Tommy Franks Weighs In on Tora Bora
As a follow-up to this post, on Bush, Kerry, Tora Bora and bin Laden, I should note that the Bush campaign brought out General Tommy Franks to rebut Kerry's charges in the NY Times.
This is pretty much all I have seen in the media about this issue.
So what does Franks say?
First he says that they were never sure bin Laden was there.
Well sure, but there were plenty of reports suggesting he WAS there, and therefore wouldn't you try hard to get him if you thought he might be there?
Second, he basically admits that much of the work was done by local Afghani fighters, as charged by Kerry.
Then he says they had help from the Pakistanis in sealing off the border and closing passes.
Well-- we ALL know exactly how useful the Pakistanis have been in getting bin Laden, don't we? And surely back even then, they had to know the Pakistanis weren't necessarily trustworthy in terms of getting bin Laden.
Basically, Franks gives a non-denial denial. And not an especially vigorous one at that. And I suppose this is what the Bush administration passes off as their defense for letting bin Laden get away--- "well, we tried".
Clearly, the effort to get at the time the most wanted man in the world was lackluster. And we can be fairly certain that the Bush administration liked to talk tough about bin Laden, but didn't REALLY want to capture or kill him.
It's funny, at the time of the Tora Bora battle, I thought the US was holding back because they were afraid of taking casualties--- and this was actually the line put out by some commentators. And it made some sense-- the US had up to that point, a 25 year history of being casualty shy (since Vietnam).
I actually thought that this reluctance to take casualties on the part of the US meant that Bush was bluffing Saddam about invading Iraq if they found UN violations. Naively, I thought Bush really wouldn't do it, because invading Iraq would obviously be very costly in terms of casualties.
Boy, was I wrong!
Instead, in the most perverted way possible, the invasion of Iraq turned out to be vengeance for 9/11, when this vengeance should have the Afghanistan operation and getting bin Laden at Tora Bora. I was horrified to hear US soldiers, juiced up on 9/11 and war, talk about getting back at the Iraqis for 9/11.
This is the "leadership" that the Bush administration gave us. They brain-washed those soldiers into thinking they were fighting the terrorists behind 9/11. And it was simply a horrible and evil thing they did to those kids.
And then out came the news of abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. These acts were also due to 9/11 brain-washing, and it resulted in true depravity. This was the worst thing I have seen from my country since the horrors of Vietnam.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Franks, and others in the administration I'm sure, need to be indicted for war-crimes.
This is pretty much all I have seen in the media about this issue.
So what does Franks say?
First he says that they were never sure bin Laden was there.
Well sure, but there were plenty of reports suggesting he WAS there, and therefore wouldn't you try hard to get him if you thought he might be there?
Second, he basically admits that much of the work was done by local Afghani fighters, as charged by Kerry.
Then he says they had help from the Pakistanis in sealing off the border and closing passes.
Well-- we ALL know exactly how useful the Pakistanis have been in getting bin Laden, don't we? And surely back even then, they had to know the Pakistanis weren't necessarily trustworthy in terms of getting bin Laden.
Basically, Franks gives a non-denial denial. And not an especially vigorous one at that. And I suppose this is what the Bush administration passes off as their defense for letting bin Laden get away--- "well, we tried".
Clearly, the effort to get at the time the most wanted man in the world was lackluster. And we can be fairly certain that the Bush administration liked to talk tough about bin Laden, but didn't REALLY want to capture or kill him.
It's funny, at the time of the Tora Bora battle, I thought the US was holding back because they were afraid of taking casualties--- and this was actually the line put out by some commentators. And it made some sense-- the US had up to that point, a 25 year history of being casualty shy (since Vietnam).
I actually thought that this reluctance to take casualties on the part of the US meant that Bush was bluffing Saddam about invading Iraq if they found UN violations. Naively, I thought Bush really wouldn't do it, because invading Iraq would obviously be very costly in terms of casualties.
Boy, was I wrong!
Instead, in the most perverted way possible, the invasion of Iraq turned out to be vengeance for 9/11, when this vengeance should have the Afghanistan operation and getting bin Laden at Tora Bora. I was horrified to hear US soldiers, juiced up on 9/11 and war, talk about getting back at the Iraqis for 9/11.
This is the "leadership" that the Bush administration gave us. They brain-washed those soldiers into thinking they were fighting the terrorists behind 9/11. And it was simply a horrible and evil thing they did to those kids.
And then out came the news of abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. These acts were also due to 9/11 brain-washing, and it resulted in true depravity. This was the worst thing I have seen from my country since the horrors of Vietnam.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Franks, and others in the administration I'm sure, need to be indicted for war-crimes.
posted by spooked at 10:20 PM
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