Nearly three years after the debacle, and after months of campaign charges from KE04, Bush finally talked about the failure to capture Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora in December 2001. That’s the good news. The bad news is, Bush, once again, didn’t make any sense.
“Now my opponent is throwing out the wild claim that he knows where bin Laden was in the fall of 2001 — and that our military had a chance to get him in Tora Bora. This is an unjustified and harsh criticism of our military commanders in the field. This is the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking.”
None of this is even remotely consistent with reality. Either Bush is lying badly (which is disconcerting) or he has no idea what he’s talking about (which is frightening).
First, there’s nothing “wild” about saying bin Laden was in Tora Bora in the fall of 2001. Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Myers all said the exact same thing.
Second, it’s hardly a dubious claim that our military “had a chance to get [bin Laden]” at the time. Indeed, there’s nothing controversial about it.
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.
Third, though Bush accuses Kerry of “unjustified” criticism of commanders in Iraq, it’s worth noting that the Pentagon came to the exact same conclusions about Tora Bora that Kerry did.
After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the United States. 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.
And, finally, it’s not “Monday-morning quarterbacking” when you’re emphasizing it constantly for nearly three years. Kerry isn’t just sitting back and complaining about Bush’s failures now; he was highlighting the debacle at Tora Bora at the time and ever since.
This is a painfully easy one. For reasons that defy common sense, Bush called on poorly trained Afghan mercenaries to pursue bin Laden at Tora Bora. Many of those same Afghan mercenaries were fighting alongside al Queda and the Taliban shortly before hand. U.S. troops were nearby, but the Bush administration chose not to use them — and bin Laden, just months after orchestrating the worst terrorist attack in American history, escaped.
Instead of explaining of how this happened, or taking concrete steps to reassure Americans that this won’t happen again, Bush responded to the Tora Bora debacle — nearly three years later — with yet another baseless attack on Kerry. Pathetic.