Craig Crawford's Trail Mix

The timing of Osama bin Laden’s reappearance on video could not be worse for Democrats now preparing their fifth and possibly final round of voting to stop the Iraq War.

The al-Qaida leader, who takes credit for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is back on screen for the first time since the weekend before the 2004 presidential election — an event widely thought to have helped George W. Bush win a second term. In this week of 9/11 remembrances he is helping out Bush again by taunting Democrats for failing to stop the war — and allowing the White House to argue that a vote against the war would be giving in to bin Laden.

Whether or not it is intentional, the political effect of bin Laden’s rare appearances on video these past few years suggest that he and Bush have two things in common: Keeping the president in office and keeping U.S. troops in Iraq.