Should/could we have gotten Bin Laden?

Great Debates
1

Many argue that instead of invading Iraq we should have gone into the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan and rooted out Osama.

For debate: Was focusing more effort (relative to Iraq) on getting Osama a viable option? How many soldiers would we have lost going cave to cave and village to village? What was the liklihood of ever proving that we got him. Would we have gotten the full cooperation of Pakistan or might we have unsettled things there even more? Would getting him have demoralized his followers? How many did we let get away to operate elsewhere?

2

We could have gotten him and we should have gotten him. He was in Afghanistan and we had him. Then we “farmed the job out” to the local warlords. So, Osama got away. I have to wonder about all of this. Without Osama, there is no boogieman to rally around. So, the Bush contingent needs him; they can wave the flag, start wars, curtail rights and do whatever they please as long as the people are kept in a state of hysteria. With no Osama, there might not be any way to claim an Al Quda/Iraq connection (even tough that connection was never there) either. Once we had Osama and the Taliban, it would have been over.

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” -Hermann Goering

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” - James Madison

“Actions will be judged according to their results.” - Mohammad

3

Could - What do you base that on? Did we know exactly where he was? What would it have taken?

Should/Didn’t - That’s a plausible conspiracy theory but then why doesn’t Bush pull him out of a hat now?

“Once we had Osama and the Taliban, it would have been over” … Do you really believe that?

4

I don’t have the cite anymore. It’s been how long ago now? Besides, I’m tired of looking for cites. Let someone else do it for a bit. But, we literally had him surrounded, we had the Taliban on the ropes and finally toppled them, and Osama’s cronies were either running, hiding, or dying. Afghanistan WAS the strong hold of Al Queda. The whole country was ours. Then, we gave it all over to the locals and Osama vanished. Bush can’t pull him out of a hat now, because Bush let him go. Plain and simple. What would ithave taken at the time? Simple. Don’t job shop or outsource the capture to the local lords. Keep the Army and Marines right there until either a live or dead Osama is found. What sense did it make to back off? NONE.

Meanwhile, Bush tries to dissemble. Osama is important, no he isn’t, yes he is. Back and forth, flip, flop.

5

You know what? I’m going to give you some cites. Why is it the pro Bush people always ask for cites, yet never provide any of their own, or they send the rest of us on these damn paper chases?

There are others, but you get the drift. Funny, how they all say the same thing.

6

In April 2001 the administration released the government’s annual terrorism report with no extensive mention of Osama bin Laden as in prior years. A State Department official told CNN that "the Clinton administration had made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden.”

Similarly, at an April meeting of deputies Clarke urged a focus on Al Qaeda. Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz responded, “No, no, no. We don’t have to deal with al-Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.”

The Bush administration terminated a highly classified program to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the U.S. and even provided aid to the Taliban in 2001.

Newsweek reported that “In the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called ‘Catcher’s Mitt’ to monitor al-Qaeda suspects in the United States.”

Additionally, AP reported “though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months,” thus terminating the reconnaissance missions started during the Clinton Administration. (23)

Bush received an August 6, 2001 memo entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” which mentioned bin Laden’s desire and capability to strike the US possibly using hijacked airplanes. The CIA warned that bin Laden will launch an attack against the US and/or Israel in the coming weeks that “will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests.” (1)
The Bush administration prevented the release of details of the August 6th briefing in the report issued by the Joint Congressional Committee investigating the 9-11 attack. (1)

Gosh, I don’t think I ever said I’m not worried about Osama Bin Laden. That’s kinda one of those exaggerations. (3rd Debate)

In 2002 Bush said: “Well, as I say, we haven’t heard much from him. And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I–I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.”

“And [Osama Bin Laden is] just – he 's a person who has now been marginalized. His network is — his host government has been destroyed. He’s the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match…So I don’t know where he is. Nor — you know, I just don’t spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I…I truly am not that concerned about him.”

You gotta have a president who’ll pursue the terrorists

We’ve never let up on Osama bin Laden from day one

Bush will “. . . [f]ind terrorists where they train and hide.” (Campaign commercial)

“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.”

My take on all this is:

**Bush flip flops on the entire subject. This bogeyman is The Evil Mastermind Bent On World Destruction when it suits Bush politically. He is also an unimportant little nit that doesn’t matter when it suits Bush politically. he wants to keep Bin Laden around, so he can brandish him like a weapon whenever the rabble gets out of hand or asks too many questions. **

7

Hey there. have I answered your questions? What are your thoughts? I am extremely biased, but I think the cites back up my positions and assumptions.

8

I don’t see how your cites prove we COULD have gotten him Steve (nor do I think a cite one way or the other would ‘prove’ this case as no one really knows…they can merely speculate). SHOULD we have gotten him, focused on him? Sure to the extent we could do so, Afghanistan being Afghanistan. Finding one guy, and one paranoid guy who knows the ins and outs of covert sercurity in THAT terrain, even knowing aproximately where he was, would have been like finding a particular grain of sand on a beach.

Whether we could or not…or whether putting more folks in Afghanistan would have been either a good idea OR effective in getting Bin Laden…well, I’m unconvinced we should have or could have put enough troops into Afghanistan at the time to make much of a difference. Which is kind of why we relied on local forces to do the bulk of the heavy lifting on the ground.

Of course, none of this is to say that we were bright to then focus on Iraq…that was certainly a mistake and really had nothing to do with Afghanistan or terrorism directly. I think we SHOULD have focused more on locating terrorist groups in other countries, tracing the money flow, and taking steps to eliminate both. I doubt many folks who are opposed to the war would be thrilled with this course either (especially striking terrorist camps in other countries, or the other covert things we’d have needed to do to get at them), but at least it would be cutting more to the heart of the problem. I certainly don’t see how invading Iraq has really moved us forward in the WoT and a good case could be made that invading actually has made things worse.

-XT

9

My cites quite plainly say he was allowed to escape. This leads me to 2 different possible scenarios. Either Franks is one of the most incompetent generals EVER, in letting our top bad guy slip away, or he was told to let him get away by farming the job out. I was asked for cites. I provided them. I drew my conclusions long ago, and these cites were an explanation why. The various news accounts have NOT changed since back then. SHOULD we have gotten him? Hell yes. We should have brought back his bloody head on a pike, and paraded it up and down Times Square, and then hung it from the White House front gates for display.

Here are the main and most important parts of each cite…

Pentagon refused to deploy a cordon of conventional forces to cut off escaping Qaeda and Taliban members

misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda’s leader. … In the fight for Tora Bora, 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

Franks and other commanders relied on three Afghan warlords and a small number of American, British and Australian special forces

warned Franks and others that the two main Afghan commanders, Hazrat Ali and Haji Zaman, couldn’t be trusted, and they proved to be correct. They were slow to move their troops into place and didn’t attack until four days after American planes began bombing - leaving time for al-Qaida leaders to escape

10

Stellar work, SteveG1.

Great cites, reputable outlets. You da man.

11

Afghanistan and Pakistan are big countries. What if Osama was hiding in an apartment of the basement of a home? Kinda hard to search that big an area. And Osama surely had ground intelligence that would say where the invading US troops were. He could have relocated if the invaders were nearby.

The open issue is with spies on the ground the US could have pinpointed Osama? Dunno if the US had that many disloyal Afghanis and Pakistanis on the payroll.

12

This is a misquote. The actual text of the hadith says innama al-a‘mal bi-al-niyah, which means ‘actions are by intentions’. The concept of judgment seems to be implied, though not stated.

13

Should they have gotten bin Laden? That goes without saying. Hell, yes!

Could they have gotten him? I find myself comparing that situation with the search for Saddam Hussein. That took a fair amount of time and a huge effort. Had we put enough boots on the ground to check every 'fraidy hole in Afghanistan, we would likely have captured bin Laden.

I’m inclined to doubt that this administration deliberately let bin Laden go in order to provide a handy and durable bogey man. Those guys just aren’t up to such subtle thinking. What seems to have happened it that they were so hot to plow up Iraq that they simply lost interest in ObL.

14

The administration said later on that there was more to Al Qaeda than Bin Laden, and that’s one thing they’ve been undoubtedly right about. They could’ve said the same thing back then. It might’ve been even easier to keep following the Al Qaeda trail to Iraq if Bush could’ve said “see, we got rid of the Taliban and easily caught Bin Laden, so now let’s have another easy romp through Iraq.” The main justification for the Iraq war was WMD and the idea that ‘in this post-September 11th world, we can’t wait to be sure.’

I can buy that the local warlords might’ve let him go, but I don’t think any politician would ever have passed up the chance to catch a figure like Bin Laden. Seems to me they just underestimated what it would take to get the job done, and they’ve made that mistake more than once since then.

15

Saddam was hiding in a pretty big country, in a spider hole. We found him. His sons were on the run. We found them. Every day, the police can find a wanted criminal in an even bigger country, right here in the U.S. After WW2, we and the Allies searched the entire planet for Nazis and found them. One little old man with a mission (S. Wiesenthal) found several, all on his own. Osama had ground intel. So did we. But he didn’t have OUR people surrounded. We did have him trapped. Just go ahead and ignore everything that points to the obvious, which is, WE let him escape. You can find anyone. ANYONE. IF you want to badly enough.

16

Well, yeah, that’s exactly what happened. His intelligence told him that the US troops were sitting in their bases while they got more expendable people to do their dirty work. And he relocated by slipping a wad of cash to the mercenaries that the US had sent to flush him out rather than doing it themselves.

17

I’ve heard several hundred times from conservatives how Clinton could have gotten bin Laden and didn’t. And any conservative will tell you Clinton was an incompetent who gutted our military and intelligence. So if Clinton could have done it, why couldn’t Bush, after the 9/11 attacks made it the top priority in the nation and he had (according to conservatives) restored our armed forces and intelligence community, do at least as well? Is it because we didn’t torture enough people? Or maybe more tax cuts would encourage the investing community to find bin Laden? Or is it part of a conspiracy by married homosexuals?

18

OK, let’s go along with the pro Bush partisan “I don’t know anything and can’t read or comprehend” approach. Give me ONE respectable cite that demonstrates anything to disprove MY cites (Freeper is not one of them). Stop the biased questions and the search for loopholes. What if. What if… What if Osama had a blue suit, a giant S on his chest and red cape and boots too. Knock it off. Give me ONE good reason to believe that every effort was made, and every available resource was used to get him. Instead we had soldiers miles away sitting on their asses, local warlords (Osama’s buddies?) pretending to search, warnings which Franks IGNORED, and admissions or claims that there was an obvious way out provided for Osama to use. I gave my cites. I even underlined the important points for the reading impaired. Was it the grossest of incompetence, or were they NOT SUPPOSED to get him?

Osama is still loose. Al Queda is still operative. The Taliban was never completely eradicated and may be making a comeback. WHY? We had them by the throat. WHY did we not finish them all, once and for all? Give me some reasons and some cites to back it up.

19

Clinton could have gotten vs. Bush could have gotten … “slight” difference. Anybody else want to increase their credibility and point it out?

20

I agree with SteveG1, and he’s done good research. Still, that doesn’t mean it would have been so easy to get Bin Laden even with the full (rather than delayed, compromised, corrupted) cooperation of local leaders. A recent National Geogaphic Magazine article on Tora Bora and Waziristan focuses on how the combination of local sympathies for Bin Laden and the sanctity of giving refuge to anyone who asks for it would have meant that any householder who sheltered Bin Laden and later gave him up to U.S. authorities or their allies would be so scorned that his “life wouldn’t be worth an onion”. In other words, we would have had to have in place a huge number of forces, to be capable of doing door-to-door operations over difficult terrain.

Again, I agree with SteveG1 – we should have done much more – it was worth a try , at least. But it would still have been a long shot, with or without the help of local leaders.