Not only did Bush fail to react to U.S. intelligence warnings about the 9/11 attacks, he then failed to finish off bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders in the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001.
Then, with al-Qaeda needing a respite, Bush shifted American focus to attack the secular government of Iraq, one of al-Qaeda's regional enemies. That bought time for al-Qaeda to regroup, recover and reorganize.
But the biggest boon for al-Qaeda was Bush's invasion of Iraq in March 2003, which served as a major recruiting tool for Islamic radicals. The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, written in April 2006, confirmed this fact, calling the Iraq War the "cause celebre" that spread militancy throughout the Muslim world.
Bin Laden also reciprocated, providing a crucial political boost to Bush in the final days of Campaign 2004.
On Oct. 29, 2004, with Bush in a tough fight for a second term, bin Laden took the extraordinary personal risk to break nearly a year of silence and release a videotape that superficially denounced Bush but was interpreted by CIA analysts as a backdoor way to help Bush win.
"Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President," said deputy CIA director John McLaughlin in opening a meeting to review secret "strategic analysis" after the videotape had dominated the day's news, according to Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders.
Suskind wrote that CIA analysts had spent years "parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, Zawahiri. What they'd learned over nearly a decade is that bin Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. ... Today's conclusion: bin Laden's message was clearly designed to assist the President's reelection."
Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, expressed the consensus view that bin Laden recognized how Bush's heavy-handed policies - such as the Guantanamo prison camp, the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal and the war in Iraq - were serving al-Qaeda's strategic goals for recruiting a new generation of jihadists.
"Certainly," Miscik said, "he would want Bush to keep doing what he's doing for a few more years."
As their internal assessment sank in, the CIA analysts were troubled by the implications of their own conclusions. "An ocean of hard truths before them - such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin Laden would want Bush reelected - remained untouched," Suskind wrote.
Bush's campaign backers, however, took bin Laden's videotape at face value, calling it proof the terrorist leader feared Bush and favored Democrat John Kerry.
In a pro-Bush book entitled Strategery: How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats and Confounding the Mainstream Media, right-wing journalist Bill Sammon devoted several pages to bin Laden's videotape, portraying it as an attempt by the terrorist leader to persuade Americans to vote for Kerry.
"Bin Laden stopped short of overtly endorsing Kerry," Sammon wrote, "but the terrorist offered a polemic against reelecting Bush."
Sammon and other right-wing pundits didn't weigh the obvious possibility that the crafty bin Laden might have understood that his "endorsement" of Kerry would achieve the opposite effect with the American people.
Bush on bin Laden
Bush himself recognized this fact. "I thought it was going to help," Bush said in a post-election interview with Sammon about bin Laden's videotape. "I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the President, something must be right with Bush."
Then, with al-Qaeda needing a respite, Bush shifted American focus to attack the secular government of Iraq, one of al-Qaeda's regional enemies. That bought time for al-Qaeda to regroup, recover and reorganize.
But the biggest boon for al-Qaeda was Bush's invasion of Iraq in March 2003, which served as a major recruiting tool for Islamic radicals. The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, written in April 2006, confirmed this fact, calling the Iraq War the "cause celebre" that spread militancy throughout the Muslim world.
Bin Laden also reciprocated, providing a crucial political boost to Bush in the final days of Campaign 2004.
"Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President," said deputy CIA director John McLaughlin in opening a meeting to review secret "strategic analysis" after the videotape had dominated the day's news, according to Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders.
Suskind wrote that CIA analysts had spent years "parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, Zawahiri. What they'd learned over nearly a decade is that bin Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. ... Today's conclusion: bin Laden's message was clearly designed to assist the President's reelection."
Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, expressed the consensus view that bin Laden recognized how Bush's heavy-handed policies - such as the Guantanamo prison camp, the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal and the war in Iraq - were serving al-Qaeda's strategic goals for recruiting a new generation of jihadists.
"Certainly," Miscik said, "he would want Bush to keep doing what he's doing for a few more years."
As their internal assessment sank in, the CIA analysts were troubled by the implications of their own conclusions. "An ocean of hard truths before them - such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin Laden would want Bush reelected - remained untouched," Suskind wrote.
Bush's campaign backers, however, took bin Laden's videotape at face value, calling it proof the terrorist leader feared Bush and favored Democrat John Kerry.
In a pro-Bush book entitled Strategery: How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats and Confounding the Mainstream Media, right-wing journalist Bill Sammon devoted several pages to bin Laden's videotape, portraying it as an attempt by the terrorist leader to persuade Americans to vote for Kerry.
"Bin Laden stopped short of overtly endorsing Kerry," Sammon wrote, "but the terrorist offered a polemic against reelecting Bush."
Sammon and other right-wing pundits didn't weigh the obvious possibility that the crafty bin Laden might have understood that his "endorsement" of Kerry would achieve the opposite effect with the American people.
Bush on bin Laden
Bush himself recognized this fact. "I thought it was going to help," Bush said in a post-election interview with Sammon about bin Laden's videotape. "I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the President, something must be right with Bush."
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