From Holden:
Your president spoke the name that shall not be spoken earlier today then was unsurprisingly incoherent on the same topic when asked this afternoon.
Q You mentioned Osama bin Laden earlier this morning and you said several times that there’s progress being made on the war on terrorism. But more than three years after September 11th, you still don’t know where he is. How would you assess the adequacy of the intelligence you’re getting on bin Laden, and do you expect that he’s going to be found anytime soon, even within your second term?
THE PRESIDENT: If al Qaeda was structured like corporate America [like, say, Enron or Halliburton?], you’d have a chairman of the board still in office, but many of the key operators would no longer be around — in other words, the executive vice presidents, the operating officers, the people responsible for certain aspects of the organization have been brought to justice. A lot of them have been. And we are — spend every day gathering information to locate Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri, obviously, people like Zarqawi. We’re not resting on our laurels. We’ve had great successes. And — but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t stop.
And one of the reasons I came out here was to remind people that we’ve had great successes. I appreciate their successes — Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Ramzi Binalshibh. I can go down the list. But there’s more work to be done. And it’s a matter of time. As far as I’m concerned and as far as the CIA is concerned, it’s a matter of time before we bring these people to justice. And I can’t thank the intelligence gatherers, the analysts and the operators [?!!? – operatives?] — I can’t thank them enough for the sacrifices they’re making.
And, it looks like the wife is back in town.
I did visit with Condi yesterday. I’m about to go visit with her again in the Oval Office… And I look forward to talking to Condi about getting an amplification on her visit with our allies overseas. I look forward to not only hear their words, I want to hear about their body language.