The U.S. Senate made a decision to create a special intelligence force at the department of defense, which would have only one mission -- to catch bin Laden. The force received $200 million, and obliged to send progress reports to the government every three months.

Judging by all, the al-Qaida leader is doing just fine. He must be in a euphoric mood. Terrorist number one has every reason to believe that he is winning in his holy war against the unfaithful and immoral West.

One of his main achievements is personal freedom. Five years after 9/11 this guru of terrorism is sitting quietly in a well-warmed cave, most probably on the Afghan-Pakistani border, enjoying the banking of the CIA's unmanned Predators trying to spot him.

From time to time he would send a courier to deliver videotapes to the outside world. On one of the old tapes, he is conducting a master class in terrorism with some of those who later on crashed passenger planes into New York's Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The professionalism of the teacher is as impressive as the zeal of his students. On another tape, which has just been made public, his right hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri is cursing U.N. peacemakers in Lebanon and predicting more trouble: "The plans are being nurtured, and will produce new events with the Allah's permission." He means new acts of terror, and Israel is likely to be the first victim.

I think this probably takes care of a usual working day of the global villain. Bin Laden can now take a break. Today, he is not the inventor of future horrors, or the field-commander-in-chief of al-Qaida, whose network has spread to more than forty countries. He is now a live symbol of jihad, who inspires with terror the younger generation of radical Islamists from the United States to Europe and the Middle East.

Indeed, why does bin Laden have to do much if the United States is doing the bulk of his work? He could not even dream that he would be able to lure the U.S. Army first into Afghanistan, and then to Iraq, and engage it in endless warfare according to his own, guerrilla rules. But his main victory is that the United States has done away with his worst enemy, the infidel Saddam Hussein. The hatred was mutual but now bin Laden's American foe has put his Iraqi enemy behind the bars.

The Bush administration seems to have helped bin Laden, and his anti-West philosophy in one more respect. Nothing has reaffirmed his chanting about the West's immorality and animosity to man as the creation of the Allah with more conviction than the torture and humiliation of POWs by U.S. officers in Abu Ghraib prison. Bin Laden can put on his side of the scales the flying prisons and CIA secret bases in Europe, which practiced alternative methods of interrogation.

I think he knows quite well why despite more millions of dollars allocated and new intelligence groups set up, the hunters will not be too enthusiastic in their effort to catch him, just like they have not been in the past five years.

Too many are interested in having the live and energetic bin Laden as a concrete, physical enemy. It is much easier to get funds from the parliament, be it Congress or Westminster, when it comes to fighting such a real foe. The popular support for the struggle against such an elusive evildoer is much more easily obtained. Personification of international terrorism makes it more effortless -- we don't have to think what we are fighting against.

Portraying bin Laden and his al-Qaida as a vanguard of the worldwide terrorist movement means ignoring the more unpleasant reality. Experts on terrorism call what happened in five years since 9/11 'passing the baton'. The original al-Qaida has passed it to a global network of isolated radical cells. It no longer exists as an integral whole with a single command. Terror has ceased being embodied in one organization or man.

The movement of hatred for America, and the West in general, is gaining momentum largely because of their inability to suppress terror effectively. At the same time, the significance of Osama bin Laden, the pioneer of this devilish philosophy, is gradually declining, allowing him to change his labor-intensive role of the leader for an idle status of a symbolic or cult figure.

Osama has reasons to laugh quietly in his warm cave. -- (Vladimir Simonov is a political commentator for RIA Novosti. This article is reprinted with permission from the news agency.) -- (United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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