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Democrats Argue Bin Laden Still Dangerous to US |
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by Mickey McCarter
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Tuesday, 01 December 2009 |
Report suggests support from Senators for more US troops in Afghanistan
The failure of the Bush administration to capture Osama Bin Laden in 2001 and since has left the door open to continued terrorist attacks around the world, justifying continued attempts to detain or kill him now, declared a Senate report released by John Kerry (D-Mass.) Monday.
The report signaled the likely support of at least some Senate Democrats to a plan by President Barack Obama to augment US forces in Afghanistan. Obama is scheduled to outline that plan Tuesday night in a speech at the US Military Academy at West Point, NY.
The Senate Foreign Relations report, titled Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Today, asserted that Bin Laden's continued freedom sparks continued terrorist activity.
"Our inability to finish the job in late 2001 has contributed to a conflict today that endangers not just our troops and those of our allies, but the stability of a volatile and vital region," Kerry wrote in a letter of introduction to the report.
Capturing or killing Bin Laden in 2001 would not have stopped extremist Islamist terrorism, the report acknowledged. However, Bin Laden's continued freedom buoys his status as a symbolic figure who can incite terrorist financing and activity.
"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, leaving the American people more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today's protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan," the report stated. "Al Qaeda shifted its locus across the border into Pakistan, where it has trained extremists linked to numerous plots, including the July 2005 transit bombings in London and two recent aborted attacks involving people living in the United States."
Despite doubts at the time that Bin Laden was indeed at Tora Bora, official documents, such as the history of the US Special Operations Command, consistently place Bin Laden in the region at the time.
Operation Enduring Freedom, orchestrated by the Department of Defense under Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, toppled the Taliban government that sheltered Al Qaeda in the fall of 2001, the report noted. US military and allied forces cornered Bin Laden in the mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan called Tora Bora by December 2001.
Bin Laden was so certain he would die that he crafted a will, the report asserted. The will, dated Dec. 14, 2001, carried instructions to his family and followers.
The will read, in part: "Allah commended to us that when death approaches any of us that we make a bequest to parents and next of kin and to Muslims as a whole. Allah bears witness that the love of jihad and death in the cause of Allah has dominated my life and the verses of the sword permeated every cell in my heart, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together.' How many times did I wake up to find myself reciting this holy verse!"
The Defense Department, however, turned down requests to augment the fewer than 100 US commandos that were on the ground with Afghan forces. The US military did not attempt to block roads leading out of Tora Bora, the report observed, leaving Afghan and Pakistani forces to do so.
Instead, the US military bombarded the mountains from the air in hopes of killing the Al Qaeda leader. Rumsfeld and OEF commander Gen. Tommy Franks withheld US troops to minimize the US footprint in the region and to prevent alienating Afghan and Pakistani citizens.
"Reversing the recent American military orthodoxy known as the Powell doctrine, the Afghan model emphasized minimizing the US presence by relying on small, highly mobile teams of special operations troops and CIA paramilitary operatives working with the Afghan opposition," the report said.
Rumsfeld and Franks refused to change their plan despite urging from commanders and intelligence officers, the report said. But they had enough troops in or near Afghanistan to conduct "the classic sweep-and-block maneuver" that could have prevented Bin Laden from escaping. The fight would have been dangerous and risky but the goal was worthwhile, the report declared.
Bin Laden's continued presence as a charismatic figurehead for Al Qaeda movements worldwide have contributed not only to terrorist attacks against transit systems in recent years, the report said, but also to attempted plots in the United States where suspected terrorists received weapons training in Pakistan--including Najibullah Zazi, who was arrested by the FBI in September in a domestic terrorism investigation.
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Mickey McCarter |
| About the author: |
| eNewsletter Editor/Senior Washington Correspondent,
is a journalist with more than a decade of experience in reporting
on
military affairs and information technology.
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