How many lives could have been saved if Bush had captured OBL ...?

[kentuck]

and had not invaded Iraq? How many less terrorists would now be in this world if he had captured the head "terrorist" in the world and wiped out most of his organization? Would it have made a difference? I think it would have made the world safer.

However, when he decided to temporarily forego the capture of OBL and devote everything to capturing Saddam Hussein, the world became a much more dangerous place. Thousands of Iraqis died and over 860 Americans so far have died also. Tens of thousands of people, including Americans, have been seriously injured.

How much of a major blunder was this by George W Bush? Now that Iraq has been sufficiently "freed", it's time to focus on OBL again? It will be left to historians to interpret the damage that the leader of America has done to the world community.

[maveric]

1. They would have still gone into Iraq.

They planned that from day one.

[DustMolecule]

2. The answer is 'none'

because he (Bush) was never after OSL in the first place....you KNOW this, why are you asking?????

[acmavm]

3. Bush only turned up the heat on OBL when things really started going

badly in Iraq. One has to wonder why he waited so long. And I hope that I'm not being to cynical when I say that I'm also wondering what effect, if any, this will have on the business relations with the rest of the bin Laden family. Or is that why he drug his feet for so long?

Plus one has to wonder what effect his capture will have on Al Queda. I don't mean that I think they'll just fall apart, I mean the I wonder if they'll launch a big attack here. I think that if he would have been nabbed early in the game, that the probability of that happening was much lower than it is now. Bin Laden isn't running things anymore, but since the invasion of Iraq, Al Quaeda has taken on a life of it's own without bin Laden. He's not such an integral part of things now. And if we've had him for a while, then his importance in Al Quaeda has diminished to where he's not even calling any of the shots, a number of other people are. So this is just window dressing. Too late to do any good, but the idiots will eat it up.