Gen. Franks Attacks Kerry's Tora Bora Criticism To Cover His Sorry Ass

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Retired U.S. General Attacks Kerry Over Bin Laden

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 9:09 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan on Tuesday disputed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's charge that the Bush administration let Osama bin Laden escape Afghanistan in 2001.

"I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality," retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks wrote in a commentary published by The New York Times.

http://news.lycos.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=938163


World Of Reality:
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Sources: bin Laden wounded in Tora Bora battle
April 18, 2002 Posted: 12:11 AM EDT (0411 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Captured al Qaeda fighters say Osama bin Laden was wounded in Tora Bora last year and ordered his lieutenants to disperse in various directions from the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, according to high-level anti-terror coalition intelligence sources.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/04/17/gen.osama.escape/
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Bin Laden 'heard' in Tora Bora

Saturday, 15 December, 2001, 19:47 GMT

American forces have heard Osama Bin Laden giving orders over a short-range radio in the Tora Bora mountains in eastern Afghanistan over the past week, a US official says.
The intercepted radio messages helped persuade US army officials that Bin Laden was probably in the area.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was confirmed "with reasonable certainty" that the voice on the radio was Bin Laden's, after it was compared with several videotapes.

The US blames Bin Laden for the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The official would not specify what kind of radio transmission the forces had detected, but he did say it was short-range, indicating that Bin Laden was in Tora Bora in the past week.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1713307.stm
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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.

In the fight for Tora Bora, corrupt local militias did not live up to promises to seal off the mountain redoubt, and some colluded in the escape of fleeing al Qaeda fighters. Franks did not perceive the setbacks soon enough, some officials said, because he ran the war from Tampa with no commander on the scene above the rank of lieutenant colonel. The first Americans did not arrive until three days into the fighting. "No one had the big picture," one defense official said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62618-2002Apr16?language=printer
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Bin Laden 'fled Tora Bora'

Wednesday, 17 April, 2002, 15:02 GMT 16:02 UK


The Washington Post said officials had criticised the top US field commander in Afghanistan, General Tommy Franks, for running the war from central command in Florida, not Afghanistan itself.

The officials also criticised the general's policy of using local Afghan troops, saying that corrupt local militias had failed to seal off the country's border with Pakistan as promised.

They also said that some colluded to allow al-Qaeda fighters through border posts.

But a spokesman for General Franks said the US military "have never seen anything that was convincing to us" regarding the possible escape or death of Bin Laden.

The spokesman, Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, also told the paper that General Franks "still thinks that the process he followed of helping the anti-Taleban forces around Tora Bora ... was absolutely the right thing to do".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1935244.stm
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Franks started covering his ass the day he let bin Laden escape. Now he's trying to prop up his accomplice.

From the opening article:

The Kerry campaign also noted that Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, wrote in a book that Franks told him in February 2002 -- 13 months before the Iraq war -- the Pentagon had begun shifting manpower and resources from Afghanistan in preparation for military operations in Iraq. Graham is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
http://news.lycos.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=938163

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