Senate Report: US Allowed Osama Bin Laden to Escape Afghanistan in 2001
A new senate report acknowledges for the first time that Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was within the grasp of U.S. troops in December of 2001 but military leaders made the decision not to pursue and detain him. It's troubling news to hear 8 years after 2 illegal wars have cost more that five thousand U.S. serviceman's live and thousands of innocent civilian's lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants "removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama Bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora," reads the 49-page report authored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff for Chairman John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate.
"The decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism," the report states.
The report comes just days before Barack Obama, is to announce his decision on whether tens of thousands more troops will be sent to Afghanistan in an attempt to suppress resurgent Taliban forces.
"The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the army, was kept on the sidelines," the senate report said.
The two wars resulting from the attacks on September 11, 2001 and, according to the official story, to combat terrorist extremists responsible for the attacks have been largely unpopular since the invasions first took placed. And now we have an official government report admitting that the U.S. had made no attempt to capture the most infamous terrorist of them all when we was "within grasp".
"I would say there would be a good chance we would not have forces or need to have forces there. But this has been kind of well known for some time. We took our eye off the ball instead of moving in on him at Tora Bora, the previous administration decided to move its forces to Iraq,"
-Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee
Perhaps the agenda from the beginning was never to kill or capture those responsible for the attacks on September 11, but to sustain a long drawn out war on two fronts against an enemy that didn't even exist, at least not prior to invasion. After all, there is nothing more profitable than war.
According to the official 9/11 story, all but 3 of the box knife wielding terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. None of the terrorists were from Iraq, nor was Osama Bin Laden. This fact didn't prevent a decade long war resulting in almost 5,000 American lives and a national debt $768 billion greater than before the wars.
During the air invasion of Iraq, the U.S. dropped enough bombs on Iraq to average one every 30 seconds for days. The targets did not only include strategic military targets and equipment, of which Iraq had little, but also civilian structures of life support such as water treatment plants, power distribution and food processing facilities.
An enemy did not exist in Iraq before September 11, but after the United States' devastating and unwarranted invasion it is no wonder there were enough enemies created to last 10 years. Furthermore, most insurgents in Iraq are not even Iraqi, most of them or Iranian or Syrian and cross the border into Iraq through Syria.
The tragedies committed by the Bush administration in Iraq were illegal, unprovoked and unnecessary. Meanwhile, on the other war front in Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden is being allowed to run free into Pakistan in 2001 where he would not be persecuted by any coalition forces.
Even more confusing to most Americans that continue to generally trust government is that Obama promised throughout his campaign to dramatically and immediately begin withdrawing troops. Obama was not shy to state that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were foolish, unnecessary wars. Yet now as the recent senate report comes to light, he will no doubt increase troop levels in Afghanistan.
