Associated Press October 26, 2001
Rumsfeld: bin Laden Hard to Catch
By Sally Buzbee
President Bush has made clear from the start that Osama bin Laden is the No. 1 target in the war against terrorism. But bin Laden is proving difficult to catch, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld admits. That has some questioning how the United States will define a victory, either in its bombing campaign inside Afghanistan or beyond, if the alleged terrorist leader is never caught.
"It's a problem of timing," said John Pike, a defense analyst at GlobalSecurity.org in Washington. "How are we going to know when we win?"
Ivan Eland, a defense analyst at the Cato Institute, said the Bush administration has no choice, if it wants to keep public support long-term. "They have to get him, or it's going to be perceived as a failure," Eland said.
But finding the elusive Saudi blamed for masterminding the Sept. 11 terror attacks is "hard," Rumsfeld said Thursday. "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack," he said. Nevertheless, the Pentagon chief insisted: "I think we're going to get him."
Shortly after the terror attacks, Bush told the nation: "If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he will be sorely mistaken." Asked later if he wanted bin Laden dead, the president said: "I want justice. And there's an old poster out west, that I recall, that said, 'Wanted, Dead or Alive."'
Both the president and Rumsfeld have repeatedly stressed that the effort to find bin Laden and crush terrorism worldwide will be long and difficult. To lower expectations of quick success, Rumsfeld has compared it to the Cold War, which lasted 50 years.
They also repeatedly stress that the military campaign is just one part of efforts to root out bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Other efforts include attempts to cut off his money supply worldwide.
The United States has been bombing Afghanistan in an effort to destroy the Taliban's military. It also has sent special operations forces to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of top Taliban leaders, bin Laden and others in al-Qaida.
Asked if bin Laden were on the run, Rumsfeld said: "He went on television not too long ago ... So he's functioning. Does he move? Sure he moves. Have we located him? No - in a way that allowed us to do anything about it - no. Are we continuing the effort? You bet. Do we expect to get him? Yes."
U.S. officials have difficulty obtaining intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts "sufficiently before the fact" to strike, the defense secretary said.
The United States has faced that problem before. After two U.S. embassies were bombed in Africa, the Clinton administration retaliated with a missile attack in 1998 that hit bin Laden's training camps, reportedly just a few hours after he had left.
Rumsfeld was asked about bin Laden's fate after he was quoted in USA Today as saying the United States might not catch bin Laden.
"It's a big world," Rumsfeld told the newspaper in Thursday's editions. "There are lots of countries. He's got a lot of money, he's got a lot of people who support him and I just don't know whether we'll be successful."
U.S. intelligence officials believe bin Laden has remained in Afghanistan since the Sept. 11 attacks that he allegedly masterminded. They worry, though, that he might try to leave for another lawless area, like Chechnya, Somalia or Sudan.
The only way the United States could claim success, without catching bin Laden, is if his network were destroyed and he was essentially unable to organize any terrorist activity, but still remained in hiding somewhere, said Dan Goure, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute. Even then, the United States also would have to prevent all countries from aiding terrorists, Goure said.
Asked to define success, Rumsfeld said the mission is "to stop terrorists from terrorizing the world and to stop countries from harboring terrorists." And that probably will happen only if Taliban and al-Qaida leaders are captured or killed, he acknowledged.
At the same time, he sought to throw the emphasis off bin Laden.
"What is really important ... is the outcome," Rumsfeld said.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
