A new Senate Foreign Relations Committee reports states that Osama bin Laden was "within our grasp" in the mountsins of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001. It adds that Bush Administration military leaders decided not to pursue him with a massive military force, allowing him to disappear into the mountains when he was at his most vulnerable.
The Battle of Tora Bora took place in Dec. 2001. It was believed that bin Laden was hiding in the rugged mountains at Tora Bora. U.S. forces failed to kill or capture him, despite overrunning the Taliban and al-Qaeda positions.
The report, prepared at the request of the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, John Kerry (D-Mass.), is damning in its further assertions. The report asserts that kill or capture bin Laden in December 2001 has had lasting consequences beyond. It says that Bin Laden's escape laid the foundation for the currently reinvigorated Afghan insurgency.
Instead of using a massive force to pursue bin Laden at the time, less than 100 commandos, as well as additional Afghan militias, tried to track down the band of terrorists with the aid of air strikes. The report asserts that then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks, the top military commander at the time, had the means to mount a rapid assault on Bin Laden with several thousand troops. However, at that time, Rumsfeld expressed concern over a possible backlash of thousands of U.S. troops in that area, and added that evidence of Bin Laden's location was inconclusive. The new report refutes that claim.
Here are some excerpts from the report:
"Removing the al-Qaida leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat. But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism." [...]
"The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army, was kept on the sidelines."
Written by Michael Santo
HULIQ.com
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