Bowling for bin Laden

Whose of us in the library and information science field aren't exactly known for being a terribly outrageous lot. It's not that we don't try ... I wore a music festival T-shirt and drank a beer this weekend to help us reclaim our rightful place among the party-school elite, for example.\nMy friend laughed at me. \nMaybe it was because it was her T-shirt.\nIn any event, try as I might, it's probably best for me and my kind to stick to what we do well. And, even though we don't have the best parties, we're pretty good at helping people find reliable facts to strengthen their knowledge and arguments.\nOne of the cardinal rules of information use is that you always, always support your opinions with reliable and verifiable data. Especially in the academic and public arenas.\nAre you listening, professor Rasmusen?\nSo imagine my shock when CBS released poll results on Sunday which indicated that a full three-quarters of the American public feel President Bush has made the country safer from terrorism.\nMy question: How is that, exactly?\nNewsweek is running an article this week about Osama bin Laden's continued orchestration of the al Qaeda organization. A Taliban source says bin Laden is making biological weapons a top priority. "Osama's next step will be unbelievable," he says.\nForgive me if I don't do cartwheels through Dunn Meadow.\nI've got to concede that a Taliban official isn't the most reliable source in the world for accurate information. But really, what data do we have that bin Laden isn't organizing or able to organize such an attack?\nThe president has said several times that al Qaeda is on the run, that we're hot on its trail or some other Texas Ranger analogy. I really want to believe him. I do. \nBut where are the facts?\nArticles like the one in Sunday's New York Times don't help. Evidently, al Qaeda militants are now pouring into Iraq. Somehow, I have a hard time believing we're close to the big ol' roundup. \nIraq is seen by virtually everyone as crucial to our efforts to establish stability in the Middle East, and thereby increase the safety of the world. But now al Qaeda has a presence in a place where they had none six months ago.\nIt's almost as if we're lining up a bunch of Arab kingpins on a desert bowling alley and trying to knock them over with a Nerf bowling ball. We were led to believe that if we hit the head pin, the rest would come tumbling down. But the truth of the matter is that the pins are lined up so haphazardly that one pin doesn't knock over any of the others. \nAnd somebody keeps bringing in more pins.\nWhat we really need in order to believe that we're winning the War on Terror is a lucid plan that's supported by tangible and meaningful evidence. Mr. Bush needs to level with us and assure us we've got an agenda and we're going bowling with an Abrams tank. \nPresident Franklin Roosevelt helped to lay as much evidence out as he could during the fearful times of World War II. Somehow he found it in him to lead the American people by leveling with them and encouraging them with our successes and failures and bothering to explain why.\nAll the while he managed to do this without compromising national security while still respecting the intelligence of the populace.\nThe War on Terror is no less important.