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There
is an irresistibly intriguing rumor making the rounds on Capitol
Hill today.
It is that the Pentagon and the CIA could have nailed
Osama Bin Laden in Tora Bora last week, but let him escape
instead.
Why would they do such a thing?
"A Twofer Payback" is the answer.
Let's
draw up a list of prospective countries to where OBL might run,
places anarchic or insanely hubristic enough to provide him
on-the-lam shelter.
There are five.
Somalia.
What better justification, what better opportunity, could
there be to payback the Somalian savages who killed 18 U.S.
peacekeeping soldiers and dragged several of their bodies
through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993, than if OBL escaped to
Somalia?
There have got to vast legions of folks in the U.S.
military who are right now praying, "If he got away, please
let him get away to Somalia."
Iraq.
GW is working overtime to create a rationale for going
after Saddam, and getting our European allies behind it.
If Saddam were fool enough to take OBL in, no more
rationale is needed.
The BLU-82 Daisy Cutters and GBU-28 Bunker Busters start
dropping tomorrow.
Iran.
While it seems unlikely the mullahs would help and hide
OBL, his presence and the massive U.S. military strike against
it would immediately precipitate a national uprising.
Iran is a desiccated tinderbox, ready at any moment to
burst into flames of revolutionary revenge against the mullahs.
OBL's fleeing to Iran would be the catalyst for
conversion of Iran from theocratic tyranny to secular pro-West
democracy.
Saudi.
OBL's ultimate fantasy is to become the Ayatollah
Khomeini of Saudi Arabia.
He has strong support by the ultra-puritanical Wahabis,
the Islamic sect that financially sponsored the Taliban and are
now dedicated to purging Mohammed's sacred homeland of the
corrupt Saudi Royal Family.
The Wahabis providing sanctuary to Osama, and trying to
instigate a civil war thereby, would give the Saudi Royals,
backed by US firepower, the excuse they need to wipe them out
for good.
Pakistan.
As anyone who has traveled through the Pushtun area of
Pakistan bordering Afghanistan knows, the Pak government
exercises diaphanously nominal control over it.
If a Pushtun tribe with more hubris than brains gives OBL
sanctuary, it is the pretext for the Pakistani military - still
dominated by Punjabis who despise the Pushtuns - with US
firepower to establish sovereignty over their entire country and
end the endemic anarchy.
There
is simply no way for Osama Bin Laden to vanish in obscurity.
These five countries seem to be the only conceivable
places to where he might attempt escaping.
There are quite beneficial consequences for the US should
he do so for any of the five.
Thus the rumor.
It may be nothing more.
The possibility of a Twofer Payback has, nonetheless, a
magnetic appeal.
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