Opinion: The bin Laden tape

Over the past year, the face of our government's war against terrorism somehow morphed from Osama bin Laden's into Saddam Hussein's. Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush vowed that his top priority was to track down bin Laden "dead or alive." The military operation to oust Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which gave sanctuary to bin Laden's terrorist camps, was successful, but bin Laden was never accounted for. Administration officials more recently have claimed not to care whether bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders are alive or dead, as long as their terrorist network remains "on the run."

In the meantime, the president shifted the nation's focus to "regime change" in Iraq, a conventional enemy that is much easier to target than a shadowy international terrorist organization that knows no borders. In pressuring the rest of the world to go along with his plan to remove Hussein from power by force if necessary, President Bush has been willing to risk alienating many of the governments whose cooperation is crucial in the broader war against al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups.

The appearance this week of a new tape recording purportedly made by bin Laden should restore some perspective. U.S. authorities say the voice on the recording probably is bin Laden's. If so, the recording, with its references to several recent events, marks the first clear evidence in almost a year that bin Laden is still alive. In any case, the content of the recording provides a chilling reminder that international terrorists hardly have been on the run. They have carried out deadly attacks around the globe -- and surely are plotting even deadlier ones.

The recording praises several recent terrorist incidents, including the bombing of a Bali nightclub, the attack on a French tanker in Yemen and the killing in Kuwait of Marine Cpl. Antonio Sledd of Tampa. U.S. authorities fear that the tape may also have contained hidden signals intended to spur further attacks against Americans and other Westerners.

No one has suggested that Hussein is even indirectly implicated in any of those recent attacks, yet he, not bin Laden, remains the focus of our current military mobilization. Over the past two months, the Bush administration has done an impressive job of rebuilding an international consensus for action against Iraq. However, keeping that coalition intact may require even more difficult diplomacy. Despite Wednesday's announcement that Baghdad has accepted the United Nations' strict terms for renewed weapons inspections, Hussein is almost certain to engage in further delay and defiance once inspectors return. Hussein, like bin Laden, has tried many tactics to isolate the United States from the many other governments whose help we need as we chase terrorists around the globe.

Even with broad international support, a new war against Iraq would require a huge, long-term commitment of U.S. troops and resources. It may be possible to wage such a massive conventional war against Iraq without compromising our broader war against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, but many authorities continue to question our priorities. U.S. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who led the congressional inquiry into the intelligence failures preceding Sept. 11, argues that making Hussein a bigger priority than al-Qaida is akin to making Mussolini a bigger priority than Hitler during World War II. This week's tape recording -- and the series of worldwide terrorist attacks that preceded it -- suggests that Graham has a point.

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