WASHINGTON (AFP) — The White House on Tuesday vowed to capture Osama bin Laden and pursue the fight against Al-Qaeda in Iraq as the United States marked the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
While ceremonies were held to mourn those killed in the attacks on New York and Washington, the US administration renewed a promise to capture bin Laden and portrayed US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as central to the "war on terror."
"We are fighting violent extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan and across the world so that we do not have to fight them on American soil," said a statement issued by the White House.
Amid declining public support for the Iraq war since the 2003 US-led invasion, President George W. Bush's administration defended the US military presence there as a way of protecting Americans from terrorism.
"These extremists want to overthrow rising democracies, claim a strategic country as a haven for terror, destabilize the Middle East, and strike America and other free nations," it said.
"This is why success in Afghanistan and Iraq is vital, and will be a terrible blow to the extremists' ambitions," the statement said.
The statement came as Americans remembered the attacks six years ago that killed nearly 3,000 people and prompted Bush to declare a "war on terror" that has included enhanced police and surveillance powers as well as the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
As top US officials were defending Bush's policy in Iraq before a skeptical Congress, bin Laden used the anniversary to release two videotapes mocking the United States, threatening to escalate the war in Iraq and praising one 9/11 hijacker as a "champion."
The White House said it was committed to capturing bin Laden but played down the Al-Qaeda leader's importance.
"He (Bush) said all along: we are going to find him," spokesman Tony Snow told reporters.
"The fact is that the war against terror is not a war against one guy, Osama bin Laden. It is against a network that uses all sorts of ways of trying to recruit new terrorists."
Despite a massive manhunt and a 25-million dollar bounty on his head, bin Laden has evaded capture and has regularly taunted the United States and its allies through video and audio messages.
"Bin Laden is somebody who is the symbolic leader of Al-Qaeda. Certainly the capture of bin Laden would be of enormous symbolic importance," Snow said.
US intelligence chief Michael McConnell also downplayed bin Laden's significance, saying Al-Qaeda's "intellectual leader" was bin Laden's Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told ABC television Tuesday that bin Laden was "more a figurehead than anything else."
The top US commander in Iraq meanwhile told lawmakers in Congress that a "surge" of additional troops was proving a success and pleaded for patience before any decision to start a major withdrawal of US soldiers.
War-weary Americans support a gradual pullout from the dragging Iraq conflict which has killed more than 3,700 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. But the administration said one reason for staying is to defeat Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
"Helping the Iraqis as they build their democracy is critical to keeping the American people safe from the terrorists who want to attack us," the White House statement said.
"A free Iraq will be a massive defeat for Al-Qaeda, a source of hope for the rest of the Middle East, and an ally in the war on terror."
Critics of the war argue the US involvement in Iraq has turned the country into a new haven for Al-Qaeda and diverted essential US forces away from Afghanistan and other threats.
Bush is due to address the nation later this week on Iraq.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
