Why is Osama still on the loose?

Osama bin Laden may well be "virtually impotent," as President Bush's national security adviser, Frances Townsend, put it today, rearing his revolting head only in the occasional formulaic terrorist propaganda video. But that's also not the point.

Bin Laden is a monster who masterminded the 9/11 attacks, a.k.a. the murders of nearly 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil. It's not enough just to keep him running from one hiding place to another, or to be satisfied because he hasn't struck again in the United States. Everything that is good and decent and just in the world cries out for him to be captured and held accountable.

In the famous words of a man who once commanded the world's respect before he got himself stuck in an intractable, seemingly never-ending Iraq debacle he doesn't know how to escape: "There is no question about it. This act will not stand. We will find those who did this, we will smoke them out of their holes, we will get them running, and we will bring them to justice."

Six years later, I can only hope those words still mean something.