Taking Out Dubya

Someone was after Bush.

Before he was captured last spring, Osama Bin Laden’s top operational commander was solely focused on killing President Bush and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharaff, the Daily News has learned.

The capture last May of Al Qaeda’s No. 3 leader, Abu Faraj Al-Libi, apparently thwarted plots to assassinate the two partners in the global war on terror, said a senior Pakistani official, whose information was corroborated by two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials.

“Al-Libi had one mission: Kill Bush and Musharraf,” the Pakistani official told The News. “He wanted to kill Bush in the White House, preferably.”

“It was clearly something they wanted to do. There’s no question about that. It’s the holy grail of jihad,” a senior U.S. counterterrorism official confirmed.

Al-Libi organized several failed assassination attempts on Musharraf before he was nabbed, officials have said. But the plot by Al Qaeda’s international operations chief to send assassins to the U.S. to kill Bush was only disclosed this week.

The officials asked for anonymity because details of the Bush plot are still highly classified. The officials added that there is little evidence the U.S. mission advanced beyond initial planning by Al-Libi in Pakistan.

This immediately provoked a response from many left-wing pundits and groups.  In a statement on his website Michael Moore decried the “fascist Bush administration’s meddling in the private affairs of citizens in another state.  These men are not assassins, they’re Revolutionaries, Minutemen, and Freedom Fighters, standing up to the evil monster that is currently engaged in an illegal occupation of the United States government.” MoveOn.org echoed similar sentiments when it said “This is nothing more than the latest example of the Bush administration stopping at nothing to save their own skins.  Hating the president and wishing he was dead is a legitimate act of dissent.  Planning the assassination of a president as evil as Bush is the living embodiment of patriotism and love of country.  And, of course, the fascist Bush junta had to quash this dissent wherever these brave men could be found.  It’s a sad, sad day for freedom and democracy when planning the assassination of the president, something all of us do on nearly a daily basis, is considered a crime.”