The most wanted man in America has surfaced again.

Osama bin Laden’s release of a video is the first time the terrorist leader has been seen by the public since 2004. The video, released three days before the six-year anniversary of 9/11, has created a storm of controversy.

President Bush’s homeland security advisor Frances Townsend called the al-Qaida leader “virtually impotent” and has said the tape holds “nothing more than threats . [and] propaganda.”

However, CBS news consultant Michael Scheuer, a former CIA agent, said the video may be a warning of attacks to come.

Scheuer argued the video is full of troubling signs. In the video, bin Laden invites Americans to “embrace Islam” as a way to end the war in Iraq. Scheuer said such an offer is frightening because the chance to convert to Islam is required before attacking an enemy. Also, the lack of military jacket and rifle, previously sported by bin Laden when appearing in front of the camera, suggests a relaxed attitude, indicating that the terrorist leader feels, or wants to project, an air of security and relative safety from the United States.

Scheuer, who was the former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, has been heavily criticized in the media for how the unit, called Alec Station, handled the search for Osama after the U.S. embassy attacks in 1998. Yet, as Gabriel Schoenfeld points out in his article in The Weekly Standard, the CIA was already diverting funds away from its counterterrorism unit toward unrelated activities and had largely staffed Alec Station with officers that “did not have the operational experience, expertise and training necessary to accomplish their mission in an effective manner.”

To move past all of these issues and focus on the main point for a minute, the fact remains that more than half a decade after 9/11, the man who claimed responsibility has not yet been brought to justice.

And in bin Laden’s latest video, one thing is clear – he is still out there and, regardless of whatever cave he’s hiding in, he is still aware of current events in America, as his comments on the sub-prime mortgage crisis indicate.

Although the Bush administration is fond of linking bin Laden and al-Qaida with Iraq – and despite Bush’s promise days after 9/11 that we would get Osama “dead or alive” – there has been little progress in tracking down bin Laden.

An article in the Sept. 3 issue of Newsweek examines the difficulties and bureaucratic red tape hindering the operation in the mountains of Afghanistan, an operation that has been repeatedly under-equipped as funds are diverted into Iraq.

Newsweek suggests that the military was hesitant to engage in the intensely localized approach needed to catch bin Laden. Such Special Forces operations, known as Snake Eaters, are notoriously contrary to the military’s “spit-and-polish image.”

The operations have a high risk of leaving a black mark on a commanding officers’ performance records. Career officers’ records must be spotless in order for the officers to be promoted, and operations such as the one required to track bin Laden are sure to have setbacks and mistakes – promotion killers for career officers.

So despite the president’s assurance that we would “hunt down . find . [and] smoke out of their holes the terrorist organization that is the prime suspect,” we still have not brought the man to justice. Despite Bush’s promises that we would find and hold accountable the people responsible, it is obvious that the administration’s focus has shifted, from bin Laden to Iraq, from the man responsible for the twin towers to waging a war against a country with dubious, or outright false, connections to 9/11.

The Web site www.impeachbush.org has had 940,158 people sign a petition to impeach the president. On this, the day after the anniversary of 9/11 we need to stop and think how we got so far from the intended target, how far we’ve been misled and how much longer we’ll tolerate such actions by our government.

– Quincy Miller is a senior in English from Altoona.