"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
A crowd of rescuers chanted "USA, USA" as President Bush thanked everyone working Friday at ground zero of the devastated World Trade Center that was hit by hijacked planes flown by terrorists.
As he stood on a pile of rubble in Manhattan, some people in the crowd shouted they couldn't hear him.
"I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon," Bush answered.
Coalition commanders in Afghanistan have begun playing down the importance of Osama Bin Laden - in sharp contrast to the statements made earlier this year that he would be caught by the end of 2004.
"From the Afghan point of view we don't want to focus too much on Bin Laden," said Major-General John Cooper, deputy commander of the American-led coalition forces.
"He is not necessarily the major player. He will be caught one day but his whereabouts today won't have a huge effect."
Cooper, the most senior British officer in Afghanistan, admitted that after three years of searching the hills and valleys of Afghanistan, the coalition forces had no idea where their other main target, the Taliban leader Mullah Omar, is hiding. "We don't even know which country he's in," he said.
Cooper refused to reveal whether the coalition had any idea where Bin Laden was. "Saddam (Hussein) was caught as a result of circumstances and good intelligence and I'm sure one day the same will happen with Bin Laden," he said.
The attempt to shift attention away from Bin Laden may be a reflection of frustration at being unable to find him.
President George W Bush was so eager to capture the Al-Qaeda leader before next month's election that the strength of the US forces in Afghanistan was almost doubled to 19,000 men.
However, deteriorating security in Iraq has forced the Pentagon to move Taskforce 121, the commando team behind the capture of Saddam, away from Afghanistan. It has returned to Iraq to search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist believed to be responsible for the murder of Kenneth Bigley.
Psychological operations teams in Afghanistan have stopped distributing wanted posters for Omar and Bin Laden and have concentrated instead on encouraging people to register and vote in this weekend's presidential election.