1 Boring Old Man

Bush administration bungling allowed Bin Laden to get away
the left coaster
by Turkana
September 13, 2010

… For Osama bin Laden was identified as the one man most responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and Osama bin Laden got away. Two wars, hundreds of thousands dead, trillions of dollars wasted, and the man deemed most responsible for the 9/11 attacks was not brought to justice. Thus is Republican leadership truly defined. The news was actually reported as early as April 2002, when the Washington Post had the following:

^{The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge. Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan’s mountainous eastern border. Though there remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December… A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war’s operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda’s leader. Without professing second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach fundamentally in subsequent battles, using Americans on the ground as first-line combat units.}

The irony could not be more sad and twisted. Bin Laden got away because of a failure to commit ground troops. A "significant defeat for the United States" being a truly monumental understatement. And afterwards, of course, the Bush-Cheney team committed ground troops callously and almost indiscriminately, as it largely successfully distracted the nation from its failures before and immediately after 9/11, venting an irrational national wrath on the innocents of Iraq. And Franks, of course, was by Bush awarded the Medal of Freedom…

We’re Going to Lose Our Prey

In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, former CIA Director Tenet said it was evident from the start that aerial bombing would not be enough to get bin Laden at Tora Bora. Troops needed to be in the caves themselves, he wrote, but the Afghan militiamen were ‘‘distinctly reluctant’’ to put themselves in harm’s way and there were not enough Americans on the scene. He said that senior CIA officials lobbied hard for inserting U.S. troops. Henry Crumpton, the head of special operations for the CIA’s counterterrorism operation and chief of its Afghan strategy, made direct requests to Franks. Crumpton had told him that the back door to Pakistan was open and urged Franks to move more than 1,000 Marines who had set up a base near Kandahar to Tora Bora to block escape routes.

But the CentCom commander rejected the idea, saying it would take weeks to get a large enough U.S. contingent on the scene and bin Laden might disappear in the meantime. At the end of November, Crumpton went to the White House to brief President Bush and Vice President Cheney and repeated the message that he had delivered to Franks. Crumpton warned the President that the Afghan campaign’s primary goal of capturing bin Laden was in jeopardy because of the military’s reliance on Afghan militias at Tora Bora. Crumpton showed the President where Tora Bora was located in the White Mountains and described the caves and tunnels that riddled the region. Crumpton questioned whether the Pakistani forces would be able to seal off the escape routes and pointed out that the promised Pakistani troops had not arrived yet. In addition, the CIA officer told the President that the Afghan forces at Tora Bora were ‘‘tired and cold’’ and ‘‘they’re just not invested in getting bin Laden.’’

According to author Ron Suskind in The One Percent Solution, Crumpton sensed that his earlier warnings to Franks and others at the Pentagon had not been relayed the President. So Crumpton went further, telling Bush that ‘‘we’re going to lose our prey if we’re not careful.’’ He recommended that the Marines or other U.S. troops be rushed to Tora Bora.

‘‘How bad off are these Afghani forces, really?’’ asked Bush. ‘‘Are they up to the job?
‘‘Definitely not, Mr. President,’’ Crumpton replied. ‘‘Definitely not.’’

Flight from Tora Bora

On December 14, the day bin Laden finished his will, Dalton Fury finally convinced Ali and his men to stay overnight in one of the canyons that they had captured during daylight. Over the next three days, the Afghan militia and their American advisers moved steadily through the canyons, calling in airstrikes and taking out lingering pockets of fighters.

The resistance seemed to have vanished, prompting Ali to declare victory on December 17. Most of the Tora Bora complex was abandoned and many of the caves and tunnels were buried in debris. Only about 20 stragglers were taken prisoner. The consensus was that Al Qaeda fighters who had survived the fierce bombing had escaped into Pakistan or melted into the local population. Bin Laden was nowhere to be found. Two days later, Fury and his Delta Force colleagues left Tora Bora, hoping that someone would eventually find bin Laden buried in one of the caves.

There was no body because bin Laden did not die at Tora Bora. Later U.S. intelligence reports and accounts by journalists and others said that he and a contingent of bodyguards departed Tora Bora on December 16. With help from Afghans and Pakistanis who had been paid in advance, the group made its way on foot and horseback across the mountain passes and into Pakistan without encountering any resistance…