It says it all

The decision by CIA management to close its Osama bin Laden unit says it all. We are assured, of course, that the decision does not lessen the Administration's determination to find bin Laden and to bring him to justice. But, doesn't this step merely confirm the obvious - finding bin Laden is not the priority it once was, and, despairing of ever finding him, the White House is attempting to make a virtue of necessity by emphasizing that, after all, he no longer exerecises the operational control over Al Qaeda that he once did?

To be sure, the global terror network nowadays is more of a bottoms-up than a top-down phenomenon. More and more cells around the world, and here at home, seem more to be inspired by bin Laden than led by him.

But, this is at least as much bad news as good news. Needless to say, the more terrorists there are left to their own devices to do what they will, whenever, wherever, and however they choose to do it, the more likely it is that there will be other attacks here and elsewhere.

And, if the good news in this is that bin Laden isn't as important as he once was, that's "whistling past the graveyard" talk, if you ask me. He is as much as symbol of terrorism today as ever, and his outsized iconic power only grows each day that goes by without his being captured by the world's sole superpower.

Rather than closing units dedicated to finding bin Laden, our government should be opening more of them. For once, less is not more;more is more.