August 22, 2003
Whatever happened to the FBI's 22 most wanted terrorists list? The list was brought out by President Bush with great fanfare right after the 9/11 attacks. Five million dollars was offered as a reward for each of the 22 (increased a short time later to 25 million). This list is never mentioned in the news.
By contrast, we hear regularly of the list of 55 most wanted Iraqis. When Chemical Ali was recently captured, we heard that he had been the "king of spades" and was number 5 on the list of most wanted Iraqis.
As each former Iraqi leader is captured, we are given the "scoreboard". Of the 55 most wanted Iraqis, 39 are captured or confirmed dead. 16 are still at large, though one of those is suspected to be dead. We are assured that there is little left of the brutal Iraqi regime.
There was also great joy recently with the capture of the most wanted man in Southeast Asia, Hambali. It is great that we have captured him. President Bush called him, "one of the world's most lethal terrorists." What I never heard mentioned by any reporters is that Hambali is not even on the FBI's list of 22 most wanted terrorists. Other captures of terrorists have been hailed as major events, but almost all of those captured have not been on the most wanted list. The list is never even mentioned.
So how are we doing on finding the 22 most wanted terrorists? We have one of them. That's all. Some may be dead, but some who the Administration had said it thought were dead later turned up alive making threats against the U.S.
The President said, "We're going to shine the light of justice on them. We list their names, we publicize their pictures, we rob them of their secrecy. Terrorism has a face, and today we expose it for the world to see." That was two years ago. Today, we hide the list, apparently in shame due to our total failure to find 21 of these 22 most wanted terrorists.
The War on Terrorism has been replaced by the War on Iraq. We have been very successful in dismantling Iraq and less successful in rebuilding Iraq. The War on Terrorism, however, is a failure that has been completely forgotten or covered up.
Richard M. Mathews
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