So, if I read it correctly, we had 100 US troops, special Ops, CIA, etc. vs. 1,000 Al Queda and Taliban fighters and the latter presumably knew the terrain much better than we did.

And we relied on the PAKISTANIS?!?? to bottle up the rear escape route.

Gee, who could have predicted that would fail.

Or maybe Rummy wasn’t in a hurry to get Osama, b/c he needed a boogey man to scare us into war with Iraq?

Absolutely true that the Kerry report and the Dec 1 speech are political exercises, with Obama facing very poor political and strategic choices. The truth is that rather than “finishing the job” against OSL, or building schools for Afghan girl, or preventing Afghanistan from becoming a base for international terrorism, the US and NATO forces are backing one side in an Afghan civil war. In 2001, the US allied itself with the Tajiks and Uzbeks in order to drive the Taliban, which was predominantly Pashtun, from power in 2001. However, the Taliban never controlled northern Afghanistan from 1996-2001 while they were in power in Kabul. The US-backed “Northern Alliance” victory drove the Taliban/Pashtun from power. Ever since then they have been in revolt – the area where western troops are fighting “the Taliban” and “Al Qaeda” are all the areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan where Pashtuns are in the majority, and nowhere else. In practice, the US and NATO are fighting Pashtun nationalism. Which 80-100,000 troops (or any number) cannot win. This war cannot end in a decisive victory, it must end in a negotiated peace that is acceptable to both sides. But politics, Pakistan, and 8 years of a catastrophically inept Afghan policy will prevent Obama from pursuing such a peace.

Good to see you on THIS, Marcie. It’s the one that, along with Iraq, is a good bet to wreck us, and resuscitate the republicans. Or, at least increase the pace with which they’re crawling out from under the bridge.

Obama’s choice of McChrystal was a major brainfart. There isn’t going to be a happy ending to this for us, and Obama knows that. The sooner he publicly cops to it, the fewer troops and gigabucks we’ll be pissing away trying to sustain Bush’s lunacy so that we can come in for a non-existent soft landing.

ET@58: Not to worry; with every month that passes, as this particular clusterfuck becomes more and more, their property, the democrats, as they try to sustain Bush’s adventures-in-nationbuilding, will be less and less likely to be discussing the health of Bin Laden.

Osama bin Laden (OBL) passed away of natural causes in December 2001. His body is buried in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. See http://www.whatreallyhappened.com for more details. All of the audio and video OBL tapes that have surfaced since then were Made in USA. Belief in OBL being alive in Afghanistan or Pakistan is like belief in God being alive in the Heavens (the cold vacuum of outer space). Of course, everyone has their very own favorite fairy tales. President Pipeline Obama believes that he will get the pipeline-job done in Afghanistan… More Imperial America stupidity and arrogance.

‘scusa, ET… @ 87.

As EW pointed out, there is really little new in this report, but it does put all in one place much of the evidence long in print.

I would particularly point to the 2005 book, by Gary Berntsen, “Jawbreaker” as a critical source. Berntsen was the CIA commander at Tora Bora — commanding his CIA personnel and the Special Forces assigned to him when it went into Afghanistan in late September, 2001 to work with the Northern Alliance on the ground.

Berntsen points to the odd arrangement that existed at Tora Bora — CIA in command of the only US forces on site, and makes the case that Rummy was responsible for the decision not to send more troops in, largely because the DoD people were not in the catbird seat in that operation. This problem ran very deep. In the days after 9/11, Bush called a meeting at Camp David, and at that time the CIA was the only agency to come to the table with a real plan. What they had was the old Richard Clarke and CIA plan to support the Northern Alliance in the field, and Tenet adopted it, and offered it up at the meeting. Rumsfeld and Cheney still were talking about invading Iraq as there were no good bombing targets in Afghanistan, and Bush rejected that, accepted Tenet’s plan, and told him to execute. This cut Rumsfeld out of the initial action in Afghanistan.

In later October and November, DoD did move Marines and a few more Army Rangers into Southern Afghanistan under DoD command, and supported Karzi’s forces in taking Kandahar. DoD also but two Battalions of the 10th Mountain Division up in the Stans, and they had everything necessary for insertion along the AfPac border. That was the state of things when Osama bin Laden was cornered in Tora Bora. Rumsfeld did not expect CIA’s Berntsen to successfully trap OBL and about a thousand al Quada, but they did — and the decision not to send forces in to block the border was Rummy and Cheney’s call.

We need to look at another series of events to comprehend this. Bush asked Musharaff to send the Pakistani Army to reinforce the Frontier Corps on the Border, and initially Musharaff agreed to this. But then suddenly everything changed, one of the covert groups over which ISI had control, shot up the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, and both India and Pakistan prepared for war along their border regions. Pakistan withdrew all its Army forces four days before bin Laden and a company of his Arab fighters walked out of Afghanistan into Pakistan. I think it perfectly logical to consider the proposition that ISI directed the shoot up in New Delhi because it wanted to salvage bin Laden and his Arab fighters, and removing the Pak Army from its blocking position was necessary to this end.

I also believe we have to consider something we know nothing about here, but how was Saudi Arabia calling all this at this time? We just don’t know. We do know that in 2001-02, the Saudi’s were not all that cooperative vis a vis al Quada, the Saudi 9/11 players, and bin Laden — they got much more serious after the bombings in Saudi Arabia by al Quada in 2003. But I can see all sorts of reasons why the Saudi’s at this point in time, were not all that interested in the US capturing bin Laden or any of his leading associates. ISI and the Saudi’s are very close, however, and one must calculate their involvement.

So — two elements of the story not mentioned yet in commentary, the turf battle between Rummy and CIA vis a vis command of ground operations in Afghanistan which Berntsen believes was the reason why Tenth Mountain, the Marines, and the Army Rangers were not sent into the border region, and second element, the “real” positions of ISI and the Saudi’s on the developing military evolution in Afghanistan when Tora Bora occurred. I see the shoot up of the Indian Parliament as a nice distraction to a straight forward military operation where the Pak Army would have blocked the border.

It should also be remembered that it was in the middle of this Tora Bora battle that General Franks was called in to receive orders to produce a plan to invade Iraq. I think that was Thanksgiving Weekend, 2001. Those orders would probably support keeping the 10th Mountain and its assets nice and safe up in the Stans.

I had the privilege of getting to know a wonderful young man (age of my oldest daughter) who was studying at Ohio University on a Fulbright Scholarship several years back. He is now back in Afghanistan and I have asked him if I can share some of his views. His new position is quite substantive, as well as the views of his father who is a retired Brigadier General in AFghanistan. Their views are very similar to Ambassador Eikenberry and Bacevichs. When Haroon was studying in Athens I was able to ask questions of his father who had fought against the Russians with the Mujahadeen. His father kept asking in 2004/2005..”do the Americans want to lose Afghanistan” “why have they allowed the Taliban to regain control?

Both Haroon and his father have been saying for quite some time that the only way to deal with the Taliban is to engage the more moderate Taliban. Have also heard that the alleged involvement of U.S. forces or CIA in the “Convoy of Death” really cemented the anger and willingness to fight occupying forces…especially since there has not been any accountability for this horrendous slaughter of surrendered Taliban that took place in the fall of 2001

Here is a segment of Haroons latest e-mail from Afghanistan.((permission to share)

‘The future administrative reform, and clear policy of the government for peace and security will be our last chance. If we utilize this opportunity, not only the Afghan but also the world will see effective progress to harness the current insurgence in Afghanistan and in the region. The rule of the US will be very important through putting pressures on the Afghan government to bring about all the positive changes in all sector.”

Haroon “Increasing the troops will not solve the problem. Working on our own security forces and peace talk with Taliban and Gulbudeen Hikmatyar and to gain the trust and confident of the ordinary people and villagers through the development process is the best option to tackle the current security problems.”
.

Haroons position
Haroon Rashid Sherzad
Director, Strategic Communications and Relations
Ministry of Counter Narcotics
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

For Sara @ 123:

I don’t mean to be difficult, but this looks like a Nov 1998 press release to me.

Googling around a little, I found a paragraph in an NYT story about White’s retirement that may explain the confusion:

And in June 1998, after two years of investigation, her office secretly secured the indictment of Mr. bin Laden for terrorism conspiracy, two months before the bombing of the American embassies in Africa, in which he was also later indicted.

So there was more than one indictment in 1998, and the later indictment in November for the embassy bombings was public. I pursue this only because I know I knew about it (vaguely) at the time, and I’m no kind of insider.

Time to review the actual post. EW began:

Understand that–for better or worse–the new report released by John Kerry on how Osama bin Laden escaped at Tora Bora is a designed to be a political document.

It’s a reasonable guess that readers at EW’s view it in those terms, but some may still read it.

Rather, that the timing and format of the report seems designed to emphasize the irony, noted above, and other little ironies such as the way our desire to get the corrupt Hamid Karzai installed as leader of Afghanistan affected our willingness to commit troops at Tora Bora.

IMVHO, this is actually new info that needs to come from a Senate source, backed up by evidence.
It also needed to be collected into a ‘story’ or ‘narrative’ because every American needs to understand that this is what **actually** happened. As opposed to, for instance, Commander Codpiece strutting in a flight suit beneath a “Mission Accomplished” sign in the lovely hues of pre-sunset off the coast of CA.

And the conclusion (less well supported by the facts presented in the report) that the same unwillingness to commit troops to Afghanistan in 2001 led to Mullah Omar’s escape.

Well, it should be supported by the facts.
But if this is what happened, then Fox News and every other media outlet should be conveying it. Failure to do so raises questions about the quality and purpose of US media conglomerates.

All these ironies, delivered just in time to play into the debate that will intensify next week.

The timing is quite obvious to all of us.

This is my last comment on this thread.

The conversation about the nature, effectiveness, and uses of the US military are beyond what I think this post was intended to address. It’s an important issue.

Arguably, the NSA and the DoD are actually the second and third branches of US government.
Followed by Congress.

But that discussion is for some other thread, some other time.

Neil, I think the notion “our guy” does not really convey the assets Karzi had that led to his election.

First, the anti-Taliban forces were mostly Northern Alliance, which was largely a Tajik movement. Afghanistan’s majority is Pashtun, about 40%, and the Tajik’s are only about 19% of the population. For this reason, and for the rough acceptance of Afghani leadership by Pakistan, the new leader needed to be Pashtun.

Second, Karzi’s tribal identity is the same as the former King of Afghanistan, who was displaced in the coup of 1972. One very large faction of the Afghan dispora was the King’s faction, who indeed wanted to bring back the monarchy. Karzi was acceptable to them as a second choice after the King, and on taking office, Karzi brought back the old King (who has since died), gave him a voice in starting the Loya Jurga, offered him a large villa in Kabul — in otherwords he absorbed in part the interests of this part of the dispora.

Third, Karzi had respectable internationally recognized credentials for the job. He had studied Political Science at the very selective college in India where the leading Civil Servants have been trained since back in British Days — he went to school with Rajiv Gandhi for instance, and subsequently he studied in Lebanon, Business and Economics. In essence, he spoke enough of the international language of governance that gave donors a sense of confidence.

Finally, his Father had been something of a minor figure in the war against the Soviets, part of one of the Mujahedin factions that was less favored by the way Pakistan’s ISI divided up the money and arms donated for that fight largely because he was a moderate as opposed to radical islamist. His father had initially supported the rise of the Taliban, but as he became disillusioned with their governance, had spoken out, and had been assassinated as a result. It was this mix the UN and all the donor countries were looking for in 2001.

One of the best sources on Karzi’s career, before 2001, and since as President is Pakistani Journalist Ahmed Rashid’s recent book, “Descent into Chaos.” Rashid was an early supporter of Karzi, they had been close friends for some years, Karzi had been a valued source for Rashid in researching and writing his previous books on the Taliban. But over the past three years or so he became quite critical of his performance as President. He spends a good deal of time in this book offering an analysis of Karzi’s errors, only some of which are related to his relationships with the west.