Senate Report: "Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed To Get Bin Laden And Why It Matters Today"

http://foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Tora_Bora_Report.pdf

TORA BORA REVISITED: HOW WE FAILED
TO GET BIN LADEN AND WHY
IT MATTERS TODAY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

On October 7, 2001, U.S. aircraft began bombing the training
bases and strongholds of Al Qaeda and the ruling Taliban across
Afghanistan. The leaders who sent murderers to attack the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon less than a month earlier and the
rogue government that provided them sanctuary were running for
their lives. President George W. Bush’s expression of America’s desire
to get Osama bin Laden ‘‘dead or alive’’ seemed about to come
true.

Two months later, American civilian and military leaders celebrated
what they viewed as a lasting victory with the selection of
Hamid Karzai as the country’s new hand-picked leader. The war
had been conceived as a swift campaign with a single objective: defeat
the Taliban and destroy Al Qaeda by capturing or killing bin
Laden and other key leaders. A unique combination of airpower,
Central Intelligence Agency and special operations forces teams
and indigenous allies had swept the Taliban from power and ousted
Al Qaeda from its safe haven while keeping American deaths to a
minimum. But even in the initial glow, there were concerns: The
mission had failed to capture or kill bin Laden.

Removing the Al Qaeda 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, leaving the American people
more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today’s protracted
Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now
endangering Pakistan. Al Qaeda shifted its locus across the border
into Pakistan, where it has trained extremists linked to numerous
plots, including the July 2005 transit bombings in London and two
recent aborted attacks involving people living in the United States.
The terrorist group’s resurgence in Pakistan has coincided with the
rising violence orchestrated in Afghanistan by the Taliban, whose
leaders also escaped only to re-emerge to direct today’s increasingly
lethal Afghan insurgency.

This failure and its enormous consequences were not inevitable.
By early December 2001, Bin Laden’s world had shrunk to a complex
of caves and tunnels carved into a mountainous section of eastern Afghanistan known as Tora Bora. Cornered in some of the
most forbidding terrain on earth, he and several hundred of his
men, the largest concentration of Al Qaeda fighters of the war, endured
relentless pounding by American aircraft, as many as 100 air
strikes a day. One 15,000-pound bomb, so huge it had to be rolled
out the back of a C-130 cargo plane, shook the mountains for miles.
It seemed only a matter of time before U.S. troops and their Afghan
allies overran the remnants of Al Qaeda hunkered down in
the thin, cold air at 14,000 feet.

Bin Laden expected to die. His last will and testament, written
on December 14, reflected his fatalism. ‘‘Allah commended to us
that when death approaches any of us that we make a bequest to
parents and next of kin and to Muslims as a whole,’’ he wrote, according
to a copy of the will that surfaced later and is regarded as
authentic. ‘‘Allah bears witness that the love of jihad and death in
the cause of Allah has dominated my life and the verses of the
sword permeated every cell in my heart, ‘and fight the pagans all
together as they fight you all together.’ How many times did I
wake up to find myself reciting this holy verse!’’ He instructed his
wives not to remarry and apologized to his children for devoting
himself to jihad.

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 U.S. troops to block
the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan.
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. Instead, the U.S. 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. On or around December 16, two days after writing
his will, bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked
unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan’s unregulated
tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today.

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, Gen. Tommy Franks, the architects
of the unconventional Afghan battle plan known as Operation
Enduring Freedom. Rumsfeld said at the time that he was concerned
that too many U.S. troops in Afghanistan would create an
anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency. Reversing
the recent American military orthodoxy known as the Powell
doctrine, the Afghan model emphasized minimizing the U.S. presence
by relying on small, highly mobile teams of special operations
troops and CIA paramilitary operatives working with the Afghan
opposition. Even when his own commanders and senior intelligence
officials in Afghanistan and Washington argued for dispatching
more U.S. troops, Franks refused to deviate from the plan.
There were enough U.S. troops in or near Afghanistan to execute
the classic sweep-and-block maneuver required to attack bin Laden
and try to prevent his escape. It would have been a dangerous fight
across treacherous terrain, and the injection of more U.S. troops
and the resulting casualties would have contradicted the risk-averse, ‘‘light footprint’’ model formulated by Rumsfeld and Franks.
But commanders on the scene and elsewhere in Afghanistan argued
that the risks were worth the reward.

After bin Laden’s escape, some military and intelligence analysts
and the press criticized the Pentagon’s failure to mount a full-scale
attack despite the tough rhetoric by President Bush. Franks, Vice
President Dick Cheney and others defended the decision, arguing
that the intelligence was inconclusive about the Al Qaeda leader’s
location. But the review of existing literature, unclassified government
records and interviews with central participants underlying
this report removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that
Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora.
For example, the CIA and Delta Force commanders who spent
three weeks at Tora Bora as well as other intelligence and military
sources are certain he was there. Franks’ second-in-command during
the war, retired Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong, wrote in his autobiography
that bin Laden was ‘‘definitely there when we hit the
caves’’—a statement he retracted when the failure became a political
issue. Most authoritatively, the official history of the U.S. Special
Operations Command determined that bin Laden was at Tora
Bora. ‘‘All source reporting corroborated his presence on several
days from 9-14 December,’’ said a declassified version of the history,
which was based on accounts of commanders and intelligence
officials and published without fanfare two years ago.

The reasons behind the failure to capture or kill Osama bin
Laden and its lasting consequences are examined over three sections
in this report. The first section traces bin Laden’s path from
southern Afghanistan to the mountains of Tora Bora and lays out
new and previous evidence that he was there. The second explores
new information behind the decision not to launch an assault. The
final section examines the military options that might have led to
his capture or death at Tora Bora and the ongoing impact of the
failure to bring him back ‘‘dead or alive.’’

Considering that bin Laden

Considering that bin Laden was the face of america's number 1 public enemy, they needed him to stay alive in order to convince the public that they must continue with their presence in afghanistan so they can reach their real goals.

Orwellian character

Right out of 1984, Bin Laden plays the part of Emmanuel Goldtein.

supporting enemies

the nazi-infiltrated cia has a history of supporting their enemies... good for their corporate-junkies businesses..

so.. first when entering afghanistan, the cia made deals with the afghan war lords.. and likely divided up the poppy seed black op money input.. for themselves, war lords and taliban forces.. fueling a big fight.. good for business..

bush ordered an escape route from tora bora into pakistan.. for keeping the new world underworld in big business.. energy and armaments.. what a sick war.. and to use 9/11/01 as its justification.. it is just plain sic nazi distorted propaganda.. thanks to all truthers.. we will find a way.. showing the emperor with no clothes on.

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I don't get it

Big Bin has been dead since the end of 2001. He was just a patsy anyhow. Just like Oswald. You got to blame someone. It's just another case of Problem, Reaction, Solution. First the government attacks America on 9/11. Then they blame it on Big Bin and his jolly men. (What a joke!) Then they get the reaction they were looking for. Get Big Bin! Then they, the government comes up with the solution. The Patriot Act, two wars etc. Then the stupid, brainwashed people go for it. Well I have news for them. The truth movement is not going away. We will win this thing come hell or high water. The thugs behind 9/11 will pay big time. Trust me on that one.

Cave-dwelling Muslim Boogeyman on Dialysis is Dead

Right on. Boogeyman bin Laden and the new universal brand-name of terror, "Al-Queda", are nothing more than a CIA funded patsy collective.
________________________________________

FOXNEWS.COM Report: Bin Laden Already Dead
Wednesday, December 26, 2001
http://tinyurl.com/mfs8y

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation's counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson, says he thinks Osama bin Laden is "probably" dead.
Thursday, 18 July, 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2135473.stm

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said Osama bin Laden is "probably" dead:
Monday, October 7, 2002
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/central/10/06/karzai.binladen/

CNN reported a magazine runs what it calls bin Laden's will:
Saturday, October 26, 2002
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/10/26/binladen.will/

Is OBL Luckiest Man in World or Just Have Friends in High Places

“Fewer than 100 American commandos,” there were only a couple dozen American troops at Tora Bora in December 2001, and there were more journalists in the mountains than US troops. Is it any wonder that OBL and several hundered of his closest friends walked out of the mountains unmolested and into the friendly confines of Pakistan? The many military blunders of Tora Bora have been widely known since the battle and can be found in the following articles:

Christian Science Monitor, "How Bin Laden Got Away," March 4, 2002: www.csmonitor.com/2002/0304/p01s03-wosc.html

Newsweek, "How al-Qaeda Slipped Away," August 19, 2002:
http://meaindia.nic.in/bestoftheweb/2002/08/19bow01.htm

Knight Ridder, "Tora Bora a Lost Victory," October 20, 2002:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030804035648/www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallah...

These investigative articles were typically written by reporters at the scene of the battle who interviewed various parties involved and basically concluded the following facts:

1. The US knew that OBL would likely try to escape Afghanistan to Pakistan from his old Tora Bora base that the CIA helped him build in the 1970’s and 80’s.

2. On November 13th, OBL and about a thousand other al-Qaeda members escaped from nearby Jalalabad to Tora Bora in a several hundred car "convoy" while the US bombed the nearby Jalalabad airport but left the convoy unscathed.

3. The US chose to go after OBL and the other thousand al-Qaeda members in Tora Bora by hiring Afghan warlords instead of using US Army and / or Marine ground forces.

4. The US was "some how" caught off guard when these Afghan warlords turned out to be sympathetic to OBL and / or were bought off by OBL and many other al-Qaeda members???

5. There were basically two known escape routes out of Tora Bora into Pakistan but the US only covered and bombed one of them, giving OBL and many other al-Qaeda members that one lucky chance they needed.

A 60 Minutes segment in October 2008 included an interview with the officer in command of a small several dozen soldier Delta Force unit whose job was "supposedly" to find and capture or kill Bin Laden at Tora Bora (www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/&id=4502669n ). What should shock and disgust every American is Delta Force’s presented plans that had a good chance of capturing or killing OBL but was rejected at the highest level of the military and government (note: similar plans were presented by the CIA and military intelligence, but also denied). Following is an excerpt from the Delta commander’s (aka Dalton Fury) 60 Minutes interview:

Delta developed an audacious plan to come at bin Laden from the one direction he would never expect.

"We want to come in on the back door," Fury explains. "The original plan that we sent up through our higher headquarters, Delta Force wants to come in over the mountain with oxygen, coming from the Pakistan side, over the mountains and come in and get a drop on bin Laden from behind."

But they didn't take that route, because Fury says they didn't get approval from a higher level. "Whether that was Central Command all the way up to the president of the United States, I'm not sure," he says.

The next option that Delta wanted to employ was to drop hundreds of landmines in the mountain passes that led to Pakistan, which was bin Laden’s expected escape route.

"First guy blows his leg off, everybody else stops. That allows aircraft overhead to find them. They see all these heat sources out there. Okay, there a big large group of Al Qaeda moving south. They can engage that," Fury explains.

But they didn't do that either, because Fury says that plan was also disapproved. He says he has "no idea" why.

"How often does Delta come up with a tactical plan that's disapproved by higher headquarters?" Pelley asks.

"In my experience, in my five years at Delta, never before," Fury says.

The best chance the United States ever had at capturing or killing OBL was, like the 9/11 attacks, a slew of errors and terrible judgment. And like the 9/11 failures and mistakes, not one single person or institution has ever been held accountable for the many failures at Tora Bora. For the US to have relied on Afghan warlords to do our job of capturing the one man our government told us killed 3,000 Americans and caused about one hundred billion dollars of property damage in the US, is inexcusable and a crime that should be investigated. The fact of the matter is that the OBL boogeyman was worth much more to the Bush Administration alive than dead (the Bush fear mongering associated with this “potent symbolic figure” proved priceless), and that is why he was allowed to walk out of the mountains of Tora Bora while a couple dozen US soldiers sat helplessly by. Rumsfeld’s blatant lie that he was concerned that “too many US troops in Afghanistan would create anti-American backlash,” has since been proven a lie with the evidence that he and other Bush Administration officials had been planning for an Iraq war since February 2001. The Afghan war has been a sham and farce since Day 1, and for Obama to keep supporting this $100 billion a year crime in process is an insult to our democracy.

I saw this earlier on MSNBC...

...and immediately wondered why MSNBC was running 7 year old news that made the government look bad. As I read it, I realized it was the usual propaganda. Instead of telling the true story (as exposed by CIA field commander Gary Berntsen and covered in the doc 9/11 Press for Truth) that the US purposely allowed Bin Laden to escape, the article on MSNBC implies it was because we didn't have enough troops in Afghanistan.

They are getting ready for the backlash that's coming when Obama announces his Afghanistan Surge tomorrow.

Exactly

Recycling this particular old story (on the pretext of the release of some congressional 'report') at this time is not likely just happenstance. Obama is gearing up for his LBJ-style escalation moment--except that the 'Gulf of Tonkin incident' in this case is already eight years old. Oh well, whatever works....

Press For Truth clip...

Bin Laden Family Flights

Here's an old chestnut that seems poignant about the Bin Laden flights during the no fly period... Very telling. The Bin Ladens got VIP treatment to leave the US after 9/11 and then Bin Laden himself and top Al Qaeda got the special Air Lift to leave Afghanistan.... BOTH of which required authorization by the Bush Administration. It smacks of an inside deal. I posted the PFT clip above as well as this on my paper's website to jog people's memory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMXY2we_8Oc

...

Fact #41
There are several indications that Osama Bin Laden has been protected, and even allowed to escape after the 9/11 attacks. On 12/24/1998, at the request of then CIA Director George Tenet, President Clinton signs an order authorizing the CIA to assassinate Osama Bin Laden. Philip Shenon will write that Clinton's authorization is "written in stark language” and it makes it very clear “that the president was telling the tribal leaders they could kill bin Laden." However, this order is "closely held within the CIA, and the 9/11 Commission will comment, “This intent [to have bin Laden killed] was never well communicated or understood within the agency." "Apparently, it is never even communicated to Michael Scheuer, head of Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit. Scheuer will later express his frustration at not being allowed to try to kill bin Laden, “We always talked about how much easier it would have been to kill him." In February 1999, Clinton rewrites the order for the CIA and "deletes the wording authorizing an operation to simply kill bin Laden." In December 1999, Clinton issues a wider memo that deals "with “a wider set of contingencies,” and they authorize the use of force only within the context of a capture operation, not an assassination attempt. The CIA is therefore allowed to try to kill bin Laden only using one specific group of assets—tribal leaders tracking bin Laden in Afghanistan, still based on the earlier instructions. But the CIA does not test “the limits of available legal authority,” apparently because the CIA’s bin Laden unit is not told of the kill authorization and due to confusion." On 9/21/2001, it is reported that President Putin "had warned the Clinton administration about the dangers posed by Bin Laden. "Washington's reaction at the time really amazed me. They shrugged their shoulders and said matter-of-factly: 'We can't do anything because the Taliban does not want to turn him over'." After 9/11, Bush says about Bin Laden, "If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he will be sorely mistaken.” Two days after that, he says, "I want justice. And there’s an old poster out West, I recall, that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" In Afghanistan, veteran CIA agent Gary Berntsen is in charge of the team responsible for capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden called "Jawbreaker." "He will claim that at the start of December 2001, one of his Arabic-speaking CIA agents finds a radio on a dead al-Qaeda fighter during a battle in the Tora Bora region. This agent hears bin Laden repeatedly attempt to rally his troops. On the same radio, that agent and another CIA agent who speaks Arabic hear bin Laden apologizing to his troops for getting them trapped and killed by US aerial bombing. Based on this information, Berntsen makes a formal request for 800 US troops to be deployed along the Pakistani border to prevent bin Laden’s escape. The request is not granted. Berntsen’s lawyer later claims, “Gary coordinated most of the boots on the ground. We knew where bin Laden was within a very circumscribed area. It was full of caves and tunnels but we could have bombed them or searched them one by one. The Pentagon failed to deploy sufficient troops to seal them off." "A Knight Ridder investigative report will later conclude, “While more than 1,200 US Marines [sit] at an abandoned air base in the desert 80 miles away, Franks and other commanders [rely] on three Afghan warlords and a small number of American, British, and Australian special forces to stop al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters from escaping across the mountains into Pakistan.” Military and intelligence officials warn Franks that the two main Afghan commanders cannot be trusted. This turns out to be correct, as the warlords accept bribes from al-Qaeda leaders to let them escape." On 12/5/2001, Brig. Gen. James N. Mattis "is convinced his forces can seal the Tora Bora area to trap bin Laden there. Around this date, Mattis argues strongly to his military superiors at Centcom that his troops should fight at Tora Bora, but he is turned down." Between December 8th - 14th, British special forces pursue Osama Bin Laden, and are reportedly "20 minutes behind" him but are "pulled off to allow US troops to go in for the kill.” However, it takes hours for the Americans to arrive, by which time bin Laden has escaped." On 10/6/2008, it is reported that "a team of elite Delta Force commandos was sent into Afghanistan with an assignment to find and kill Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora" but were stopped by U.S. officials. On 60 Minutes, the commando leader is asked by Scott Pelley, "how often does Delta come up with a tactical plan that's disapproved by higher headquarters?" His answer is "in my experience, in my five years at Delta, never before." Apparently, Cofer Black is fired on 5/17/2002. "Six anonymous US intelligence officials will claim that, in fact, Black is removed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld because Black publicly revealed details of the US military’s failure to capture or kill bin Laden in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in late 2001." On 3/13/2001, Bush says, "He’s a person who’s now been marginalized.… I just don’t spend that much time on him.… I truly am not that concerned about him.” Instead, Bush is "deeply concerned about Iraq.”


Do these people deserve to know how and why their loved ones were murdered? The facts speak for themselves.

So many coincidencental screwups in the attempt to get Osama

bring to mind the string of coincidental screwups that allegedly allowed the 19 box cutter wielding hijackers to pull off 9/11,

Cheating death?

Amazing. They mention bin Laden feared he was dying, that he drafted a will on December 14, 2001 and had it transmitted, and that the document has since been judged as authentic.

Then they simply say, 'but the al Qaeda leader would live to fight another day.' Oh well, I guess that explains that!

I guess we can conclude that one advantage of capturing bin Laden would be to learn just what his secret was to recover so miraculously; kidney-sufferers worldwide want to know! (Or would the medical community pay any attention? After all, it's not as if the demolition industry changed its methods after it was supposedly demonstrated that fire had the capacity to demolish skyscrapers.)

They write: 'On or around December 16, two days after writing
his will, bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked
unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan’s unregulated
tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today.'

Where is the evidence that a living, breathing Osama was actually among those who departed? And if there is such evidence, who are these 'analysts' who are convinced that his health recovered and that he has kept on living all this while after 'disappearing' into Pakistan?

Of course

Of course, the authors of such articles are proabably hoping readers will understand his fear of death as only being about fear of being captured and killed, unrelated to the state of his health.

Yep

Gotta keep the boogie man alive and kickin. Got to scare the people into surrendering all their wealth, the lives of their sons and daughters and their liberites. When does the revolution start I'm ready. The days of lies murder and corruption done by a supposed representative government are numbered.

You would think almost all of the miltiary involed with this

F-up, would be 9.11 truthers.

Significance of Lynne Stewart

The government perpetrates 9-11, and blames fall-guy cardboard cutout Bin Laden. They perpetrate the '93 bombing of the wtc, then blame the Blind Sheikh. Jail the Blind Sheikh, and two years later, 58 tourists and tour guides are killed by so-called terrorists, crying for the Sheikh's release. This act seemed like blow back, but was it, or was it also a false flag? Government then blames the sheikh's attorney, Lynne Stewart, for conspiring to kill people. The attention is on her, distracting it from the real perpetrators of actual deaths, the government itself, whether it was from predictable blowback from the jailing of the Sheikh, or from an actual false flag, like 9-11. Lynne Stewart's case is crucial to the government's coverup of its trail of perfidy.