Bin Laden escape proved costly: Senate report

[unhappycamper]

Bin Laden escape proved costly: Senate report
By Calvin Woodward - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Nov 29, 2009 12:19:51 EST

WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora when American military leaders made the crucial and costly decision not to pursue the terrorist leader with massive force, a Senate report says.

The report asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden at his most vulnerable in December 2001 has had lasting consequences beyond the fate of one man. Bin Laden’s escape laid the foundation for today’s reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan, it says.

Staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic majority prepared the report at the request of the chairman, Sen. John Kerry, as President Barack Obama prepares to boost U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, has long argued the Bush administration missed a chance to get the al-Qaida leader and top deputies when they were holed up in the forbidding mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Although limited to a review of military operations eight years old, the report could also be read as a cautionary note for those resisting an increased troop presence there now.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/11/ap_afghanistan_bin_laden_112909/

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. From "Dead or alive!" to "Oh, I don't think about him much". Shrubbie the criminal,

keeping America unsafe.

I wonder which of his corporate overlords was the one who told him to stop going after bin Laden.

[Warpy]

2. It was Cheney

who always denigrated terror as a threat and was focused wholly on Iraq. Cheney was a signer of the PNAC mission statement, a document that laid the whole thing out, although its ambition extended far beyond the Iraqi oil fields.

It would be interesting to speculate what a weak man like Stupid would have done had he not allowed Cheney to appoint himself vice president.

If wiser heads had prevailed, the Iraqi disaster might never have happened and bin Laden would be in custody, if 9/11 had proceeded at all.

[blm]

3. The corporate media HELPED push the Bush-Franks line that Kerry was lying

just for the campaign. Kerry was attacking Bush on ToraBora since Jan2002, but, NONE of the best known Dems who got TV time would back Kerry on this, even when he was the nominee.

So, Bush had his protection surrounding him, including our most wellknown Dems who used their camera time to support the military strategy and leadership of......Bush.