Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Liars? (Tora Bora Edition)

They do lie about everything. Everything. From ThinkProgress:

George W. Bush, 10/29/04: Unfortunately – unfortunately, my opponent, tonight, continued to say things he knows are not true – accusing our military of passing up a chance to get Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora. As the Commander in charge of that operation, Tommy Franks had said, it’s simply not the case. It’s the worst kind of Monday morning quarterbacking. It is especially shameful in the light of a new tape from America’s enemy.

Associated Press, 3/23/05: A terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, helped the al-Qaida leader escape his mountain hide-out at Tora Bora in 2001, according to a U.S. government document. The document, provided in response to a Freedom of Information request, says the unidentified detainee ‘assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora.’

Comments

[P O'Neill]

So when Tommy Franks got his Presidential Medal of Freedom, was it for sticking to the lie as well as he did?

[Ted K]

I thought the Bush comment was about the outsourcing, not about OBL's presence at Tora Bora.

Of course, the media accounts at the time of the battle suggested that U.S. military forces had been intentionally held out of that battle - I am not sure what Franks says about that claim in his book.

[Frank Emesis]

who are you going to believe, the leader of the Free World and future saint, or a terrorist?

[obscure]

Not that I have a scintilla of faith in Bush; I don't. But is his & Frank's 'plausible deniability' really threatened by the above disclosure?

Anyone?

[Salmo]

Yes!

[chris]

I only stomached watching it for five minutes, the 2004 GOP convention, before I was hsshed out of the room by my mother and uncle. When Tommy Franks & Beans was introduced, the presenter was lying. He said Franks attened high school with W together. That was patently false.

So Franks is only 51 or 52 and retired? Why doesn't he get called up to return as a captain or something. With his expereince he would be a great cap. I thought we had to hold off on retiring till 67 or 70 to ease the strain on the public purse?

[KevinNYC]

When all is said and done, Tommy Franks willingness to go along with Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld's plans is going to counted as a moment of great cowardice in our country's history. Franks knows that Rumsfeld had him working on the Iraq plan before we knew if Osama Bin Ladin had escaped. Franks knows that Bush and Rumsfeld had our most capable Special Forces troops pulled from the Osama Hunt to be moved to Iraq in 2002.

Franks knows that the numbers of troops in his Iraq War plan was several hundred thousand, and Rumsfeld started with 40,000. Perhaps a tenth of what was needed. Rumsfeld kept hammering on Franks and Franks started dropping his numbers every time.

Phillip Smucker's book has good reporting about what actually happened at Tora Bora. There were three forces going up against Al Qaeda at Tora Bora. The US military and two groups of Afghans. These groups were actually rivals and were of dubious loyalty to the US. We did not seal the border with Pakistan, in fact, when we attacked we attacked from the West which drove the enemy East towards Pakistan. We did not call in (I believe) the Tenth Mountain Regiment who were in Uzbekistan to beef up forces and surround the area. The operation was described as a Hammer and Anvil operation where you drive the enemy towards the Anvil and then smash them. The operation started going sour early. Right before the operation started in became apparent there was a lot more Al Qaeda fighters there they we thought. We didn't delay the mission and we didn't change the battle plan. We did not have the places surrounded and if fact started bombing before Afgan allies were in place. The area where we expected to establish the "Anvil" was actually crawling with Al Qaeda. The first helicopter that landed came under intense fire. At one point we bombed the Afghan allies and they didn't fight for a couple of days which allowed another escape route to open. The Afghans could not understand why we were only bombing from one side and not surrounding the back side. In the end the Afghan Allies let Osama leave. Osama had planned for this weeks earlier by traveling through the southeastern Pashtun areas and giving out a lot of money and requested help when he had to flee. It worked. And we let it work, because we had so few troops in that area and we didn't cut off the escape routes.

This CSM article covers some of it.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0304/p01s03-wosc.html

Barton Gellman has some good reports of the America military admitting failur at Tora Bora at least among itself.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62618-2002Apr16?language=printer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53187-2004Oct21.html

[foo]

It's admittedly hard for me to believe the terror suspect, as after all, being held at GITMO and all, he was most likely tortured.

Did he produce his testimony about his being a big guy in the escape after being tortured?

Anyway, just because I don't believe the terror suspect, doesn't mean that I don't believe the CSM and WAPO articles above.

[peBird]

It's not a matter of believing the suspect. It's a matter of believing the government document. Which of course you can choose to believe/not believe.