Military Backtracks on Prediction of Capturing Bin Laden This Year

The U.S. military has pulled back from a prediction that Osama bin Laden would be captured this year, even while preparing its largest force to date for operations along the Pakistani border where the Al Qaeda chief is suspected to be hiding.

Catching Bin Laden and other top fugitives remains a priority of the expanding U.S. operation in Afghanistan, but the growing mission is “not about just one or two people,” a spokesman said Saturday.

“We remain committed to catching these guys. It’s pretty much ... just about everything that we do here,” Lt. Col. Matthew Beevers said.

But he declined to make any new predictions of when the fugitives might be behind bars.

Beevers said U.S. forces in Afghanistan were “still confident” of capturing their top targets, but he added: “At the end of the day, it’s not about just one or two people. It’s about ... ensuring that there is stability and security throughout Afghanistan.”

Buoyed by the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, said in January that he was confident Bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar would also be in U.S. hands this year.

At the time, a spokesman even said the military was “sure” it would catch the two men. Those remarks, and talk of a spring offensive in Afghanistan by defense officials in Washington, triggered speculation that Bin Laden had been located.

But now the military has followed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s lead in seeking to lower expectations that a top fugitive would be taken into custody and unveiled during election campaigns in both the United States and Afghanistan.

“Close doesn’t count,” Rumsfeld said during a February visit to Kabul, the Afghan capital. “I suspect that we’ll find that it is accomplished at some point in the future, but I wouldn’t have any idea when.”

There have been no firm indications of Bin Laden’s whereabouts since he eluded capture at the Tora Bora cave complex in Afghanistan in December 2001.