion" inside his campaign about the 15-minute tape, which he called "an interesting entry by our enemy" into the presidential race.

Bush's comments in the Washington newspaper were excerpts from the new book "Strategery" by Bill Sammon, a longtime White House correspondent.

"What does it mean? Is it going to help? Is it going to hurt?" Bush told Sammon of the bin Laden tapes.

"Anything that drops in at the end of a campaign that is not already decided creates all kinds of anxieties, because you're not sure of the effect.

"I thought it was going to help," Bush said.

"I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush."

Well, that would help explain why Bush has all but forgotten about Bin Laden.

 

[WordInterrupted]

I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the president

Sooo, bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be president, but helped Bush win a presidential election? There are two explanations:

(1) bin Laden is an idiot.

(2) bin Laden did want Bush to win.

 

[Donovan]

Go with the second option. In order to galvanize support for his own cause and against Bush and the USA, Bin Laden would have needed him to win reelection. It's a smart tactic by a vastly outnumbered, outgunned and overmatched adversary. Bush had already begun to make it clear Bin Laden was not a priority per se, therefore a Republican victory would have ensured not only his continued safety, but the continued presence of an American President who was rapidly galvanizing world opinion against this country.

According to world (meaning, not Fox or CNN) news sources, since the 2004 elections terrorist organizations have experienced surges in recruitment and activity, due in large part to the unpopular and often ethically questionable acts of our current government. In other words, Bin Laden has successfully turned his own enemy into his greatest resource. The propaganda provided by Bush's decisions post-2004 are worth more than his defeat would have been at the hands of a more cautious democratic rival such as John Kerry.

Short version: Bin Laden needed an out-of-control cowboy in the white house as badly as they wanted to stay there. That's why he pulled the 11th hour "boogeyman" act and that's why the Repubs didn't try to bury or spin the tape. Politics---->strange bedfellows, and all that...