One of the great outlaw-on-the-dodge stories of all time.
Seven years and near-a-month after the 9/11 attacks, the supposedly-master-brain behind the operation, Osama bin Laden, the Saudi prince of terror, is still floating around out there in the ether, whether he’s kicking up Pakistani daisies or not.
Now he’s one of the most-celebrated celebrities of our time, like it or not, and because Decider George is an inept, creepy-crawler kind of guy, Osama’s countenance has become a poster-model’s ideal — encouraging way-more recruits to enlist in his struggle than that scrab-coated, financially insolent Uncle Sam, stabbing that hard-cut fingernail in US faces.
And in a sordid case of horrible historical irony, Osama cut his fighting teeth, gained his experience and grew in terror-making capabilities under the tutelage of the US while engaged in an Afghan/US proxy war with the old USSR.

(Photo found here).

In the true account of things, Decider George’s so-called legacy is tied directly to Osama’s coattails, and it ain’t pretty.
Poll out today indicates Decider George sucks really, really big time.
From ABC News:

• With the current economic situation, a record 70 percent of Americans disapprove of George W. Bush’s job performance; a career-low 26 percent approve.
  Just two presidents have had lower approval (Richard Nixon and Harry Truman) than President Bush, and none has had higher disapproval in polls since 1938.

And even upon Decider George’s warmongering ways.
Last week, another poll indicated US peoples have gone south on the Iraq/Afghan wars and the whole Osama bullshit.

• A new Ipsos/McClatchy online poll finds a solid majority of 57 percent thinking that the country can win the war on terrorism but a similar majority of 54 percent saying that the country is NOT winning it.
  …
  The survey also found that Americans think by 57-43 percent that Afghanistan is now a more important front in combating terrorists than Iraq.
  …
  By 66-34 percent, Americans oppose proposals to send more troops to Afghanistan, either redeployed from Iraq or sent from elsewhere.
  Rather, Americans favor gradually withdrawing troops from both countries by 74-26 percent.
  Among those most in favor of getting out of both countries were women, young people, those who make less than $50,000 a year and Northeasterners.
  Finally, given four options, 57 percent said they wanted to gradually withdraw troops from both countries and bring them home, 21 percent want to redeploy some troops now from Iraq to Afghanistan, 12 percent want to keep troop levels the same in Iraq while sending new troops to Afghanistan, and 10 percent want to keep troop levels the same in Iraq until the country is secure and then redeploy them to Afghanistan.

One mixed-up, freakin’ mess.
And the legacy of Osama continues to burn.
Gareth Porter, noted historian and a detailed military investigative journalist, has put together a good description of Decider George’s non-approach to killing or apprehending Osama, but all that oil, and all those empire-dreams were in Iraq.
Maybe the first real-time disaster in the legacy-list of disasters over the past near-eight years.
Decider George and his boys had no plan whatsoever in any form to snag Osama and his boys if they fled Afghanistan into right-there Pakistan.
Although there was a possible military set-up through Pakistan, implementing the operation meant a delay until spring 2002.
Decider George and his boys were too itchy, though, and invaded Afghanistan without a clue — Osama and few of his boys then slipped away and rode into folk history:

• That failure was directly related to the fact that top administration officials gave priority to planning for war with Iraq over military action against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
  …
  The views of Bush’s key advisers, however, ruled out any such plan from the start.
  During the summer of 2001, Rumsfeld had refused to develop contingency plans for military action against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan despite a National Security Presidential Directive adopted at the Deputies’ Committee level in July and by the Principles on Sept. 4 that called for such planning, according to the 9/11 Commission report.
  Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz resisted such planning for Afghanistan because they were hoping that the White House would move quickly on military intervention in Iraq. According to the 9/11 Commission, at four deputies’ meetings on Iraq between May 31 and July 26, 2001, Wolfowitz pushed his idea to have U.S. troops seize all the oil fields in southern Iraq.
  Even after Sept. 11, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Vice President Dick Cheney continued to resist any military engagement in Afghanistan, because they were hoping for war against Iraq instead.

Porter’s full piece ran today at antiwar.com.

Legacy has a double-edged point.