Yet more proof that Bush ranks among the most incompetent presidents of our history. Almost everything he touched turned into a turd pile.

Tragic for the country, think where we would be now if Bush, Rumsfeld & Co had been competent, John Kerry should have been, and was truthfully elected on 04.

We tend to give the "warrior" military leadership a free pass. In these wars as in Vietnam they've been poorly trained and led. Their learning curve is, in every way, expensive. What's up with that?

Capturing Bin Laden and Mullah Omar wouldn't have defeated Al Qaeda, but it would have allowed us to leave Afganistan and may have avoided the pretext for invading Iraq. Of course, that's not what the neocons wanted (hence, the decision not to send more troops).

That's a lot of lives and money saved.

They didn't want to catch Bin laden. They needed him to serve as a bogeyman to get us into Iraq. With the Bush administration, it's often hard to separate the incompetence from the corruption, but I believe this was more the latter than the former.

ChicagoPat, you beat me to it. I was thinking exactly the same thing. Also, Bush wanted to invade Iraq, and he would have had a harder time whipping up the right brew of paranoia and fear in the public that would give him enough support to do it if he'd captured Bin Laden.

I'm trying to decide what to expect NOW from the MSLM.

Option #1 - It's Obama's fault.

Option #2 - We don't care.

". . . for the record, Kerry was right, and Bush was wrong."

And the sun rises in the east, and water is wet.

Have been saying this for years; people treat you like you are crazed. Not only that, but I understand that the ISI was allowed to evacuate their personnel in helicopters. (American pilots said that there was a no-fly and no-fire zone between Tora Bora and Pakistan.) That's how Bin Ladin's crowd made it out.

As was evident at the time...

Towards the end of the last Presidential debate, Bush said he didn't care about Bin Laden, but Kerry didn't follow up on that. Kerry was a fool, and unfortunately his blunders led to Junior's second term.

Isn't the bin Laden family friends with the Bush Family?

Could this be part of why Bush ordered the military to look away from their target and let him escape into Pakistan?

I think I remember reading reports that immediately after 911 when all air traffic was ordered grounded, an airplane with some members of the bin Laden family were allowed to leave/escape the US.

Let's say the situation were turned around, ie., it was a Dem president at the time. Who doubts for a moment that EVERY GOP elected official from Mitch McConnel down to Asst. Director Water Services in Tarboro, NC would be repeating it over and over....and over. There would be calls for investigations.

On the other hand...

Who doubts for a moment that we will NOT here more than, maybe, one or two Dems at ANY level mention this. It'll pop up on a few liberal sites, then go away. MSM will ignore it because the Dems will ignore it.

Typical.

1) Shoot off ignorant mouths
1a) Believe NYTimes, Benen, and John K. Christmas/In/Cambodia -- for Gods sake.

2) Smear some good people to get to Bush (Secula seculorem. Amen) and cover some President Obama butt.

3) Don't read actual report:

"CentCom went so far as to develop a plan to put several thousand U.S. troops into Tora Bora.
Commanders estimated that deploying 1,000 to 3,000 American troops would have required several hundred airlift flights by helicopters over a week or more.
DeLong defended the decision not to deploy large numbers of American troops. "We didn't have the lift," he told the Committee staff. "We didn�t have the medical capabilities." (Page 18)

Delong was THE ranking HELI-logistics expert. When he says "lift" he means the physical capacity to get actual people there without getting most of them killed.

A##hatzzz.

"We didn't have the lift," he told the Committee staff. "We didn�t have the medical capabilities."

That's what happens when you go to war with what you have and not with what you wish you had. Shades of Rumsfeld, huh? Just more incompetence from the A##Hat in chief.

Shoot off ignorant mouths

oh you poor dear. let's see: twice we didn't bomb the al qaeda convoy of 1000 cars driving across the desert at night with no cover, we "surrounded" tora bora on just three sides, we bombed only one of two escape routes, we had bin laden's voice on the radio so we knew he was there. i personally know a captain who was at tora bora who retired afterward as he realized the bush white house was not serious about capturing bin laden and intentionally let him literally walk away.

because if you had bin laden in custody, the person responsible for the 9/11 attacks, how could you possibly make the case for invading iraq?

but for the record, Kerry was right, and Bush was wrong.
Was Bush ever right?

"...i personally know a captain who was at tora bora..."

Of course you do, my dear.

Was he one of these 90 guys?:

"A major with the Army's Delta Force, who is now retired and uses the pen name Dalton Fury, was the senior U.S. military officer at Tora Bora, commanding about 90 special operations troops
and support personnel." (Page 5)

Where's his book?

Forever and ever , a long time . It feels even longer when the two faced liars who defend booschie come up with an attack of the day . Never mind the complete lack of sensible or even plausable thinking its just attack baby , attack .
Thanks for playing !

Oh, gosh, no! The Bushies would never have allowed members of Bin Laden's family to just scoot out of the US right after 9/11! How could you say such a thing?!

It wasn't right after 9/11, it was on 9/20.

Where's his book?

he didn't write a book. he successfully fought off pressure to get reactivated for iraq and now works for [x] intelligence.

if you want his take however, you can read gary bernstern's book. he led the cia special activities paramilitary team in afghanistan and had pinpointed bin laden's position and begged for troops. the decision ultimately came from the white house not to provide any.

also, you should reread that report. not only does your cherrypicked quote not agree with the report findings, it does not agree with the analysis of the other specialists and supporting data showing that while challenging, capturing bin laden was clearly achievable, and every element of the plan (mountain airlifts, etc) had been proven out in other live and training scenarios.

p.s. your reference to delta force commander dalton fury precisely proves my point. he not only confirms that we had pinpointed bin laden but also confirms that he was denied permission to go in and take him and wasn't given a good reason not to. perhaps you should do a little more reading before quoting blindly.

what exactly is your point, tao9: that it is defensible that we failed at tora bora?

or is it simply that you're a stupid jerk and can't resist demonstrating same? i mean, here we go again: the asswipes playing games about john kerry being in cambodia. typically, anyone who says that isn't worth attending to on any other matter.

btw, bob, kerry was hardly the greatest campaigner ever, but he lost because it's very, very difficult to defeat a sitting president. just look at the record.

Ehhh, I can't swallow this one, Steve. The suggestion that the Bushies deliberately blew a decent shot at bin Ladin doesn't square with the electoral benefits of such a strike -- Republicans would have ruled the world for a generation had it been successful. A fuckup, especially one fueled by arrogance, seems perfectly in character, however.

Lindsey Graham on ABC's This Week:

"With this new surge of forces, the Taliban will never take over Afghanistan again"

Ah, too late.

By the time Chimpy Bush left office, the Taliban was already back in control of 62% of Afghanistan.

The suggestion that the Bushies deliberately blew a decent shot at bin Ladin doesn't square with the electoral benefits of such a strike.

You don't want a bounce at the polls, you want to transform the political landscape for a generation.

Bin Ladin's capture would have played hob with the plans to 'do Iraq', though, and for using wartime powers and wartime rah-rah to neuter Democratic opposition at home, ensure Republican control of the White House and both Houses of Congress in virtual perpetuity.

Good thing they screwed that up, too, while there were still a few scraps of the Constitution left. Too late for the economy, though.

My thoughts also agree that USA didn't want to catch Bin laden but use him to get into Iraq.

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