Knight Ridder reporters verify Kerry's assertions about Tora Bora

[Rose Siding]

snip>
Knight Ridder reporters Barry Schlachter of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Jonathan S. Landay and photographers Carl Juste and Peter Andrew Bosch of The Miami Herald were at Tora Bora during the battle, and photographer David Gilkey of the Detroit Free Press and reporter Drew Brown traveled there a year later, interviewed Afghan fighters, retraced al-Qaida escape routes and talked to Pakistani intelligence officers who were tracking al Qaida.

Their reporting found that Franks and other top officials ignored warnings from their own and allied military and intelligence officers that the combination of precision bombing, special operations forces and Afghan forces that had driven the Taliban from northern Afghanistan might not work in the heartland of the country's dominant Pashtun tribe.

While more than 1,200 U.S. Marines sat at an abandoned air base in the desert 80 miles away, Franks and other commanders relied on three Afghan warlords and a small number of American, British and Australian special forces to stop al-Qaida and Taliban fighters from escaping across the mountains into Pakistan.
............
Military and intelligence officials had warned Franks and others that the two main Afghan commanders, Hazrat Ali and Haji Zaman, couldn't be trusted, and they proved to be correct. They were slow to move their troops into place and didn't attack until four days after American planes began bombing - leaving time for al-Qaida leaders to escape and leaving behind a rear guard of Arab, Chechen and Uzbek fighters.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10057295.htm

[msgadget]

1. The Administration admitted it in 2002

U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight
Failure to Send Troops in Pursuit Termed Major Error
By Barton Gellman and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 17, 2002; Page A01



The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border. Though there remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December.

After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the United States. A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda's leader. Without professing second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach fundamentally in subsequent battles, using Americans on the ground as first-line combat units.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62618-2002Apr16?language=printer

[sundancekid]

2. so did Peter Bergen on Late Edition CNN (CalumnyNonnewsNetwork)

as you know, Peter Bergen (who interviewed OBL directly in the past) is considered to have highly credible expertise on bin Laden

[flpoljunkie]

3. Peter Bergen: What Really Happened at Tora Bora

http://www.peterbergen.com/clients/PeterBergen/pbergen.nsf/Web00002Show?OpenForm&ParentUNID=9FF2726B6783C68085256F3B00447441

he Battle of Tora Bora: What Really Happened?

The question of whether the United Sates missed an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden during the battle of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in December 2001 has become a contentious issue in the razor-close campaign. During the October 8th presidential debate, Sen. John Kerry said of capturing bin Laden, "The right time was Tora Bora, when we had him cornered in the mountains." Writing in the New York Times last week, General Tommy Franks, a Bush supporter, and the overall commander of the Tora Bora operation, said that this charge: "doesn't square with reality". Franks also stated, "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora," and that the US did not "outsource" the battle to Afghan warlords of questionable competence and loyalty, as Sen. Kerry has repeatedly charged. At a town hall meeting in Ohio on the day that General Franks' Times story appeared, vice president Cheney said Kerry's criticisms of the Tora Bora campaign were "absolute garbage." In Colorado on Monday, President Bush said; "My opponent is throwing out the wild claim that he knows where bin Laden was in the fall of 2001 and that our military had a chance to get him in Tora Bora."

So: Was al Qeada's leader at Tora Bora? According to a widely-reported background briefing by Pentagon officials in mid-December 2001 there was "reasonable certainty" that bin Laden was indeed at Tora Bora, a judgment based on intercepted radio transmissions. In his autobiography, American Soldier, General Franks himself recounts a scene in Waco, Texas in December 2001 where he briefed President Bush saying, "Unconfirmed reports that Osama has been seen in the White Mountains, Sir. The Tora Bora area" Moreover, Luftullah Mashal, a senior official in Afghanistan's Interior Ministry, told me that based on conversations he had with a Saudi al Qaeda financier and bin Laden's chef, both of whom were at the battle, bin Laden was at Tora Bora. In June, 2003 I met with several US counterterrorism officials who told me, "We are confident that he was at Tora Bora and disappeared with a small group." And Palestinian journalist, Abdel Bari Atwan, a consistently accurate source of information about al Qaeda, has reported that bin Laden was wounded in the shoulder at Tora Bora. Indeed, in an audiotape released on al Jazeera television last year bin Laden himself recounted his own memories of the battle. "We were about three hundred holy warriors. We dug one hundred trenches over an area of one square mile, so as to avoid the huge human losses from the bombardment." In short, there is plenty of evidence that bin Laden was at Tora Bora, and no evidence indicating that he was anywhere else at the time.

That being the case: Did the U.S. military throw away a golden opportunity to capture or kill bin Laden, during the one moment in the past three years that his location was known? There is no debating the fact that US "outsourced" the Tora Bora operation to local Afghan warlords. According to Commander Muhammad Musa, who commanded six hundred Afghan soldiers on the Tora Bora frontline, while the American bombing campaign was very effective, US forces on the ground were small in number and ineffective: "There were six American soldiers with us. My personal view is if they had blocked the way out to Pakistan, al Qaeda would not have had a way to escape." And that's the key problem. There were only a relatively few American "boots on the ground" at Tora Bora, enabling bin Laden and hundreds of other members of al Qaeda to melt away and fight another day.

more...

[maddezmom]

7. kick

[Nordic]

4. OBL's reappearance certainly drives this home

Wait a minute. Maybe that was John Kerry in a fake beard!

[Beam Me Up]

5. Perhaps not directly related, but interesting to recount here:

The following exchange with Sy Hersh in February, 2003, as presented on Bill Moyers' NOW:

WALLACE: Let's talk about Konduz. During the war with Afghanistan…

HERSH: Great story.

WALLACE: …you reported that during a key battle our side in that battle had the enemy surrounded. There were a reported perhaps 8,000 enemy forces in there.

HERSH: Maybe even more. But certainly minimum that many.

WALLACE: It's your story, take it.

HERSH: Okay, the cream of the crop of Al Qaeda caught in a town called Konduz which is near… it's one little village and it's a couple hundred kilometers, 150 miles from the border of Pakistan. And I learned this story frankly through very, very clandestine operatives we have in the Delta Force and other very...

We were operating very heavily with a small number of men, three, 400 really in the first days of the war. And suddenly one night when they had everybody cornered in Konduz, the special forces people were told there was a corridor that they could not fly in. There was a corridor sealed off to the United States military sealed off a corridor. And it was nobody could shoot anybody in this little lane that went from Konduz into Pakistan. And that's how I learned about it. I learned about it from a military guy who wanted to fly helicopters and kill people and couldn't do it that day.

WALLACE: So, we had the enemy surrounded, the special forces guys are helping surround this enemy.

HERSH: They're whacking everybody they can whack that looks like a bad guy.

WALLACE: And suddenly they're told to back off…

HERSH: From a certain area…

WALLACE: …and let planes fly out to Pakistan.

HERSH: There was about a three or four nights in which I can tell you maybe six, eight, ten, maybe twelve more or more heavily weighted Pakistani military planes flew out with an estimated no less than 2,500 maybe 3,000, maybe more. I've heard as many as four or 5,000. They were not only Al Qaeda but they were also, you see, the Pakistani ISI was the military advised us to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. There were dozens of senior Pakistani military officers including two generals who flew out.

And I also learned after I wrote this story that maybe even some of Bin Laden's immediate family were flown out on those evacuations. We allowed them to evacuate. We had an evacuation.

WALLACE: How high up was that evacuation authorized?

HERSH: I am here to tell you it was authorized — Donald Rumsfeld who — we'll talk about what he said later — it had to be authorized at the White House. But certainly at the Secretary of Defense level.

WALLACE: The Department of Defense said to us that they were not involved and that they don't have any knowledge of that operation.

HERSH: That's what Rumsfeld said when they asked him about it. And he said, "Gee, really?" He said, "News to me." Which is not a denial, it's sort of interesting. You know,

WALLACE: What did we do that? Why we would put our special forces guys on the ground, surround the enemy, and then fly him out?

HERSH: With Al Qaeda.

WALLACE: With Al Qaeda. Why would we do that, assuming your story is true?

HERSH: We did it because the ISI asked us to do so.

WALLACE: Pakistani intelligence.

HERSH: Absolutely.

Link to full transcript: http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript208_full.html

[CrispyQ]

12. NOW SHOWING: Bin Laden Family Evacaution II

Bush & Co. are a traitors.

Thanks for sharing this.

[kayell]

16. ARRRRRRRGGH!!! I missed that one, first time around. It is simply

amazing, the constant treasonous crap that the BFEE gets away with, and most of the media never fucking touches it. And the rest of us and the alternative media just flat out can't keep up, because these people seem completely incapable of going for even one hour with out commiting some fresh outrage.

DAMN, DAMN, DAMN
:nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

[Tsiyu]

6. I am absolutely amazed that Repukes

are "okay" with Osama still alive making tapes. Isn't this prima facie evidence of the phenomenal failure of this administration to protect us? His survival - when 1200 of our troops are dead - makes our military seem incompetent and useless.

Attacking and killing 100,000 Iraqis - who did nothing to us - is like this scenario:

The neighbor on my left burns my house down. Instead of going after him, I attack my neighbor on the right, burn down his house and kill his children. When the neighbor on the left roams free through the neighborhood, I am able to convince my children that they are safer because the innocent neighbors on the right are now dead and can never harm us. If they ask why I didn't kill the guy who actually burned our house down, I just say, "Oh, I'm not worried about him."

Repukes are absolute idiots.

[w4rma]

8. I'm not. They aren't idiots they are totally brainwashed.

Their whole world view revolves around Republicans are the good guys. And they fit everything else to that assumption. I did have "conservatives" as "the good guys" but then I realized that when a true conservative goes against the Republican Party they then call that conservative a liberal.

[rot0r_head]

10. Should OBL die, people who normally wouldn't might start to ask

"Why are we still in the Middle East?" Bush needs him alive, well, and in front of the cameras, the perfect bogeyman. That's why he slipped away in Tora Bora. That's why he's ready for his close up on Fox News.

Make no mistake, when John Kerry takes office this man is going to die. When it happens, what you don't see will be most telling. For example, you won't see a crowd of masked extremists raising Kalashnikovs for their martyred hero , you won't see his bullet-riddled corpse photographed with smiling GIs, and you certainly won't see Kerry take the stage with a cocky "We got 'em" while live footage of his medical exams loop endlessly on CNN. What you WON'T see is a shallow grave in the desert and an ignominious end to the most hated man in America.

[Cleita]

11. Don't forget the 3,000 dead from the WTC on 9-11 because

of this administration's incompetence and those who have died since then from toxic substances because of the WTC bombing.

[hangemhigh]

9. Hard work. n/t

[Sugarbleus]

13. Heard Repukes on TV today say that Kerry "approved" of Franks

strategy in Tora Bora? Is that true? It doesn't really matter at this late date........but I would like to know.

[bklyncowgirl]

14. Quote taken out of context.

I believe that Kerry was referring to the use of specific tactic in response to a question from a caller as to why we weren't using flame throwers.

[Sugarbleus]

15. ?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

17. If you didn't like that answer, maybe you can supply one yourself...

...that you WILL like. Does that sound fair to you?

What is it that you're failing to understand about the NeoCons methods of twisting Kerry's responses on just about every single issue? Why do you appear to believe what THEY say as opposed to what Kerry says, even though Kerry has been proven correct time after time?

Help me understand your point of view.

[Sugarbleus]

18. Well first of all, I've been on here for HOURS on and off...

I've been up all night. I'm excited about the election so I can't sleep.

I WAS SIMPLY ASKING A QUESTION that usually gets a civilized answer in DU.

I haven't had a harsh word with anyone in here for months on end...so what's up with the attitude???????????????????????

I just wanted to know if anyone knew what that bit was about. Usually DUer's have the truth about what did or did not take place or get said, when I don't. Geeezus

Forget I asked!!