For the past two months I have been reading everything I could get my hands on from you, Zepp, the WSWS and even Anti-War.org on the topic of this whole mess. One of the greatest things I read was Zepp's commentary on conspiracies.
This morning, as I showered, not even really thinking about it, suddenly I had an epiphany.  If you ask the question of
"who benefits" over and over as you review the available information, something starts to come to the surface which
concludes with this thought:

Of course OBL got away. Bush is protecting him.

Disclaimer: I'm not a conspiracy-minded person.

Here's what happened-- and if you put all the pieces that the (mostly foreign) press has assembled in perspective, it's hard to miss. Osama bin Laden's family had close ties to the Bushes to begin with. Just by playing in the same circles, they associated as businessmen often do. When OBL headed to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, the Bushes raised their eyebrows and thought, "there's a guy you could get to like."

Even without Bush involvement, OBL's group would have been armed by the CIA, but they probably used the buddy card to get special deals and treatment to aid in their fight against the Soviets. After it was pretty much all over, Bush buddied up a little more and said to OBL, "Hey, that was fun. Let's work together on some more deals to net power and money."

OBL's people killed soldiers in Somalia in an attempt to embarrass Clinton just like the Iranians held onto the hostages until Reagan was sworn in. It wasn't Clinton's operation, but it was on Clinton's watch and that was good enough. It was around that time that "Tim Osman" visited a number of Bush's oil buddies, wasn't it? Funny how a terrorist is on such good terms with the American oil industry at the same time that his organization is killing our troops. (My timing may be a little skewed, but I find it hard to believe that attitudes would change that much on either side over a year or two.)

By then OBL has developed a great relationship with the Taliban. Even though their politics and policies are anathema to our values, we're still giving them money through the late 90's partly through the ONDCP-- a right wing bastion. We kept them on line for some reason-- but I have no idea as to why. Maybe Bush thought we could control them. Or maybe he thought they'd lay out the red carpet once he came back to power (via Jr.). But they didn't. In spring of this year they decided that they didn't want to play ball on Big Oil's plans for a pipeline to bring oil out of the Caspian Basin.

So it was decided that we'd simply get rid of the Taliban and put in someone else who'd be more open to the pipeline. But how to do it? OBL comes in and tells Bush that he's got a plan. He'll have his group of terrorists act on something he's been cooking for a little bit and the U.S. can retaliate by slapping Afghanistan down hard. The Taliban will be out and the U.S. can put whoever they want in to let the little item of the pipeline go through with no hassle.

I would like to think that Bush is not such a bastard that he knew what was going to happen, but I don't know. We do know that the director of the FBI resigned in disgust because the White House didn't want to follow up on any intelligence on a terrorist act in the works. We do know that there were plenty of indications that something was coming down (and those indications were ignored). I would prefer to think that Bush didn't know what was going to happen and didn't want to know.

Now that the Taliban is all but gone and OBL is nowhere to be found, it has dawned on me that not only has Bush gotten what he wants (the pipeline), but OBL has gotten what he wants as well-- protection and a near-mythic status among his followers, not to mention a whole new crop of followers who are amazed at this shithead who bombed the US and got away with it.

I've tried to keep this short. If you can't believe it, simply juxtapose it against the news which you have access to.
There are no holes that I can find.

Rick
G'ville NC