No conspiracy, just stupidity.
As I said, try using your eyes. Read the Special Operations report. Read the book by one of the Delta operatives that was charged with finding bin Laden. Read, read, don't just run your mouth off.
Further, it was all out in the open at the time. I saw video of the Special Forces using 50s to fire across valleys, up mountainsides to Al Qaeda locations, etc. Everyone with a brain was wondering why we didn't have US infantry up there. Then a spokesman for Rumsfeld/the Pentagon said they wanted the Afghans to capture bin Laden.
It's funny, the Bush apologists are only interested in protecting his legacy. Why aren't they interested in finding out what happened?
I think it was less stupidty in general than political Bravo Sierra in particular. The elder Bush did a good job of creating a coalition and working around the sensitivities of all the parties involved. He was a former diplomat. He was a former CIA director. He understood the real world. His son did not have that experience or expertise. But Dubya wanted to try to touch all the bases and he ended up doing some really lousy baserunning. First he tried to appease the UN and that backfired. Then he confused job 2 (Iraqi regime change) with job 1 (Punish the Taliban and Al Quaeda). Had he found, eliminated or better yet brought to Gitmo bin Laden and the Taliban leadership it would have shown the world that the US WILL get you. Then he could have bypassed the UN, gone into Iraq on the strength of the already-violated UN resolutions (which he ultimately did anyway) and toppled the Iraqis. Libya already deposited a load in their panties and decided to be good children (having been slammed once before by Reagan). Syria was scurrying to the sidelines and only Iran was (and still is) posing a threat after the Iraqi invasion started.
Had we sequenced these operations properly, we would have a much stronger position today. But Dubya was trying to somehow work the sort of diplomatic magic his Dad did and somehow still ignore world opinion. It didn't help that our own Democratic party was trying it's best to telegraph every move and propagandize each operation. Bush tried to play all the parties and ended up neither pleasing anyone nor actually solidifying anything.
If Afghanistan were already secure and Iraq were properly manned, Iran never would have taken that oil well - which is both an opportunistic (and no-doubt Russian inspired) move and a way of challenging the region to grow some balls and fight back at the American "invasion." Everything bin Laden and the Iranian regime has said is coming true in spades. If I were Muslim I might well be tempted to look at bin Laden and the Taliban as inspired. After all, they keep fighting, they properly predict the course of events and they declared Allah would protect them from capture no matter what the Americans did. Bush told us this would be a long war with big losses and setbacks, but that we would ultimately win. Bin Laden told his people the same thing. Bin Laden's public trusted him, and very few of the dissenters in Islam were vocal enough to matter. Bush's own countrymen, in the form of Democrats, undermined him and encouraged the people not to trust him. He did plenty to help that effort along. So who looks like the better prophet right now? Objectively, even though he is losing militarily, bin Laden understands history and human nature far better than Bush ever did. He's winning by dismissing the short term loss and pain as the price of ultimate gain. It's such a good game plan that the Democrats are currently using the same arguments to justify their health care reform.
One day, somebody is going to right a book called "The Art of Jihad - the sayings of Osama bin Laden" and a lot of people are going to buy it.
