New York Daily News -
http://www.nydailynews.comSomewhere, Osama's smirking
Sunday, December 31st, 2006
The execution of Saddam Hussein brings justice for thousands of innocents murdered in Iraq during his regime.
Someday, we might even see justice for the 2,749 innocents murdered in downtown Manhattan five years ago.
The man behind the Manhattan murders was cornered in the mountains of Afghanistan three months after the attack on the World Trade Center. Osama Bin Laden was so certain he would not see the New Year that he drafted what he thought was his last will and testament.
"If it were not for treason, I would have triumphed," Bin Laden reportedly wrote.
Apparently, nobody was more surprised than Bin Laden when we sent in paid Afghani proxies rather than a detachment of readily available U.S. troops to grab him. He slipped away along with the tattered remnants of his organization.
And nobody could have been more pleased than Bin Laden when the Bush administration used 9/11 as a pretext to send a good part of our army into Iraq. We toppled the regime and captured Hussein.
On Friday, word came that Hussein had been executed. The photos show he was hung with a nice new 1-1/4-inch hemp rope.
The new Iraqi government initially employed rope left over from the deposed regime, which was fine until a day they attempted to hang 27 people one after the other. The rope broke on the 13th convict, and the subject reportedly flopped around on the floor shouting, "Allah saved me!"
Which was essentially what Bin Laden must have felt when he escaped seemingly certain death or capture five years ago. Bin Laden remains at liberty, a once-cornered killer raised to mythic status by his escape and by our continuing inability to capture him. He is not just at large, but ever larger. The FBI even lists him as several inches taller than his actual height.
Bin Laden now seems certain to see another New Year, and where the World Trade Center once stood now there are twin towering outrages. One outrage is the stark fact that the man who murdered thousands of innocents there is still walking around, no doubt smiling.
The other outrage is that we are only now unearthing remains that should have been recovered years ago. The latest find was on Friday, in an area that at least one Port Authority cop urged city officials to search back in 2002. The officials were in too much of a rush to declare the recovery effort over.
Both these twin outrages can be traced back to our failure to keep focused on what is most important in the aftermath of any murder. The cops do not neglect to thoroughly search part of a crime scene for evidence because there is a hurry to announce they are done. The cops also do not corner a suspected killer then turn it over to some guys from the neighborhood to make the grab.
Perhaps we were all making a mistake when we compared 9/11 to Pearl Harbor.
The attack on the World Trade Center was not a surprise attack by another nation. The attack on the World Trade Center was an act of mass murder perpetrated by a small group of fanatics.
Ground Zero is a crime scene, and Bin Laden is a perp we have only glorified with our talk about the "War on Terror." He must have seen more proof that Allah was on his side as the invasion of Iraq turned to chaos and cost the international goodwill we gained after 9/11.
At least as we elevated Bin Laden from a murderous criminal into an international figure, we reduced Hussein from an international figure into a murderous criminal. Hussein was executed as what he was and that no doubt brought some sense of justice to his victims in Iraq. They waited decades and perhaps they would counsel us to be patient.
But, to stand at Ground Zero yesterday was to see those twin outrages towering in the vast emptiness. The digging for the remains will continue into the New Year and Bin Laden is still at larger than large.
