"Bring It On" Again? - Osama bin Laden Deemed "Virtually Impotent"

Seemingly taunting Osama bin Laden, President Bush's homeland security adviser (Frances Fragos Townsend) said Sunday the fugitive al-Qaida leader is "virtually impotent" beyond his ability to hide away and spread anti-American propaganda.

The provocative characterization came just days after bin Laden attracted international attention with the release of a video in which he ridicules President Bush about the Iraq war and reminds the world that he not been captured.

...The consensus of the nation's top intelligence analysts is that bin Laden's terrorist network is anything but impotent.

Terrorism experts say the network is regrouping in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The latest National Intelligence Estimate says al-Qaida is growing in strength, intensifying its efforts to put operatives in the United States and plotting against U.S. targets that will cause massive casualties. The U.S. is in a "heightened threat environment" and al-Qaida is the most serious threat, the analysts found...

..."While he may be physically contained, his influence is not bounded by any physical barriers," said Thomas Sanderson, an authority on terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Obviously, in a sense, it does not matter that we've got him trapped in a cave. He has sent forth enough messages to incite violence worldwide against us," he said in an interview Sunday...

...Taunting bin Laden as "virtually impotent" would likely not provoke him to respond, because his strategy of attacks involves lengthy planning that would not be derailed by a single comment, said Sanderson, a senior fellow at CSIS. But such a comment could prove incendiary to like-minded followers of bin Laden who see themselves as a "vanguard of a global assault on the United States," he said.

"A provocation like that," he said, "is not helpful."