In all the time Fred Thompson spent planning to run for president and sort of running for president and announcing that he's running for president, you might think that he'd have thought a bit about how he'd answer a basic question on, say, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

Did he? You be the judge.

From Thompson's "Good Morning America" interview with Diane Sawyer today:

Sawyer: Osama bin Laden -- we just saw that a videotape is coming out, presumably taunting Americans again on the anniversary of 9/11. If you were sitting in the Oval Office today what would you do to capture bin Laden and to eradicate al-Qaida that the Bush administration has not done?

Thompson: Diane, that's tactics. You don't know what the president knows in terms of intelligence as to how they can pinpoint where Osama bin Laden is right now.

I think the point is clearly he's there, clearly he's somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and clearly he's still giving orders.

And the even broader concern that Americans should have is that al-Qaida is still out there in the world. They're in western Europe, they're in the United States, they're in Iraq.

Iraq is a part of global effort, a global war that al-Qaida and radical fundamental Muslims have been carrying on against us for some time. We didn't pay much attention to it for a while but we are now and we're finding there's a global war going on against us. And we better figure out a way to contain it because it's going to be with us for a long time after Iraq.