U.S. military Commander Dalton Fury (pseudonym) spoke about his pursuit of Osama bin Laden in December 2001 at Tora Bora, Afghanistan. “One night–alone without his Afghan allies–Fury said he was told Bin Laden was two kilometres away. Faced with overwhelming odds, he elected to stay away. But the decision always nagged him. He wrote in […]
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. “At one point, he said, his forces were closing in on Bin Laden’s men–but he decided to abort the mission because he did not have support from Afghan troops. And in another incident Delta […]
12/15/2001
Though the Bush Administration had recently announced that bin Laden was present in the battle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in December 2001, Central Command (CENTCOM) leader General Tommy “Franks continues to dissent from that analysis. Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, his chief spokesman, acknowledged the dominant view outside Tampa [Florida, CENTCOM headquarters] but said the general […]
12/15/2001
“The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora [Afghanistan] late last year [December 2001] 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 […]
12/15/2001
“In the fight for Tora Bora [Afghanistan, in December 2001], corrupt local militias did not live up to promises to seal off the mountain redoubt, and some colluded in the escape of fleeing al Qaeda fighters. [Central Command leader General Tommy] Franks did not perceive the setbacks soon enough, some officials said, because he ran […]
12/15/2001
Senator John Kerry (D-MA) wrote: “Fewer than 100 U.S. special operations commandos were at Tora Bora [Afghanistan, in December 2001], not enough to defeat the entrenched Al Qaeda fighters. Calls for reinforcements were rejected. So were requests for U.S. troops to block the exit routes to sanctuary in Pakistan a few miles away. The vast […]
12/15/2001
“In [December] 2001 he [Taliban commander Abdullah Mehsud] had been captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and was transferred to Guantánamo jail, where he played dumb and convinced his U.S. interrogators that he was a simpleton. Released in 2004, he rejoined the Taliban in North Waziristan [Pakistan].” [The 15th of the month used for date […]
12/15/2001
In the battle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in mid-December 2001, “Some thirty U.S. SOF [Special Operations Forces] arrived three days after the battle started–and, in reality, was already lost–while B-52s carried out heavy bombing of the mountains. The main force of Arabs had escaped with the help of Afghan commanders who had been bribed. Between […]
12/15/2001
“Muhammad Musa, a laconic, massively built commander…led six hundred Afghan soldiers on the Tora Bora front lines [in Afghanistan in December 2001]. …Musa said he was not impressed by the American forces on the ground. ‘They were not involved in the fighting,’ he said. ‘There were six American soldiers with us, U.S. Special Forces. They […]
12/15/2001
In late October 2001, “the Czech interior minister set off an international furor when he said that an Iraqi intelligence officer had met in Prague with Mohammed Atta, the suspected mastermind of the [9/11] attacks, just five months before the hijackings [April 2001]. …But by December [2001], Czech and American officials backed off, saying that […]