Asia Times Online :: How Bush gave Osama a free pass:
"Milton Bearden, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan during the Mujahideen war against the Soviets, observed to the Washington Post two weeks after Bush had rejected Muttawakil's new offer that the Taliban needed a face-saving way of resolving the issue consistent with its Islamic values.

'We never heard what they were trying to say,' Bearden said.

The Bush refusal to negotiate with the Taliban was in effect a free pass for Bin Laden and his lieutenants because the Bush administration had no plan of its own for apprehending him in Afghanistan. It did not even know what level of military effort would have been required for the United States to be able to block Bin Laden's exit routes from Afghanistan into Pakistan. "