October 30, 2004 - Rudy Giuliani says that it is not the President that is at fault for the missing explosives that have presumably found their way to a terrorist arsenal. You can’t blame the President because the troops on the ground saw the stuff and walked away. It is their responsibility according to the former mayor of New York. Well, Rudy, you don’t blame the troops for carrying out the mission they were given. The officers and men of the 3rd Infantry and 101st Airborne were not at al Qaqaa to secure the sealed explosives. They were the point and muscle of the US spear aimed at Baghdad. They did the job they were given and they did it well.

The problem was leadership, Rudy, and that is the President’s job. The Generals have told us that there weren’t enough forces in theatre to secure the ordinance spread around the Iraqi countryside. It wasn’t new information. The Army told the Bush Administration’s Pentagon that they would need at least half a million troops on the ground to do an effective job of invading and occupying Iraq. Don Rumsfeld vetoed that idea and planned to wage war on the cheap. President Bush signed onto the plan and gave the order to go without any plan or manpower to secure the backs of the troops out in front. That is how al Qaqaa hit the fan, Rudy, a failure of leadership not a failure on the part of the GIs or their commanders in the field. The Buck this time is squarely in the center of that desk in the Oval office not between the seats of a Humvee.

It’s like the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. When we supposedly had him and the main Al Qaeda force surrounded at Tora Bora the Secretary of Defense decided to turn the job of rooting him out over to the warlords the arch criminal and his main force slipped off to Pakistan. It was Rumsfeld’s plan that failed but President Bush signed on to it. When the dust settled from the bouncing rubble the President told us that he did not know where Bin Laden was and that he was not that concerned about him. He and Al Qaeda had been marginalized the President said. That Buck is lying next to al Qaqaa in the center of the desk.

Now we see Osama Bin Laden staring out at us from our television sets warning us that he is coming for us. Three years and a little more than a month after he sent Mohammed Atta to kill 3000 citizens of the world on US soil; three years after the President vowed to take him dead or alive; three years after the President sent Tommy Franks into Afghanistan to get him Osama Bin Laden is pointing his finger at us and telling us that blood will run in America’s streets. That is not the fault of the GIs the President sent to Afghanistan or of their commanders who did the job they were told to do with the resources they were give to do it. It is a failure of judgment and leadership.

Now we are embroiled in a bitter guerilla war in Iraq and Osama Bin Laden is no longer out there somewhere on the margin of history. He is there, Rudy, looking out from our TV screens. There he is, Rudy, he’s back!