A new report indicates that NATO troops had Osama bin Laden in rifle range twice - once in 2003 and again in 2004 - and in both instances the U.S. did not give approval to take him out.
Now, imagine for a moment an alternate universe in which President Carter, or President Clinton, or a President Gore had let the master mind behind the murders of 3,000 U.S. civilians remain free to roam the planet. Those presidents would have had their asses kicked by the Republicans, and for that matter by a huge majority of Americans.
Worse yet...think how things would have turned out had Hitler remained free and in charge of Germany; or how they would have turned out had President Roosevelt went to war with Mexico in 1941 instead of Germany. FDR would be at bottom of the heap on the lists of the best American leaders, and the United States would probably no longer exist.
Make no mistake: bin Laden remains a free man due to President Bush's warped sense of how this war should be fought (Iraq? Sadaam Hussein?). His leadership - or significant lack thereof - have left the United States reviled by the rest of the world and, as a result, significantly less safe than we were in the fall of 2001.
