Just a tidbit of information regarding the mismanagement of our military.None of this is new. It just sheds a little more light on the details.But the Al Qaeda leader would live to fight another day. Fewerthan 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghanallies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault wererejected. Requests were also turned down for U.S. troops to blockthe mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan.The vast array of American military power, from sniperteams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and theArmy, was kept on the sidelines. Instead, the U.S. command choseto rely on airstrikes and untrained Afghan militias to attack binLaden and on Pakistan’s loosely organized Frontier Corps to sealhis escape routes. On or around December 16, two days after writinghis will, bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walkedunmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan’s unregulatedtribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today.The decision not to deploy American forces to go after bin Ladenor block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense DonaldRumsfeld and his top commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, the architectsof the unconventional Afghan battle plan known as OperationEnduring Freedom. Rumsfeld said at the time that he was concernedthat too many U.S. troops in Afghanistan would create ananti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency. Reversingthe recent American military orthodoxy known as the Powelldoctrine, the Afghan model emphasized minimizing the U.S. presenceby relying on small, highly mobile teams of special operationstroops and CIA paramilitary operatives working with the Afghanopposition. Even when his own commanders and senior intelligenceofficials in Afghanistan and Washington argued for dispatchingmore U.S. troops, Franks refused to deviate from the plan.There were enough U.S. troops in or near Afghanistan to executethe classic sweep-and-block maneuver required to attack bin Ladenand try to prevent his escape. It would have been a dangerous fightacross treacherous terrain, and the injection of more U.S. troopsand the resulting casualties would have contradicted the risk-averse,‘‘light footprint’’ model formulated by Rumsfeld and Franks.But commanders on the scene and elsewhere in Afghanistan arguedthat the risks were worth the reward.After bin Laden’s escape, some military and intelligence analystsand the press criticized the Pentagon’s failure to mount a full-scaleattack despite the tough rhetoric by President Bush. Franks, VicePresident Dick Cheney and others defended the decision, arguingthat the intelligence was inconclusive about the Al Qaeda leader’slocation. But the review of existing literature, unclassified governmentrecords and interviews with central participants underlyingthis report removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear thatOsama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora.For example, the CIA and Delta Force commanders who spentthree weeks at Tora Bora as well as other intelligence and militarysources are certain he was there. Franks’ second-in-command duringthe war, retired Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong, wrote in his autobiographythat bin Laden was ‘‘definitely there when we hit thecaves’’—a statement he retracted when the failure became a politicalissue. Most authoritatively, the official history of the U.S. SpecialOperations Command determined that bin Laden was at ToraBora. ‘‘All source reporting corroborated his presence on severaldays from 9-14 December,’’ said a declassified version of the history,which was based on accounts of commanders and intelligenceofficials and published without fanfare two years ago.
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