Could We Have Captured Bin Laden?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Foreign Policy, The War On TerrorismThat’s what a CIA Field Commander says in his new book about his experiences in Afghanistan, entitled “Jawbreaker”.
…in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency’s Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Boraâ€â€?intelligence operatives had tracked himâ€â€?and could have been caught. “He was there,” Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on Berntsen’s remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. “We don’t know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001,” Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. “Bin Laden was never within our grasp.” Berntsen says Franks is “a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was.”
I can already hear the criticisms of “He’s just trying to sell a book.” However, I’d ask all of you to look at this situation with open eyes. The truth will come out eventually and hopefully this brings us closer to finding out where Bin Laden is sooner rather than later. Maybe it’s just my own perceptions, but it feels like we’ve all but forgotten about the guy who was responsible for setting off the WOT.
What are your thoughts? Are we doing enough to try and find Bin Laden? Why haven’t we found him yet? Does it have to do with our “grin-and-bear-it” relationship with Pakistan?
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August 7th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
As the resident conservative crank, I think there has been a definte shift away from bin Laden. I remember a few years ago (Two? Three?) when the Administration started making comments about how the WoT wasn’t just about one man, de-emphasising the hunt for OBL. I can understand that it shouldn’t be all about one man, but ignoring OBL’s relevance to the effort is bad.
For a couple of years, I thought OBL probably was dead. There were no credible messages from him that were definitively post-Afghan invasion. That changed about 18 months ago (I think, but I may be misremembering) with a video that came to light that had clearly been filmed after the Iraq invasion.
Really, I don’t know if we’re doing enough to find OBL or not, since most of what’s happening is hidden from view. I get the feeling we aren’t because it would requitre putting pressure on the Pakistani regime. The Administration seems to have made the judgement that it’s either Musharraf or more radical elements of the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), the Pakistani intelligence service. For a little background, try this article.
http://tiger.berkeley.edu/sohrab/politics/isi_problems.html
The fact that the ISI was (Is?) closely allied with the Taliban and al Qaeda is bad enough, but it’s a nightmare when remembering that Pakistan has the bomb. (And I wonder if they’ve managed to aquire thermonuclear capability in recent years?) The situation in Pakistan is scarier than either the Iranian situation, or the North Korean situation, IMO.
So yes, I think the Admin. has decided to grin-and-bear-it with Pakistan. And I wonder if we have some sort of arrangement with India to prop up Musharraf?
August 8th, 2005 at 8:11 am
I have no idea whether we are doing enough to catch OBL. The fact that
the Administration is not constantly talking about our covert efforts to
find him doesn’t mean that he has been forgotten. Some of my liberal friends seem to think that it should be easy to find him and that the reason we have not is the result of some kind of conspiracy. But let’s remember how long it took to find Eric Rudolph. He was hiding out in the North Carolina mountains for years until a police officer had a chance encounter and recognized him. Should we have been more aggressive at Tora Bora? Probably. But if Berntsen had the evidence that OBL was in Tora Bora, then why didn’t that info get to Franks? I have a hard time believing that Franks would not want to catch OBL. That would be quite a feather in his cap. This wouldn’t be the first time that an army inexplicably let enemy forces escape: McClellan let Lee’s troops get away after Antietam when he had the opportunity to destroy his army and the Germans allowing the British to escape at Dunkirk.
I’m looking forward to reading the book; no doubt it will have some great stories to tell, but what are we to make about Berntsen, a former intelligence agent, writing a book about recent intellence operations while we are still at war?
August 8th, 2005 at 9:44 am
I’ll judge him on the merits and accuracy of his book and his service to our country. Motives behind writing a book shouldn’t enter the equation in my mind because all that boils down to is a guessing game.
In my mind, I sincerely hope we’re going after OBL. And while I realize that there are still ongoing efforts to find him that are covert, I can’t help but feel, since OBL is amazingly strict and ritualistic with who sees him, I doubt we’ll just bump into him as we did with Eric Rudolph.
Also, personally, I don’t really care about historical instances where one side let the other get away. We went into Afghanistan to get OBL. If we had a chance to get him and we didn’t, that’s inexcusable. But let’s see how this plays out and what details unfold. I’m more than willing to admit that there’s a lot more to this story than we’re being told.
August 8th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
“Also, personally, I don’t really care about historical instances where one side let the other get away. We went into Afghanistan to get OBL.”
This was certainly one of the objectives, but OBL isn’t the only reason that we are in Afghanistan. The whole WOT isn’t just about capturing or killing OBL, but about dismantling the whole organization and forcing the countries that support them to give them up.
August 8th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
Possibly OBL could’ve been caught at Tora Bora. Possibly trying hard enough to get him would’ve gotten hundreds of troops killed without a guarantee of success. So maybe Franks goofed, maybe he made a good call and we have to live with it being an imperfect universe. But OBL’s been kept heads down and on the run, crippling his ability to run his network. I’d call that a net success. There were chances to do better, but any history book is full of missed opportunities like that.
August 9th, 2005 at 10:42 pm
Does it not strike you as odd that you’re trusting the CIA - the “slam dunk” folks? I wouldn’t believe it if they said the sun was up unless I could look outside and verify it for myself.
Bin Laden has been marginalized. He hardly matters any more - if he’s even alive.
July 24th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Maybe the most important comment of all was Bertsen’s about the location of Franks…….since we put our command in Florida, instead of in Afghanistan, they are farther out of touch….no matter how electronic we have become….when we put our commanders back on the ground and give them the immediate authority to act from their on site level, we will again be able to move quickly enough to succeed……the question is not what Franks wanted, it is what those above him who had to be in the loop before an attack could be mounted wanted…….I’m not sure how many of the most vocal administration feel about ending the war…..which might have happened if Bin Laden and Mullah Omar had been brought down….
What is the REAL objective in Afghanistan, and if it is to capture Bin Laden, then Iraq is a definite deterrent to accomplishing that mission…..but too late now, we are committed to what we have started…