The Bush Admin has alternated, over time, between OBL being public enemy #1 and OBL being reduced to near irrelevance.
In prep for today's talky-talk, we get this:
WASHINGTON - President Bush, trying to defend his war strategy, declassified intelligence Tuesday asserting thatOsama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to form a terrorist cell that would conduct attacks outside Iraq — and that the United States should be the top target.
But, the CIA has also reported this, which suggests Iraq was a bridge too far, despite some indications that the tide might be turning on AQI.
Washington: A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama Bin Laden has produced no significant leads on his whereabouts, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of Al Qaida operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior US intelligence officials familiar with the operation.
In one of the most troubling trends, US officials said that Al Qaida's command base in Pakistan increasingly is being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.
[See also Opium reportedly growing in Iraq's Southern region - although a financing link there would suggest a financial cooperation between Sunni-Shia extremist groups that I would doubt, because I've only seen logistical and operational cross-support stories (with all the caveats that I'm not an expert, etc.)]
