[mburbank]

Okay, first we officially announce that this spring we intend to launch major military operations in Afghanistan near the Pakastani border. I'm not sure if this is just some sort of emily post type etiquit or if there's some strategic reason to let your enemy know when you plan to attack, it's kind of fuzzy.

Then there are all these news reports that we're zeroing in on Bin Laden, a man who's name has hardly been mentioned in about a year.

Then the military says no, we're not zeroing in on him, if we knew where he was, we'd already have him.

Now, this:

U.S. Pressing Hunt for Osama Bin Laden


By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer

KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S. military said Wednesday that a "renewed sense of urgency" is firing the search for Osama bin Laden , even as it dismissed reports that the fugitive al-Qaida leader had been located near the Afghan-Pakistan border.




What does that MEAN?! Did our sense of urgency about capturing the guy responsible for 9/11 somehow LAPSE for a while there? During the time the administration didn't even mention his name, did the actual head of the actual terrorist organization we are supposedly at war with kind of get back burnered?

In the above quoted article, the same military official goes on to say that "The sands of time are running out" for Bin Laden. How could he possibly know? How many times can you say the Noose is tightening? Is it tightening really, really, slowly? re we using that headline every time the noose tightens a millionth of a micrometer? Were some earlier noose tightening reports premature? Or maybe it's a really really big noose that can be tightened for a very, very long time before it's actually around anything?