Porter Goss' "Excellent Idea"

From AP:

The director of the CIA says he has an "excellent idea" where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but that the United States' respect for sovereign nations makes it more difficult to capture the al-Qaida chief. [Pause for laughter. Wipe coffee from monitor.]

In an interview with Time for the magazine's June 27 issue, Porter Goss was asked about the progress of the hunt for bin Laden.

"When you go to the question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play," Goss said. [Pause for laughter. Breathe.]...

Maybe Goss forgot which Administration he was in.

Goss did not say where he thinks bin Laden is, nor did he specify what country or countries he was referring to when he spoke of foreign sanctuaries. But American officials have long said they believed bin Laden was hiding in rugged mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

From AFP:

Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar are not in Afghanistan, the US ambassador said, a day after a top Taliban commander said the pair were alive and well.

"Mullah Omar is not in Afghanistan. I do not believe that Osama is in Afghanistan," Zalmay Khalilzad told a press conference.

I'm trying to read between all these lines, but my new glasses haven't come in yet. What gets me is that for a long time now we've been told that Bin Laden is probably in Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border, more or less as stated in the AP story above. If that's what Goss meant, why didn't he say so? It's common knowledge. If he thinks Bin Laden is elsewhere, he might want to inform the troops searching for him. In mid-March, right before Condi dropped by for a visit, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, told the BBC that

his forces got their clearest trace of Bin Laden after the Pakistani army launched an offensive in the tribal region last year.

"There was a time when the dragnet had closed and we thought we knew roughly the area where he possibly could be. That was, I think, some time back, not very long... maybe about eight to 10 months back," he said.

"But after that, this is such a game, this intelligence, that they escape. They can move and then you lose contact."

And apparently the capture on May 2 of Al-Qaeda member (?) Abu Farraj al-Libbi yielded no leads.

We take it Goss was bullshitting. Or all those suckers searching for Bin Laden are. Or [insert hypothesis here].