Joe Conason: The Crushing Legacy of Bush and Cheney

[marmar]

from Truthdig:



The Crushing Legacy of Bush and Cheney

Posted on Dec 2, 2009
By Joe Conason


From now on, the headlines about Afghanistan will be slugged “Obama’s War,” and perhaps that is fair enough given the president’s many endorsements of what he has called a war of necessity. It would be much less fair, however, to ignore the events that led us to this moment, when any choice offers no great guarantee of progress and no small prospect of trouble.

Those events began with the inexplicable decision by officials of the previous administration to allow Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other ranking leaders of al-Qaida to escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001. At the time, as a new Senate report on the battle of Tora Bora recalls, Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, and Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, decided not to augment the tiny contingent of special operations troops on the ground with sufficient force to capture or kill b in Laden and his deputies. They later claimed to be worried that “too many American troops in Afghanistan would create an anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency,” a rationale that can only evoke bitter laughter now.

None of the reasons offered back then for inaction at Tora Bora made sense after the outrage of Sept. 11, when the entire world, including the Afghan people, were cheering the U.S. invasion. The pattern of deception that later led to war in Iraq began with expressions of doubt by both Franks and Vice President Dick Cheney about bin Laden’s presence in Tora Bora—a doubt that none of the commanders on the ground shared and that always sounded more like an excuse than an explanation. If there was any chance that the perpetrators of Sept. 11 could be found in those mountains, then maximum force should have been deployed as rapidly as possible.

What we know now, of course, is that Cheney, Rumsfeld and President Bush himself were distracted from the vital necessity of victory in Afghanistan—which meant not only driving out the Taliban but installing a real government in their place—by their obsession with Iraq. Not only did the al-Qaida leadership escape, but so did Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, who returned to mount a threatening insurgency two years later, just as the Bush White House and the Pentagon were declaring “mission accomplished” in Baghdad. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_crushing_legacy_of_bush_and_cheney_20091202/

[Solly Mack]

1. k/r

[BeFree]

2. Hey Barack: read this and repeat it

You need to remember this and every time the MIC squeals, let them hear it.

[HamdenRice]

3. If they had captured and killed OBL, there would have been no excuse for continued war & Iraq

Forgive me if I sound conspiratorial, but it seems to me less like incompetence and more like we needed a bogey man.

[Tippy]

4. We all need to remember.....K&R

"Not only did the al-Qaida leadership escape, but so did Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, who returned to mount a threatening insurgency two years later, just as the Bush White House and the Pentagon were declaring “mission accomplished” in Baghdad. "

[marshall]

5. And now it's up to Obama to crush the Taliban

And anyone else who poses a threat. And this time we'll keep our eye on the goal and not be distracted.