Tora Bora

What happened at Tora Bora?

John Kerry has been accusing the Bush administration of not devoting American troops to the capture of Osama, relying on local, and unreliable, Afghan warlords, and, in the process, letting Osama get away. The Bush team has responded to this biting attack by denying this version of events. Tommy Franks, the general in charge, recently wrote in the New York Times:

As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East, 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.

Building on Frank's piece, Dick Cheney called Kerry's charges "absolute garbage."

Josh Marshall writes about this dispute in his blog today, and excerpts passages from newspaper coverage from 2002. Can you guess what it says?

From the Washington Post, April 17, 2002

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.

So you can see where Kerry gets his odd, "politically-motivated" "garbage" that doesn't "square with reality," and why Tommy Franks. Cheney, et al, might want to make sure people thought something different.

Just in case you were wondering.