How We Botched Bin Laden's Capture
"Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed To Get Bin Laden And Why It Matters Today" is a reexamination of the December 2001 battle when Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cohorts were cornered in eastern Afghanistan but allowed to slip into Pakistan. Though a tactical and strategic disaster - one that continues to haunt U.S. national security - the Tora Bora debate remains primarily the purview of government insiders and policy wonks. Most of the public seems more concerned about the Octomom and the Gosselins (with Tiger Woods' marital situation likely to become the new novella du jour.) But while the publication of a blockbuster naming names and contradicting half-truths and lies won't shake the public out of its indifference, at least we finally have a documentary record to contradict the self-serving recollections of administration insiders eager to airbrush reputations and sell books.
With Bin Laden cornered, it turns out there were fewer than 100 American commandos on the scene with their Afghan allies. At the time, the U.S. had roughly 1,000 members of the 15th and 26th Marine Expeditionary Units at a base a few hours by flight away in Kandahar, as well as another 1,000 troops from the Army's 10th Mountain Division in southern Uzbekistan and Bagram Air Base. But the Senate report notes how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks rejected requests for U.S. troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away near the border with Pakistan.
That was a mistake.
The report find the U.S. would have had enough of its own troops on call to execute a sweep-and-block maneuver to corner bin Laden. It would have been dangerous, but officers on the ground made the argument "that the risks were worth the reward."
CBSNews.com Special Report: Afghanistan
Franks and others - including former Vice President Dick Cheney - still claim that the intelligence was inconclusive about Bin Laden's location. They're entitled to their opinion but the report presents another conclusion based upon a review of existing literature, unclassified government documents as well as interviews with central participants. Bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora.
The debate over what happened in Afghanistan can't be understood in isolation. Remember that in late November 2001, George Bush pressed Rumsfeld to come up with a new war plan against Iraq. That request then was transmitted through the chain of command just as Franks' brain trust was working up attack plans against Tora Bora. The new focus of intelligence and military planning resources on war in Iraq would subsequently color the entire American campaign in Afghanistan. In the understated prose of the Senate report, the decision represented "a dramatic turning point that allowed a sustained victory in Afghanistan to slip through our fingers."