Do we have any proof that Bush let Bin Laden go?

[converted_democrat]

I am in the middle of a heated "talk" and I need to know if I'm talking out of my ass or not.. Do we know if * let Bin Laden go? I tried searching on here, but the firet 20 pages were the ABC issue.. Any links you could direct me to would be great..

[meegbear]

1. How bin Laden got away ...

A day-by-day account of how Osama bin Laden eluded the world's most powerful military machine.

<snip>

Pir Baksh Bardiwal, the intelligence chief for the Eastern Shura, which controls eastern Afghanistan, says he was astounded that Pentagon planners didn't consider the most obvious exit routes and put down light US infantry to block them.

"The border with Pakistan was the key, but no one paid any attention to it," he said, leaning back in his swivel chair with a short list of the Al Qaeda fighters who were later taken prisoner. "And there were plenty of landing areas for helicopters, had the Americans acted decisively. Al Qaeda escaped right out from under their feet."

The intelligence chief contends that several thousand Pakistani troops who had been placed along the border about Dec. 10 never did their job, nor could they have been expected to, given that the exit routes were not being blocked inside Afghanistan.

<snip>

It's a long piece, but it covers the entire episode.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0304/p01s03-wosc.html

[Tempest]

2. CIA Commander: U.S. Let bin Laden Slip Away

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek/

But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK.

In his book—titled "Jawbreaker"—the decorated career CIA officer criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger.

That backs up other recent accounts, including that of military author Sean Naylor, who calls Tora Bora a "strategic disaster" because the Pentagon refused to deploy a cordon of conventional forces to cut off escaping Qaeda and Taliban members. Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman, says the problem at Tora Bora "was not necessarily just the number of troops."

[Kahuna]

3. I do. By waiting 5 whole weeks to invade Afghanistan it was a certainty

that Bin Laden had one helluva head-start to get outta Dodge. I mean, for an administration that prides itself in secrecy, they telegraphed their every move concerning their intentions concerning OBL.

[Abies]

4. How about 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006? (n/t)

[dogday]

5. Let him go? He doesn't even think about him anymore

You have to be trying to catch him, in order to let him go and Bush said he is not concerned about it.....