Well, duh! You just don’t eliminate your best campaigner

In case there’s any doubt in your mind – and, at this point, there really shouldn’t be – here it is in George Bush’s own words. Here is the reason Osama bin Wanted-dead-or-alive is still running around the mountains, free as a bird.

Since 9/11/2001, he has been the GOP’s main campaign asset. The boogeyman under the bed. Having him out there, plotting God knows what, is worth a vote or two.

WASHINGTON – President Bush said he believes his 2004 re-election victory over Sen. John Kerry was inadvertently aided by Osama bin Laden, who issued a taped diatribe against him the Friday before Americans went to the polls, The Examiner newspaper reported on Tuesday.Bush said there were “enormous amounts of discussion” inside his campaign about the 15-minute tape, which he called “an interesting entry by our enemy” into the presidential race.

…”I thought it was going to help,” Bush said. “I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.”

Um, yeah. It may have been “inadvertent” on OBL’s part, but there was nothing inadvertent about it at the White House. The last thing anyone in BushLand wanted was to capture this guy and waste all the time and energy they had put into scaring the shit out of the American public over him.