Why the killing of bin Laden is a partisan issue

by: Carnacki

Tue May 03, 2011 at 11:26:42 AM EDT

One of their reasons for not wanting to make the killing of bin Laden a partisan issue is to deny President Obama his full credit. They want President George W. Bush to receive credit to, even though six months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush said:

I don't know where he is. I really just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.

As early as October 2001, according to Gen. Tommy Franks, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were diverting resources to prepare for the Iraq war. In November 2001, bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Bush even disbanded the team searching for bin Laden in 2006.

What many of their Republicans and their apologists are seeking to do here is to ignore that reality and replace it with one more beneficial to them.

Dan Froomkin has a post up to try to counter the revisionism going on from the Republicans who find history inconvenient to them:

WASHINGTON -- As he announced the death  of infamous terrorist Osama bin Laden on Sunday night, President Barack Obama struck an extraordinary contrast with his predecessor, George W. Bush.

That was to some degree unavoidable. Bush's consistent failure to respond appropriately to bin Laden -- as a potential threat, as a fugitive, or as a public enemy no. 1 -- represents one of the greatest shortcomings of his presidency.

Obama has now succeeded where Bush failed. And it was impossible to hear Obama declare that "justice has been done" without thinking about how long it went undone.

But Obama also went out of his way to draw distinctions between how he approached the problem and how Bush did.

For instance, as the months and years went by after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- and Bush's initial bluster about capturing the al Qaeda leader "dead or alive" became a source of embarrassment -- Bush began to insist that bin Laden himself wasn't so very important.

"I truly am not that concerned about him," Bush said at a White House press conference on March 13, 2002. And of course the following March, he shifted America's focus to Iraq, which proved to be a gigantic diversion.

Hard to imagine how anyone thinks that quote is taken out of context or why anyone thinks Bush deserves "credit" now.

The Bush record on bin Laden, of course, starts with him failing to prevent the attacks in the first place. As has been exhaustively documented by now, during the summer of 2001, his White House waved off repeated warnings of an imminent attack from former counterterrorism director Richard A. Clarke and then-CIA director George Tenet.

Bush and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, were said to be more focused on their pet issue, missile defense, and the hunt for a reason to attack Iraq. Bush, according to Bob Woodward, said he wasn't interested in "swatting flies."

The unsuccessful attempts to engage Bush culminated in a briefing he got while vacationing on his Texas ranch. As investigative reporter Ron Suskind reported in his book, "The One Percent Doctrine," an unnamed CIA operative flew to Crawford to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

"All right," Suskind reported Bush saying after hearing out the operative. "You've covered your ass, now."

Just as many Republicans are trying to cover their asses now.