The weekend news came from Fran Townsend, the Administration spokesman for homeland security. Osama Bin Laden is “impotent and living in a cave” she declared, and unable to again attack America.  Earlier in the week she derided his beard, as she joked about him perhaps having colored it. Such was the depth and sophistication of the Administration’s response to Osama’s first video release in three years.

Perhaps I look at things too simplistically, but instead of wondering about the coloring in his beard, it seems to me that the major question the American people should be asking President Bush is “Why is Osama Bin Laden still alive?”

Six years after the terror attack on the United States, Mr. Bush’s “Global War on Terror” has ground to a halt. We spend $10 Billion monthly to referee a Shia -- Sunni -- Shia civil war in Iraq; Afghanistan sets records annually in exporting opium to the West -- which the Taliban uses to pay for their war; grandmothers struggle to remove their shoes in our airports in the name of “Homeland Security,” Iran is shelling northern Iraqi villages with impunity; nuclear Pakistan is set to implode in political and Islamic chaos - is there a coherent mission for our Marines, Navy, and Soldiers behind this madness?

The Administration will argue that killing Bin Laden is no longer necessary for us to defeat “terror,” but I disagree. He is the father figure of the Islamic war against Western civilization, and therefore his death needs to be as symbolic as his life. The value of killing Osama is that until America does so, every day he remains alive, every video he releases, gives the disaffected and angry masses in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier or Saudi madrasses proof that their twisted faith is stronger than that of the United States.

Successfully hunting and killing Bin Laden will force the Administration to re-focus on the true war on terror: renew the emphasis on Afghanistan and defeating the Taliban coming over from the North-West Frontier -- or focus on a nuclear and Islamic Pakistan. Iran is an urgent problem; nuclear or not, their oil-funded influence has already de-stabilized southern Iraq and will soon affect the remainder of the Middle East. Adm. William Fallon, Centcom’s commander, has been arguing that with so much of our military and other resources tied up in Iraq, the United States is dangerously unprepared for these potential confrontations.

Would killing Osama solve these issues, or halt the plotting of other Islamic terrorists? No, but it would give them cause to think that if they do try to pull another 9/11 that the United States has a mighty and terrible sword that will cost them dearly.

Upon hearing the results of his attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Adm. Yamamoto mused that he “feared that he had awakened a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve.”  Would that Osama Bin Laden had the same fear of President Bush?