In December 2001, “The Taliban was on the run, and bin Laden and the hard core of al Qaeda were cornered in the White Mountains at Tora Bora [Afghanistan], against the Pakistani border. But the Pentagon did not deploy enough American troops to seal off the area, on either side of the border. Army Gen. […]
Category: quotes
12/15/2001
U.S. military Commander Dalton Fury (pseudonym) spoke about his pursuit of Osama bin Laden in December 2001 at Tora Bora, Afghanistan. “[A] Delta force named Jackal radioed they had Bin Laden in sight. He wrote: ‘The operation Jackal team observed 50 men moving into a cave that they hadn’t seen before. The mujahideen said they […]
12/15/2001
“Following the overthrow of the Taliban in December 2001, Spain decided to deploy up to five hundred troops as part of the U.S.-led occupation force in Afghanistan.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Deepak Tripathi, Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan, Page 38 […]
12/15/2001
A WikiLeaks document leaked from Guantanamo Bay included a statement by detainee Harun Shirzad al-Afghani, who told of bin Laden’s (OBL’s) escape from the Tora Bora compound in Afghanistan in December 2001. “Al-Afghani was a commander in the militant group Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, a close ally at the time of al Qaeda. Al-Afghani claims that the […]
12/15/2001
Appearing on Frontline on January 11, 2006, “Michael Scheuer, chief of the CIA’s bin Laden desk from 1995 to 1999, said the failure [to capture bin Laden in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in December 2001] was owing to ‘the abject fear of American casualties.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] […]
12/15/2001
Then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice wrote, regarding Osama bin Laden: “Some people contend that we had a chance to capture or kill him at Tora Bora [Afghanistan] in [December] 2001. In fact, there were conflicting reports about his whereabouts at the time, and as a result the military did not request additional forces to conduct […]
12/15/2001
“President Bush completed his first year in office with the highest public approval rating ever recorded for a president: more than 80 percent of the nation thought he was doing a good job [according to several news polls in December 2001].” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Karen DeYoung, […]
12/15/2001
In a December 2001 interview with Bob Woodward, President Bush said, regarding decisions to go after Iraq: ” ‘I know it is hard for you to believe, but I have not doubted what we’re doing. I have not doubted what we’re doing. …There is no doubt in my mind we’re doing the right thing.’ “ […]
12/15/2001
Following the November 2001 investigation by the U.S. embassy in Niger into sales of uranium from Niger to Iraq, “State Department analysts…concluded that the Niger deal was a fraud. In December 2001, Greg Thielmann, director for strategic proliferation and military affairs at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), reviewed Iraq’s WMD program […]
12/15/2001
“In his memoir Jawbreaker, published in 2005, [top CIA Commander Gary] Berntsen, a Bush loyalist, tells of how his teams found bin Laden and his remaining entourage in the [Tora Bora] mountains of the Afghan-Pakistani border [in December 2001] and begged Centcom [Central Command] for eight hundred U.S. Army Rangers to ‘block a possible Al-Qaeda […]