The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin has done some interesting research:

And what I found is that Bush treats bin Laden a lot like those wizards in the Harry Potter books treat He Who Must Not Be Named.

Since the beginning of 2003, in fact, Bush has mentioned bin Laden’s name on only 10 occasions. And on six of those occasions it was because he was asked a direct question.

In addition, there were four times when Bush was asked about bin Laden directly but was able to answer without mentioning bin Laden’s name himself.

Not once during that period has he talked about bin Laden at any length, or said anything substantive.

During the same period, for comparison purposes, Bush has mentioned former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on approximately 300 occasions.

I’m curious as to whether this is intentional. There’s really no way to tell from the outside, of course, but it could be an effective strategy to get many voters to forget about the fact that this guy is out there somewhere. I could be convinced that capturing him is inessential to the war on terror as long as we’re certain he has no access to funds (his real source of power). It seems that the administration could just tell us that. Of course, there is that pesky issue of justice and law… it would be nice if we could put bin Laden in front of a court just like we’ve done with Saddam. I mean, I know the war on terrorism isn’t a “law enforcement” exercise, but, you know, it’s something we sorta believe in… laws and trials and all that.

Found this report on Pandagon.