From Raw Story
Rumsfeld decision let Bin Laden escape: Senate report
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Osama bin Laden was “within the grasp” of US forces in late 2001 but escaped because then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected calls for reinforcements, a hard-hitting US Senate report says.
…
It points the finger directly at Rumsfeld for turning down requests for reinforcements as Bin Laden was trapped in December 2001 in caves and tunnels in a mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan known as Tora Bora.
“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,” the report says.
From the report:
“Instead, the US command chose to rely on airstrikes and untrained Afghan militias to attack Bin Laden and on Pakistan’s loosely organized Frontier Corps to seal his escape routes.”
…
“But the Al-Qaeda leader would live to fight another day. Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghan allies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected.
“Requests were also turned down for US troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan.
“The decision not to deploy American forces to go after Bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks.
Either sheer, ‘criminal’ negligence and incompetence must be assumed, or the reports of the Bin Laden family and its connection to the Bush Family must be considered.
Either way, how these clowns aren’t in jail or at least universally shunned as the total fuckups that they are, escapes me as much as Bin Laden was patently allowed to escape them.
One thing is for sure, the more we learn, the worse the entire Republican war effort looks, these guys couldn’t pull of a two car parade, yet they were allowed to spend 5000 American lives, uncounted lives of Afghanis and Iraqis, and trillions of dollars on a Crusade
Tragic, obscene, and thoroughly disgusting.
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is being pushed out there to make Obama’s escalation look good.
It’s manipulation.
Tragic, obscene, and thoroughly disgusting.
These people were quite competent at every “disaster” they designed.
We were never supposed to capture Osama bin Laden any more than Osama bin Laden was supposed to capture George Bush.
Osama bin Laden, if he was actually there (which I sorta doubt) was deliberately let go.
what a bunch of idiots…. the press corps I mean. Harping on the party crashers. Otherwise a lot of predictable non-answers.
Oh, msnbc did plug Keith O tonight will have a Special Comment in anticipation of Obama’s Tuesday War Speech.
So they let” OBL slip through their fingers, eh? There was another planted story recently too but my foggy brain cant think what it was.
If it’s true, then it was a set up.
Who is supposed to be concerned over this? The Secret Service or Obama?
And who in their right mind believed that Jack Ruby just
happened to walk into the unguarded police station, armed, get right up to Oswald and plug him point blank?
As far as Bin Laden or the Saudis were concerned, they were irrelevant; so what that almost all the alleged hijackers were Saudis. So what did we do in our investigation of the Saudi Arabia Connection?
We threatened Pakistan, invaded the whole country of Afghanistan because Bin Laden had a camp there (while ignoring the fact that there were no large runways there for well educated Saudis to practice flying large commercial jets), invaded Iran by mistaken intelligence (oh sure), and then watched Obama, (during the campaigns) talk about going back after Bin Laden if he got elected. And then very strangely making his ultimate decision to escalate based upon the recommendations of McCrystal Ball, the man McCain probably adores.
And tomorrow night we may very well get a twisted rationale, while after 8 years, we’re gonna finally get it right! He’ll say he has a fresh exit plan if the Afghans don’t show progress in helping themselves.
(But if we actually did leave because “they” failed, how do we explain the loss of life and injuries to our soldiers and the tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan? I don’t think we’ll leave because it would make it appear that all our soldiers died in vain and we wasted trillions of dollars on nothing. So I guess Obama doesn’t mind being another LBJ and face the same fate. He certainly doesn’t want to copy JFK.
All this because the only place bad guys can plan an attack is in a tent in Afghanistan?
I have not read the above comments to us, but I want to say the following:
It’s all B.S., as far as I’m concerned. The Bush Adm. NEVER had any intention of capturing bin Laden, period. Afterall, had they actually captured him, how would they have excused their continued “mantra” of al Qaeda is here, al Qaeda is there (as though al Qaeda was “omnipresent”), as in Iraq, or wherever the Bushies wished to go, according to their plans (PNAC)?
Moreover, the Bushies and the Saudis, as you well know, have had a long standing relationship for many, many years now. My, albeit, hypothetical, thoughts on the subject are simply that the Saudis (and, let me add, despite all in terms of bin Laden’s relationship with his own country, many Saudis helped fund bin Laden’s efforts) and the Bushies “made a deal” — i.e., the Saudis agreed to the “plan” that bin Laden would be named, but that HE WOULD be protected, all as a ruse to deceive Americans, whilst it was our own government who deceived US.
All of our efforts, Afghanistan and Iraq, were long ago contrived by neocons and it has nothing, but nothing to with democracy, or even a hint of it — it is a “neocon” grab, as in the Bush Administration, to enrich those industries, Halliburton, Boeing, Blackhawk, etc. to help themselves to WEALTH, under the guise of “helping” democratise this country or that, while garnering all of their natural resources for themselves (not for us), i.e., the oil, natural gas, uranium, copper, gold, etc. THESE ARE THE ONLY REASONS WE ARE IN THOSE COUNTRIES AND HAVE BEEN THE ONLY REASONS, AT THE EXPENSE OF HUMANITY, AMERICAN, IRAQI, AFGHANISTANI, PAKISTANI, and wherever else we might be right now unbeknownst to us. And THEY (those mega-industries) WIN. Americans are being impoverished and will continue to be impoverished. Yep, on top of everything else, some Senators now want to “tax” Americans for “keeping us safe.”
*Pretty much blind this past month — don’t ask!
were at one time historized, 401 file not found in the internet world yet today, this day as witnessed and reported upon to you fine people by the one rider of the Apocalyptic horse of the Apocalypse does hereby submit the unholy link of Satanic deception and worldwide death.
http://www.newamericancentury….
How many wooden stakes does one need to pound into the heart of a vampire to kill it.