Tales from the Trail

Now it’s really official.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been crossed off the National Counterterrorism Center’s calendar.

In the online version, the photo of bin Laden, included since at least 2001 even before the Sept. 11 attacks, has a big red “KILLED” stamped across his face. And his status has been changed to “Deceased.”

We’re guessing there was a certain amount of satisfaction in the act of  canceling him on the calendar from an agency that has been chasing him for years.

“It felt really, really good,” one intelligence official tells us.

Another intelligence official had a bit more to say.  “It’s great to know that he’s seen his last day alive and the last day he’ll be on anyone’s calendar.  This is a guy who no longer deserves the time of day, or any part of the year.”

Guess that’s that.

Photo credit: Reuters/Athar Hussain (images of bin Laden displayed for sale at roadside in Karachi)

President Barack Obama may have hoped to limit the political fallout from last month’s attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner by admitting there was a “screw up.” Will firings follow? Some think Obama’s unusually sharp rhetoric raises the odds that heads will roll.

One such observer is U.S. Rep. Peter King, an influential New York Republican.

“If the situation is as bad as the president says it was, as far as so many dots not being connected, so many obvious mistakes being made … I would think once the president set that stage, that to show that he’s serious, someone will have to go now,” King told ABC’s Good Morning America.

But the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee says he can’t tell which official should pay because the Obama administration hasn’t let Congress know who did (or didn’t) do what, when.