Bin Laden Branded `Virtually Impotent'

In this photo provided by FOX News, Fran Townsend, President Bush's homeland security adviser appears on "Fox News Sunday" in Washington, Sunday, Sept. 9, 2007. (AP Photo/FOX News Sunday, Freddie Lee) MANDATORY CREDIT: FREDDIE LEE, FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Freddie Lee - AP)

Townsend said experts are doing a technical analysis, looking for clues about bin Laden's health and whereabouts.

"There's nothing overtly obvious in the tape that would suggest this is a trigger for an attack," she said.

She emphasized another finding from the intelligence estimate released in July _ that worldwide counterterrorism efforts have constrained the ability of al-Qaida to hit the U.S.

"We ought to remember, six years since the tragedy of the September 11th, we haven't seen another attack," Townsend said.

More than 3,000 people died on that day in 2001, the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. Tuesday's anniversary has renewed questions about whether the country is safer today.

"Six years later, we are safer in a narrow sense: We have not been attacked, and our defenses are better," wrote the chairmen of the independent Sept. 11 commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, in Sunday's Washington Post. "But we have become distracted and complacent."

Townsend disputed that assessment. She said the government has made considerable progress in protecting the country.

"We are safer than we were in 2001," she said.

The anniversary of the attacks comes in the same week that Bush is expected to announce the next stage of U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq. The war is portrayed in starkly different terms by Bush, who sees it as vital to stopping al-Qaida, and by his critics, who view it is as unrelated to the terrorist attacks.

"This is an insult to everybody in the world that this man is still sending his tapes," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., of bin Laden. "And it is the real failure because Iraq has nothing to do with Osama bin Laden in the beginning."

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona _ who has stuck by Bush's war strategy _ nevertheless described bin Laden as a "great danger."

"He continues to communicate, he continues to lead, and he continues to be a symbol for them of leadership in this radical hatred and evil radical Islamic extremism," McCain said.

Taunting bin Laden as "virtually impotent" would likely not provoke him to respond, because his strategy of attacks involves lengthy planning that would not be derailed by a single comment, said Sanderson, a senior fellow at CSIS. But such a comment could prove incendiary to like-minded followers of bin Laden who see themselves as a "vanguard of a global assault on the United States," he said.

"A provocation like that," he said, "is not helpful."

Townsend appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and CNN's "Late Edition." Kerry and McCain were on "This Week" on ABC.

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