Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
OT hahahaha, wow that was funny, you should be out on the circuit with jokes like that
Well if you want we could have a discussion on what scares you and I could argue why you are being unreasonable
Thanks, but specifically was not the case in that situation, seems to be working now, if it changes I will let you know
test
You live in Florida, what is the talk down there on radio and in the papers, you probably see a lot more state polls, who is leading, and who do you think will win Florida
I was surprised after the debate they did not announce one, but I think after the past 2, one right after Kerry announces Edwards as his VP pick, and the second right after the Democratic national convention, people have learned to tune them out
Well at least Ed you are the only conservative still posting over here, give you credit for that, all the others refused to pay the subscription price
The Polish President already said Bush lied and deceieved him
Matt, when a person replies to me it is not showing up in the mailbox, please let me know what is going on
Ed come on, be objective for one minute in your life, first of all, every one of those polls are within the margin of error, so they are essentially tied, secondly every one of those polls had Bush leading by anywhere between 5 and 11 points just last week, so your point is baseless.
If the Red Sox were behind the Yankees by 8 games and suddenly they won 7 in a row and the Yankees lost 7 and they were down 1 game, who would have the momentum
funny stuff, I forgot to mention the cbs/nytimes poll which shows the race even, the abc/wash post poll which shows bush up 3 among registered voters down from up 7, the zogby poll which shows bush up 1 down from up 3
not to mention Kerry has made gains in all character issues and among who is better on etc etc
of course nice lie on your part, Kerry basically erases the Bush bounce, wins the debate, and you claim the markets are up because of Bush,
are you crazy? Bush has had one of the worse weeks in his campaign
not to mention the markets were barely up today
Funny stuff, the day after Kerry won the debate the market went up, the day after two major polls confirmed Kerry was either tied or leading after being down between 6 and 11 according to same polls the market is up. You obviously are living in a cave.
Keep deluding yourself, check gallup poll, didn't they have bush up 13 recently, wow now it is even, and newsweek had bush up 6,now kerry up 3, and all of the gaps in iraq and terrorism are being closed
I'm sure if it was Zitboy's chicken a__ on the line he wouldn't be running to risk his life so that iraqi's could help themselves
Zitface the true chicken hawk
Thanks for the reply, I figured that, but since I saw it on the net, thought it would be good for you to address it
To All Is there a VIRUS on IHUB, check out this post I found on google groups
: Mark Buckles/Harlan Labs (contact@sbalnalrah.spoof.moc)
Subject: Virus and Spyware
View this article only
Newsgroups: alt.comp.anti-virus
Date: 2004-09-29 14:22:08 PST
My boss's computer was infected with the w32.beagle.aq@mm!zip
virus, and various bits of spyware and adware such as powerscan,
conscorr.exe, bxxs5.dll (and much more).
This seemingly happened while he was browsing a message board
called IDCC on the www.investorshub.com website.
He says that he did not download anything - how could this infection
have happened? How can it be prevented in future?
Note: he was running Norton antivirus software.
Thanks!
Best Regards,
Mark Buckles
Harlan Labs, San Diego
http://www.harlanlabs.com
Post a follow-up to this message
that is simplistic thinking, but then again that is how the president thinks, the insurgents include professional people according to reports on the ground, so how many are going to be killed, is it a quarter of the population, who are you killing, I guess you go by the simple notion that we can kill every terrorist
did it ever occur to you that a majority of iraq might not want us there, so what do you plan on doing, wiping out half the country
didn't work for France in Algiers and probably won't work for us in Iraq
learn Muslim culture then come back to us, they don't want non muslim help, don't you understand that even though most muslims were happy that Saddam was gone they were upset that it had to be done by America
we shouldn't be spilling blood for people that don't want our help, if saddam was a real threat then we would have to do it to protect us, but it is obvious he wasn't
anybody seen osama
your remark about lefties is funny, so what does lefties mean, do people have that stamped on their license, how do we know how to find them, I want to know so we can identify all of their core beliefs before we talk to them
now once we do find them, where does it say that most of them want us to fail in iraq, hmmm, has this been written anywhere, I guess you can read their mind, define lefty for us
hahaaha, zit you continue to prove your lack of intelligence, comparing the unprecedented growth of the stock market to the crash of 1929, are you smoking crack, why try to argue, you are obviously severely delusional
so none of Hoover's policies had to do with his loss of jobs, better read up on presidential history
oh and I love your comparison to world war II with the war on terror, oh god I'm laughing so much I might choke on my pretzels
hahaha, oh boy you are funny, a world war with 2 theatres of operation halfway around the world, united states loses 400,000 soldiers, about 40 million around the world, a per capita cost that blows away any other war in u.s. history, a whole economy geared toward the war production, which much of it run by women
it must be nice to live in zit's simplified world, he just throws crazy things out there like they are true
funny that Hoover pledged to continue with his tax cuts right after the stock market crash
Zit do you remember the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act which raised tariffs, this is widely believed to have worsened the Depression, same thing with his tightening of the money supply
Similar to Bush, Hoover would pronounce monthly that the economy was getting better, only to have the stock market fall even more
your 20 year high of economic growth is funny, the economy only grew a tremendous amount because it was in comparison to some of the worst setbacks, if you look at the real growth it was only average
The Clinton 8 year period was one of the most if not most successful of any President in terms of economic expansion
you are right about home sales and construction, probably due to low interest rates
by the way the stock market recovered the losses from 9/11 within 4 to 6 months, just about every stock was cut in half a few weeks after 9/11, just about every stock recovered to pre 9/11 levels by 6 months
8 year bubble, lol, well then if you have 9/11 then like a skilled President you react to the situation and get rid of your tax cuts, we have never cut taxes during a war
You have no credibility just like to throw nonsense and claim it as fact
Will Dick Cheney fake chest pain during the debate, then Bush can put a popular Republican to save his campaign
Well Zittie I could be wrong but don't remember democrats making cheney give up his stock, thought he did it voluntarily, i could be wrong but your record as a liar is well noted
Check out Newsweek poll Kerry ahead 47 to 45
Actually you are pretty scary throwing this nazi crap around, anyone who actually throws our president with this garbage needs their head examined, you are just as crazy as rush limbaugh, get some reality please
NEWSWEEK POLL BUSH LEAD GONE CHECK DRUDGE
NEWSWEEK POLL BUSH LEAD GONE CHECK DRUDGE
hey the real problem is the w.t.o. is corrupt, if they set fair minimum wages in the foreign countries that actually paid a decent wage one could live on then a lot of the companies would stop going over there, and if they did go over there they would improve those economies and in the long run help america, Nike is a joke, they have all their factories overseas and they pay their workers peanuts
yeah when i was sixteen, teenagers here have plenty of job prospects, most teenagers don't want to work
if any american wants to do those jobs they just have to wait on the same corner they wait at now
Bin Laden linked to Tora Bora
Lack of ground troops to hunt him called worst error of al-Qaida war
By Barton Gellman and Thomas E. Ricks / Washington Post
Comment on this story
Send this story to a friend
Get Home Delivery
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al-Qaida, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.
Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border. Though there remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December.
A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al-Qaida's leader. Without professing second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach in later battles, using Americans on the ground as first-line combat units.
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-Qaida fighters.
The Bush administration has never acknowledged that bin Laden slipped through the cordon ostensibly placed around Tora Bora as U.S. aircraft began bombing on Nov. 30. Until now it was not known publicly whether the al-Qaida leader was present on the battlefield.
But captured al-Qaida fighters, interviewed separately, gave consistent accounts describing an address by bin Laden around Dec. 3 to mujaheddin, or holy warriors.
Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, chief spokesman for Franks, acknowledged the dominant view outside Tampa but said the general is unpersuaded.
"We have never seen anything that was convincing to us at all that Osama bin Laden was present at any stage of Tora Bora-before, during or after," he said.
"Truth is hard to come by in Afghanistan," Quigley said, and for confidence on bin Laden's whereabouts "you need to see some sort of physical concrete proof."
OF COURSE THERE IS NOT ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CERTAINITY THAT BIN LADEN WAS THERE, BUT THERE IS CERTAINITY THAT THE MILITARY SCREWED UP, AND OF COURSE THE U.S. IS GOING TO DENY THAT THEY THOUGHT BIN LADEN WAS THEREE
U.S. Bombs Tora Bora Caves, Bin Laden Believed Near Compound
Saturday, December 08, 2001
STORIES BACKGROUND
•Profiles of America's Fallen Heroes•Marines Attack Taliban, Al Qaeda Forces•Rangers Come Home From Afghanistan•Pool Report: Suddenly War Feels Like War•US Soldiers Wounded in Bombing Flown to Germany•Omar Thought to Remain in Kandahar as Taliban Flee City•New Afghan Accord Already Facing Obstacles
TORA BORA, Afghanistan — U.S. jets pounded Afghanistan's eastern mountains Friday, flooding valleys and hideouts near Usama bin Laden's Tora Bora cave compound with thick dust and smoke.
Local tribes believe bin Laden may be in the midst of the relentless bombing. Local commanders claim to have overheard a tall man on horseback near Tora Bora inquiring in Arabic about "the sheik," which the commanders believe to be a reference to the Al Qaeda leader.
Hundreds of anti-Taliban forces have been attacking the compound this week in an attempt to rout out Al Qaeda fighters who retreated to the complex of tunnels and caves as the Taliban was pushed out of most of Afghanistan. The anti-Taliban forces have also been driven in their manhunt by the $25 million reward on bin Laden's head.
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. operation in Afghanistan, said American forces were working with local anti-Taliban militias and the Pakistani government to prevent senior Al Qaeda members from escaping across the border. He noted U.S. special forces were in the area.
"We are in coordination with Pakistan as well as with opposition forces to do the best we can in this terribly rugged terrain to prevent the escape of those leaders," Franks told reporters in Tampa, Fla.
Local commanders said Arab fighters had abandoned their main caves as the bombardment and ground attacks intensified, and had moved with their entire families into smaller caves higher in the mountains. Between airstrikes, fighters reported seeing the children of Arab guerrillas playing outside caves.
The Al Qaeda fighters rained mortar shells, rockets and bullets from their mountaintop positions, firing at pickup trucks packed with tribal fighters heading to and from the front lines. Tribal fighters responded with tank fire and mortar bombardments.
One of the commanders, Zein Huddin, said Friday night that his forces had intercepted Arabic-language radio traffic between the fighters in the mountains and allies in Kandahar before the Taliban abandoned the southern city.
"We have intercepted radio messages from Kandahar to the Al Qaeda forces here, and they ask, 'How is the sheik?' The reply is, 'The sheik is fine,"' Huddin said. He was convinced "the sheik" was none other than bin Laden.
Another senior commander, Haji Kalan Mir, said his men reported seeing a man who resembled bin Laden on Friday, riding on horseback at the front line with four deputies.
"He went riding back to (the village of) Malaewa after visiting some of his troops," Mir said.
A third commander, Haji Musa, said he didn't know about bin Laden, "but his son is still in the caves."
None of the reports could be independently confirmed, and U.S. officials say they are getting so many bin Laden sightings they don't know which are valid.
"I see, literally, dozens and dozens and dozens of pieces of intelligence every day, and ... they don't agree," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday when asked whether bin Laden was near Tora Bora. "One can't know with precision until the chase around the yard is over."
Nonetheless, the American military has focused intense bombing in the remote mountains near the Pakistani border. One tribal fighter said Friday that he was assigned to protect 20 U.S. Navy personnel coordinating airstrikes from the ground and that they were living in a schoolhouse at a nearby village.
A senior Pentagon official, Gen. Peter Pace, said special operations troops have started working with the tribal fighters in the area, relaying information to warplanes that can be used to determine bombing targets.
Commanders said there was no hand-to-hand fighting Friday, as there had been a day earlier when the tribal fighters seized two caves — and then pulled back to allow U.S. warplanes to soften Al Qaeda positions before attacking again.
"Today we didn't do much, we didn't have an attack plan," said Hazrat Ali, one of three commanders attacking the mountains. He planned a major push on Saturday.
Ali said three of his men had been killed since Tuesday, when the assault began.
The Qatar-based television network Al-Jazeera reported Friday that the Arabs had asked for a five-day break in the fighting to leave the area. It gave no details, and both the United States and Afghanistan's new administration have said foreign fighters in Afghanistan must be brought to justice.
That appeared to leave the Arabs with little option but to fight. The only trails out — across the border with Pakistan — were covered in deep snow.
During Friday morning prayers, a Muslim cleric from the Arabs' side called out over a loudspeaker to the tribal fighters across the front line. He pleaded with his "Muslim brothers" to cease their attack, asking them instead to send in the Americans.
The village of Tora Bora, which means "black dust," lent its name in the 1980s to one of the most well-known anti-Soviet guerrilla bases, which was carved into the side of Ghree Kil mountain with U.S. funding.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
RESPOND TO EDITOR E-MAIL STORY PRINTER FRIENDLY FOXFAN CENTRAL
SEARCH
FOX NEWS SHOP / E-MAIL US / UPGRADE CENTRAL / FAQs
Advertise on FOX News Channel, FOXNews.com and FOX News Radio
Jobs at FOX News Channel.
Internships at FOX News Channel (Applications are now being accepted for Fall internships).
Terms of use. Privacy Statement. For FOXNews.com comments write to
foxnewsonline@foxnews.com; For FOX News Channel comments write to
comments@foxnews.com
© Associated
How bin Laden got away
A day-by-day account of how Osama bin Laden eluded the world's most powerful military machine.
By Philip Smucker / Special to The Christian Science Monitor
TORA BORA, AFGHANISTAN - All 1,000 of the regional tribal leaders rose to their feet and shouted "Zindibad, Osama!" ("Long Live Osama!").
The Al Qaeda chief placed his right hand over his heart, the ethnic Pashtun sign for being honored, while 15 of his elite guards flanked him.
E-mail this story
Write a letter to the Editor
Printer-friendly version
Reporters on
the Job:
Philip Smucker gives you the story behind the story.
Related stories:
03/04/02
The hunt for Al Qaeda: Key dates
03/01/02
Does bin Laden matter anymore?
02/13/02
US raids against 'hold-out' regions stir Afghan anger
02/06/02
Bin Laden fled to Iran, cook says
01/28/02
After Tora Bora, US hunts alone
monitortalk:
Join a live chat with Philip Smucker Tues. at noon ET.
In the last public speech given at the Jalalabad Islamic studies center on Nov. 10, Osama bin Laden painted the battle lines black and white. "The Americans had a plan to invade, but if we are united and believe in Allah, we'll teach them a lesson, the same one we taught the Russians," he said, according to two tribal leaders who attended the speech.
Mr. bin Laden, with that speech, was laying his plans to stay a step ahead of the US campaign. He would travel to his favored fortified redoubt in Tora Bora, as the US expected him to, but he would also pave a way out. After his rousing speech, he bestowed cash gifts on key people who could later help him escape.
The US-led war in Afghanistan was going exceedingly well up to that point. The Taliban regime had been pushed from the northern half of the country; the capital of Kabul and much of the rest of Afghanistan would fall within the next few days.
It was a war like no other. In an evolutionary leap powered by Information Age technology, US ground soldiers were mainly employed as observers, liaisons, and spotters for air power - not as direct combatants sent to occupy a foreign land. The success of the US was dazzling, save for the fight for Tora Bora, which may have been this unconventional war's most crucial battle. For the US, Tora Bora wasn't about capturing caverns or destroying fortifications - it was about taking the world's most wanted terrorist "dead or alive."
In retrospect, it becomes clear that the battle's underlying story is of how scant intelligence, poorly chosen allies, and dubious military tactics fumbled a golden opportunity to capture bin Laden as well as many senior Al Qaeda commanders.
Moreover, as the US military conducts new strikes with its Afghan allies in nearby Paktia Province, sends special forces into Southeast and Central Asia - and prepares for a possible military plunge into Iraq - planners will need to learn the lessons of Tora Bora: Know which local leaders to trust. Know when to work with allied forces on the ground. And know when to go it alone. "Maybe the only lesson that is applicable is: whenever you use local forces, they have local agendas," says one senior Western diplomat, now looking at options for invading Iraq. "You had better know what those are so that if it is not a reasonable match - at least it is not a contradiction."
Bin Laden rallies followers
It was just two days before the fall of Kabul on Nov. 12, that bin Laden rallied his forces five hours east by road in the city of Jalalabad - a long-time base of his operations. It was mid-afternoon, bombs were falling all over the city, and tribal leaders had just finished a sumptuous meal of lamb kebabs and rice.
After a rousing introduction by an Arab speaker with wavy black locks, bin Laden entered the Saudi-funded institute for Islamic studies, which had been hastily converted into a Taliban and Al Qaeda intelligence center only days after the World Trade Center bombing.
He was dressed in loose gray clothing and wearing his signature camouflage jacket. His commandos were garbed in green fatigues, and their shiny, new Kalashnikovs were specially rigged with grenade launchers. As bin Laden held forth, several Arabs shouted from the middle and back. "God is Great! Down with America! Down with Israel."
Blending his theological and martial message, bin Laden made one final appeal. "God is with us, and we will win the war. Your Arab brothers will lead the way. We have the weapons and the technology. What we need most is your moral support. And may God grant me the opportunity to see you and meet you again on the front lines."
With that, bin Laden stepped away from the podium. The 15 guards closed ranks and shuffled out the door behind him.
Malik Habib Gul, who sat in the second row in the basement of the Taliban's intelligence headquarters that night, did not soon forget the evening; a lavish one by Pashtun standards. Like the other tribal elders in attendance, the chief received a white envelope full of Pakistani rupees, the thickness proportional to the 30 extended families under his jurisdiction in Upper Pachir, which lies against the Pakistani border. His "spending money," he says now, did not run out until last week. Mr. Gul says he received about the equivalent of $300; other leaders of larger clans received up to $10,000.
Flight to Tora Bora
By the next day, US aerial bombing became much heavier, and the mood was dismal in the streets of Jalalabad. The ancient trading center, situated on the old Silk Road, has long been a meeting place for Pashtun tribesmen who come from hours away - and from across the border in Pakistan - to barter weapons, purchase mules, and negotiate political loyalties.
"We saw Osama while standing here in front of our guesthouse at 9 p.m. on that Tuesday," says Babrak Khan, a Jalalabad resident who once worked as a guard at a nearby base for Islamic militants. Mr. Babrak says he's sure of the time, because he listened to part of the BBC Pashto language news broadcast that begins at 9:30 p.m. in Afghanistan.
As Babrak and three other city residents describe it, bin Laden rapidly exited the sixth or seventh car, a custom-designed white Toyota Corolla with an elongated, hatchback, in a convoy of several hundred cars. Bin Laden cradled a Kalakov machinegun, a shortened version of a Kalashnikov, as he barked orders to his man.
A little later, he stood beside a mosque under a tree, surrounded by about 60 armed guards, but quite visibly nervous. Maulvi Abdul Kabir, the Taliban governor of Jalalabad, was holding his hand, as is customary for Muslim men who are spiritually close. The two men were speaking briskly with the son of Younus Khalis, the city's aging patriarch with links to both bin Laden and the Taliban.
Not long after this rare sighting of bin Laden, the convoy, mostly four-wheel drive trucks but followed up with six armored vehicles in the rear, hastily left town. The fleeing Al Qaeda and Taliban members snaked their way down a bumpy dirt road that runs through ancient battlefields and tattered villages and into the Al Qaeda base.
In the foothills of Tora Bora, about 30 miles southeast of Jalalabad, the convoy split up. One group went to the village of Mileva and the other group to the village of Garikhil as they prepared to take up their positions in the nearby cave complex.
"They were scornful and in a hurry, and sat there on a stoop, dividing up the fighters and assigning them to different caves," says Malik Osman Khan, chief the village of Garikhil. "Our people were terrified, because we thought the planes would hit the Arabs as they stopped in our village. We sent the women and children into another village for their own safety."
The bombing heats up
On Nov. 16, three days after Al Qaeda and Taliban forces headed into their trenches, caves, and dugouts, US bombing of the base, which had been ongoing since October, intensified.
In fact, this was when reports of civilian casualties in the region began circulating. Wahid Ullah, the 16-year-old son of Mr. Khan, the tribal chief of Garikhil, was one of more than 100 civilians killed. He had been playing stickball on Nov. 16 or 17, when a cruise missile shattered the earth around his feet. "At first, we thought that the US military was trying to frighten the Arabs out, since they were only bombing from one side," Khan says.
US draws up its battle plan
As the US intensified its airstrikes on Tora Bora, US and Afghan helicopters started to arrive with supplies for the Afghans. Also - as was its pattern elsewhere in Afghanistan - the US began enlisting local warlords. Two - Hazret Ali and Haji Zaman Ghamsharik - would become notorious in the battle for Tora Bora.
Both Mr. Ali and Mr. Ghamsharik say they were first approached by plain-clothed US officers in the middle of November and asked to take part in an attack on the Tora Bora base.
"We looked at the entire spectrum of options that we had available to us and decided that the use of small liaison elements were the most appropriate," says Army Col. Rick Thomas in a phone interview from US Central Command Headquarters in Tampa, Fla.
"We chose to fight using the Afghans who were fighting to regain their own country," Colonel Thomas says. "Our aims of eliminating Al Qaeda were similar."
Ali is a short, cocky fighter who won control over most of Jalalabad when the Taliban vacated on Nov. 13. He then became security chief for the Eastern Shura, the self-proclaimed government here. With only a fourth-grade education, he can sign documents, but he has trouble reading them. As an anti-Taliban fighter allied to former Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Masood, who was assassinated just before Sept. 11, Ali and his band of hillbilly fighters fought against the Taliban in the north for six years. Local Pashtuns in Jalalabad complain that Ali's men went on a looting spree during their first days in town.
As a counterbalance to Ali, the US chose another powerful regional warlord, Ghamsharik, whom they had lured back from exile in Dijon, France, in late September. Known to many as a ruthless player in the regional smuggling business, Ghamsharik was given a rousing party on his return, including a 1,000-gun salute. He became the Jalalabad commander of the Eastern Shura. But he still didn't have the support of his own Afghan tribesmen (Khugani). Many of them, in fact, were proud to admit that they worked for Al Qaeda inside the Tora Bora base as well as in several nearby bases.
From the start, Ghamsharik was clearly uncomfortable with the power-sharing arrangement. Ali's men were Pashay - no relation to Ghamsharik's own Pashtun followers. He called his rival Ali "a peasant," and said he could not be trusted.
The rift between the two men would seriously hinder US efforts to capture Al Qaeda's leadership. Although backed by the United States, the Jalalabad warlords would have to determine by themselves - while sometimes arguing fiercely - how best to go after Tora Bora's defenders.
Moreover, in the early stages of the Eastern Shura discussions about Tora Bora, these leaders talked about "asking the Arabs to leave," not about attacking them outright. A key powerbroker, Maulvi Younus Khalis, a Jalalabad patriarch who supported bin Laden, had stacked the Shura with his own sympathizers. "The Americans can bomb all they want, they'll never catch Osama," he quipped to the Monitor on Nov. 25.
While ceding some power to the two competing warlords - Ali and Ghamsharik - Khalis, who had been temporarily handed the key to Jalalabad when the Taliban vacated, made sure that his personal military commander, Awol Gul, retained the heavy fighting equipment. Mr. Gul and another Khalis man, Mohammed Amin, traveled into Tora Bora on several occasions beginning Nov. 13, according to Ghamsharik.
The Afghan warlords estimated that Tora Bora held between 1,500 and 1,600 of the best Arab and Chechen fighters in bin Laden's terror network.
Ghamsharik said on Nov. 18 that the fight would be a tough one: "[Al Qaeda fighters] told us through our envoys that 'We will fight until we are martyred.' "
They also suspected that bin Laden himself would be directing the battle. After all, it was the place from which he had most successfully fought the Soviets in the 1980s.
And on Nov 29, Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC's "Primetime Live" that, according to the reports that were coming in, bin Laden was in Tora Bora."I think he was equipped to go to ground there," Mr. Cheney said. "He's got what he believes to be a fairly secure facility. He's got caves underground; it's an area he's familiar with."
An exodus begins
Meanwhile, in the weeks following bin Laden's arrival at the Tora Bora caves, morale slipped under the constant air assault. One group of Yemeni fighters, squirreled away in a cave they had been assigned to by the Al Qaeda chief, had not seen bin Laden since entering on Nov. 13.
But they say bin Laden joined them on Nov. 26, the 11th day of Ramadan, a warm glass of green tea in his hand. Instead of inspiring the elite fighters, he was now reduced, they say, to repeating the same "holy war" diatribe.
Around him that day sat three of his most loyal fighters, including Abu Baker, a square-faced man with a rough-hewn scruff on his chin."[Bin Laden] said, 'hold your positions firm and be ready for martyrdom,' " Baker told Afghan intelligence officers when he was captured in mid-December. "He said, 'I'll be visiting you again, very soon.' " Then, as quickly as he had come, Baker says, bin Laden vanished into the pine forests.
Between two and four days later, somewhere between Nov. 28 to Nov. 30 - according to detailed interviews with Arabs and Afghans in eastern Afghanistan afterward - the world's most-wanted man escaped the world's most-powerful military machine, walking - with four of his loyalists - in the direction of Pakistan.
On Dec. 11, in the village of Upper Pachir - located a few miles northeast of the main complex of caves where Al Qaeda fighters were holed up - a Saudi financier and Al Qaeda operative, Abu Jaffar, was interviewed by the Monitor. Fleeing the Tora Bora redoubt, Mr. Jaffar said that bin Laden had left the cave complexes roughly 10 days earlier, heading for the Parachinar area of Pakistan.
Jaffar, whose foot was blown off by a cluster bomb, was traveling with his Egyptian wife. He stayed in Upper Pachir one night, before fleeing north, then east toward the famed Khyber Pass.
Bin Laden phones home
Bin Laden, according to several fighters and the Saudi financier, later phoned back to the enclave, urging his followers to keep fighting. He also reportedly told them he was sending his own son, Salah Uddin, to replace him. Bin Laden's talk with his followers in Tora Bora just a few days after his departure may explain why US intelligence officials said that they thought they heard his voice on Dec. 10, probably on a short-wave transmission.
The escape accelerates
The slow but growing exodus from Tora Bora now became a mad rush. Mohammed Akram, who had occasionally cooked for bin Laden, says he was fixing dinner in a cave at the end of November, when a huge bomb exploded at the base and blew him some 30 feet back into the mouth of the grotto. Two of his colleagues were killed, and he, along with another Saudi and a Kurdish fighter, decided to flee.
His flight, he stated in February, began about the same day at end of November as bin Laden escaped. "We received a lot of Iranian currency, and the commanders distributed it to the soldiers," he said, adding that he had received 700,000 ($1,400) rials for his own personal use. "Our own Chechens were killing people who tried to leave so we left at night and traveled into Paktia [the province to the south] near to Gardez and onto Zarmat."
As panic overtook the fighters inside the enclave, local villagers who had been regularly paid off by bin Laden's men were available to help.
Malik Habib Gul, who had attended bin Laden's Nov. 10 speech in Jalalabad, says he was happy to arrange mule trains. He says the Al Qaeda fighters paid between 5,000 and 50,000 Pakistani rupees for mules and Afghan guides, which moved stealthily along the base of the White Mountains, over a major highway, and into the remote tribal areas of Pakistan.
"This was a golden opportunity for our village," he said in Jalalabad last week. "The only problem for the Arabs was the first 5 to 10 kilometers northeast from Tora Bora to our village of Upper Pachir. The bombing was very heavy. But after arriving in our village, there were no problems. You could ride a mule or drive a car into Pakistan."
He and other villagers say that from about Nov. 28 to Dec. 12, they probably escorted some 600 people out, including entire families. "Our main responsibility was getting people across the Kabul River at Lalpur. To do this, we had to cross the main road, but there was no one guarding it. To the south [in the direction of Parachinar, Pakistan], only walkers, mostly young fight- ers crossed. The snow was deep and the climb was difficult."
Intelligence lapses or flawed strategy?
Pir Baksh Bardiwal, the intelligence chief for the Eastern Shura, which controls eastern Afghanistan, says he was astounded that Pentagon planners didn't consider the most obvious exit routes and put down light US infantry to block them.
"The border with Pakistan was the key, but no one paid any attention to it," he said, leaning back in his swivel chair with a short list of the Al Qaeda fighters who were later taken prisoner. "And there were plenty of landing areas for helicopters, had the Americans acted decisively. Al Qaeda escaped right out from under their feet."
The intelligence chief contends that several thousand Pakistani troops who had been placed along the border about Dec. 10 never did their job, nor could they have been expected to, given that the exit routes were not being blocked inside Afghanistan.
The proxy war is launched
Meanwhile, back in Jalalabad, the Afghan warlords enlisted by the US to attack Tora Bora were also cutting deals to help the Al Qaeda fighters escape.
In the shoddy lobby of the Spin Ghar Hotel in downtown Jalalabad on Dec. 3, Haji Hayat Ullah - a member of the Eastern Shura who, according to both Afghan and Pakistani sources had long ties to bin Laden - asked for the "safe passage" for three of his Arab friends.
After a 20-minute discussion with Commander Ali, which was overheard by the Monitor in the empty hotel lobby, a deal was struck for the safe passage of the three Al Qaeda members.
About the same day as the 10-day offensive was launched - on Dec. 5 - nearly three-dozen US special forces, their faces wrapped in black and white bandanas, watched the fighting unfold from behind boulders on mountainsides, their trusted laser target designators in hand. They were "painting" the mouths of caves and bunkers inside the complex. The US bombing became markedly more accurate - almost overnight, according to Afghan civilians and local commanders.
The battle was joined, but anything approaching a "siege" of Tora Bora never materialized. Ghamsharik says today that he offered the US military the use his forces in a "siege of Tora Bora," but that the US opted in favor of his rival, Hazret Ali.
Indeed, Mr. Ali paid a lieutenant named Ilyas Khel to block the main escape routes into Pakistan. Mr. Khel had come to him three weeks earlier from the ranks of Taliban commander Awol Gul.
"I paid him 300,000 Pakistani rupees [$5,000] and gave him a satellite phone to keep us informed," says Mohammed Musa, an Ali deputy, who says Ali had firmly "trusted" Khel.
"Our problem was that the Arabs had paid him more, and so Ilyas Khel just showed the Arabs the way out of the country into Pakistan," Mr. Musa adds.
Afghan fighters from villages on the border confirmed in interviews last week in Jalalabad that they had later been engaged in firefights with Khel's fighters, who they said were "firing cover for escaping Al Qaeda."
As a Russian-made tank commandeered by US-backed Afghans blasted the valleys dividing snow-capped peaks, American B-52s rained down bombs from above, sending giant mushroom clouds that hovered over the pine forests.
The remaining Arab fighters - now reduced to a few hundred from the original 1,500 to 2,000 - continued to hold out, and could be overheard speaking on their radio handsets on Dec. 6. "OK. You can come out shooting," said one Al Qaeda fighter, speaking to another. "The US planes have flown out of the area again."
"The Sheikh [bin Laden] says keep your children in the caves and fight for Allah. Give guns to your wives as necessary to fight against the infidel aggressors."
But talk of surrender came quickly and unexpectedly on Dec. 11, amid heavy gunbattles in the bombed-out pine forests here. Arab fighters used an Afghan translator earlier in the day to convey their wishes: "Our guest brothers want to find safe passage out of your province."
Ghamsharik responded: "Our blood is your blood, your wives our sisters, and your children our children. But under the circumstances, I am compelled to tell you that you must either leave or surrender."
When Ali, whose men had paid Khel to guard the rear nearly two weeks earlier, complained that no deals should be cut, Ghamsharik shot back: "If you want to hold this ridge, send your own men up here. You are down there with the press and the pretty ladies, and I'm stuck up here." Both men chuckled.
On Dec. 13, Al Qaeda-backer Younus Khalis sent his own man into the fray - this time on the US side of the battle.
Awol Gul was calm and relaxed as B-52s pummeled a mountain behind him and Al Qaeda sniper fire rang out in the distance. "They've been under quite a bit of pressure inside there," he said. "It is likely that they have made a tactical withdrawal farther south. They have good roads, safe passage, and Mr. bin Laden has plenty of friends.
"We are not interested in killing the Arabs," Mr. Gul went on to say. "They are our Muslim brothers."
By Dec. 11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sounded unsure about how effective Pakistan's military could be in blocking the border. He said: "It's a long border. It's a very complicated area to try to seal, and there's just simply no way you can put a perfect cork in the bottle."
On Dec. 16, Afghan warlords announced they had advanced into the last of the Tora Bora caves. One young commander fighting with 600 of his own troops alongside Ali and Ghamsharik, Haji Zahir, could not have been less pleased with the final prize. There were only 21 bedraggled Al Qaeda fighters who were taken prisoners. "No one told us to surround Tora Bora," Mr. Zahir complained. "The only ones left inside for us were the stupid ones, the foolish and the weak."
Epilogue
While the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants has become increasingly invisible, it continues nonetheless. The ongoing fighting in Paktia Province, as well as the deployment of US troops to nations as far-flung as Georgia, Yemen, and the Philippines ensures that US pressure will stay on Al Qaeda's many cells - and that eyes around the world will remain open for "the Sheikh" and the $25 million bounty the US has attached to his head.
And while the US has taken justifiable pride in its ousting of the Taliban and supporting Afghanistan's fledgling interim government, President Bush's aim of catching the world's most wanted terrorist "dead or alive" has not been accomplished.
"There appears to be a real disconnect between what the US military was engaged in trying to do during the battle for Tora Bora - which was to destroy Al Qaeda and the Taliban - and the earlier rhetoric of President Bush, which had focused on getting bin Laden," says Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies. "There are citizens all over the Middle East now saying that the US military couldn't do it - couldn't catch Osama - while ignoring the fact that the US military campaign, apart from not capturing Mr. bin Laden was, up the that point, staggeringly effective."
Who's who at Tora Bora
MAULVI Younus Khalis: A patriarchal leader of the Jalalabad area and senior member of the Eastern Shura, the self-proclaimed government in the region. In the 1980s, he was a key ally to the US - and was even invited to the Reagan White House - during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Khalis later cultivated ties with Osama bin Laden, hosting the Al Qaeda leader when he returned to Afghanistan from Sudan in May 1996.
Hazret Ali: One of the two most powerful warlords under Khalis, and one of the two US point men in the fight against Tora Bora. Ali, with his strong ties to the Karzai government in Kabul, became the Eastern Shura's security chief after the fall of Jalalabad.
Haji Zaman Ghamsharik: The other key US pointman in the battle for Tora Bora. He returned from exile in France to become the Eastern Shura's Jalalabad commander. Ghamsharik's Khugani tribesmen (a Pashtun subsect) live in and near the White Mountains. The Pashtun, whom he represented, have divided loyalties among Khalis, Ali, and Ghamsharik.
Awol Gul: Military commander for the Al Qaeda-linked patriarch of Jalalabad, Younus Khalis.
Ilyas Khel: He worked under commander Gul during the Taliban era. When Ali took control of Jalalabad, he began to work for him. He knew Ali from Soviet-occupation days.
Haji Hayat Ullah: A member of the Eastern Shura with Al Qaeda ties. A personal friend of Osama bin Laden, Ullah ran orphanages in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Haji Zahir: Afghan commander, and the nephew of slain anti-Taliban fighter Abdul Haq. He is also the son of the new governor of Jalalabad, Haji Qadeer.
Malik Habib Gul: An Afghan tribal chief who attended bin Laden's last public speech on Nov. 10 and later helped hundreds of the Al Qaeda fighters escape.
STAFF
E-mail this story
Write a letter to the Editor
Printer-friendly version
back to top
Education
Reference Articles
Research Articles
Financial
Debt Consolidation
Car Insurance
Gifts
Send Flowers
Italian Charms
Gift Baskets
Italian Charms Sale!
Real Estate
Moving
Moving Companies
Mortgage
Mortgage Calculator
Real Estate
Travel
Hotels
Hotel Reviews
Make a donation
Purchase articles for as little as 15 cents each.
New! Subscribe to the Treeless Edition!
Subscribe: Daily-US only Weekly-outside US Gift subscription Friday edition School programs PDA edition Treeless Edition RSS feed
Free sample issue
E-mail Alerts
Terrorism & Security
Ethics
Decision2004
More topics...
Sign up now:
Travel
Hotels in UK & Europe
Discount Travel
Vacation Rentals
Hotel Savings
Event Tickets
Hotels
U.S. Hotels
Cruise Travel
Guide to Hotels
More Hotels
Vacation Packages
Business Resources
Web Hosting Directory
Financial Directory
Education
Trade Schools Directory
Shopping
Buy & Sell Worldwide
Advertise with us
Customer Service
In the Classroom
Classroom programs for teachers and students.
Home / About Us/Help / Feedback / Subscribe / Archive / Print Edition / Site Map / Special Projects / Corrections
Contact Us / Privacy Policy / Rights & Permissions / Advertise With Us / Today's Article on Christian Science / Web Directory
www.csmonitor.com / Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
Sources: bin Laden wounded in Tora Bora battle
April 18, 2002 Posted: 12:11 AM EDT (0411 GMT)
Bin Laden, right, appeared with top deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri, in an undated videotape aired Monday on Qatar's Al-Jazeera network.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Captured al Qaeda fighters say Osama bin Laden was wounded in Tora Bora last year and ordered his lieutenants to disperse in various directions from the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, according to high-level anti-terror coalition intelligence sources.
However, the al Qaeda prisoners contradicted each other when interrogated about bin Laden's possible injuries and whereabouts, and there is no independent confirmation that he was wounded in the battle.
The FBI Web site describes bin Laden as left-handed. But a videotaped statement from him released in late December -- after the Tora Bora battle -- shows bin Laden gesturing with only his right hand. His left arm never moves and his left hand is never seen in the video.
U.S. military officials said several al Qaeda detainees who have been questioned independently each told the same story -- that bin Laden was in the Tora Bora mountains in early December, talked with his al Qaeda fighters and then slipped out of the area with the help of local sympathizers.
CNN.COM SPECIAL REPORT
CNN NewsPass Video
Agencies reportedly got hijack tips in 1998
MORE STORIES
Intelligence intercept led to Buffalo suspects
Report cites warnings before 9/11
EXTRA INFORMATION
Timeline: Who Knew What and When?
Interactive: Terror Investigation
Terror Warnings System
Most wanted terrorists
What looks suspicious?
In-Depth: America Remembers
In-Depth: Terror on Tape
In-Depth: How prepared is your city?
RESOURCES
On the Scene: Barbara Starr: Al Qaeda hunt expands?
On the Scene: Peter Bergen: Getting al Qaeda to talk
But the Pentagon considers the stories suspect. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday he has not seen enough "solid evidence" that bin Laden escaped.
"We have seen repeated speculation about his possible location, but it has obviously not been verifiable," Rumsfeld said. "Had it been verifiable, one would have thought that someone might have done something about it."
Rumsfeld said it was "entirely possible" that bin Laden was in Tora Bora when U.S. forces began their air assault there last December, but "in terms of any solid evidence, there wasn't any. There isn't now." In addition, he said, "We have had three or four or five different stories from the same detainees in any number of instances."
CNN reported in March that intelligence gathering and reconnaissance intercepts indicated bin Laden escaped from the Tora Bora region late last year. U.S. officials have acknowledged the report prompted a change in strategy, pushing American troops to the forefront of the fighting to replace local fighters who may have had some loyalty to bin Laden.
Some senior Pentagon officials have said those fighters may have allowed bin Laden to slip across the border into Pakistan as the U.S. military began its air assault in the region.
Rumsfeld questioned how such a conclusion could be reached.
"My view of the whole thing is that until the lessons learned are known, I wouldn't be able to answer a question like that and it impresses me that others can from their pinnacles of relatively modest knowledge," he said.
U.S. forces continue trying to track bin Laden and al Qaeda loyalists in the rough terrain along the southeastern border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Officials said they believe the al Qaeda leader may be alive and moving across the border.
U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight
Failure to Send Troops in Pursuit Termed Major Error
By Barton Gellman and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 17, 2002; Page A01
The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year 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 have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border. Though there remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December.
After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the United States. A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda's leader. Without professing second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach fundamentally in subsequent battles, using Americans on the ground as first-line combat units.
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 did not perceive the setbacks soon enough, some officials said, because he ran the war from Tampa with no commander on the scene above the rank of lieutenant colonel. The first Americans did not arrive until three days into the fighting. "No one had the big picture," one defense official said.
The Bush administration has never acknowledged that bin Laden slipped through the cordon ostensibly placed around Tora Bora as U.S. aircraft began bombing on Nov. 30. Until now it was not known publicly whether the al Qaeda leader was present on the battlefield.
But inside the government there is little controversy on the subject. Captured al Qaeda fighters, interviewed separately, gave consistent accounts describing an address by bin Laden around Dec. 3 to mujaheddin, or holy warriors, dug into the warren of caves and tunnels built as a redoubt against Soviet invaders in the 1980s. One official said "we had a good piece of sigint," or signals intelligence, confirming those reports.
"I don't think you can ever say with certainty, but we did conclude he was there, and that conclusion has strengthened with time," said another official, giving an authoritative account of the intelligence consensus. "We have high confidence that he was there, and also high confidence, but not as high, that he got out. We have several accounts of that from people who are in detention, al Qaeda people who were free at the time and are not free now."
Franks continues to dissent from that analysis. Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, his chief spokesman, acknowledged the dominant view outside Tampa but said the general is unpersuaded.
"We have never seen anything that was convincing to us at all that Osama bin Laden was present at any stage of Tora Bora -- before, during or after," Quigley said. "I know you've got voices in the intelligence community that are taking a different view, but I just wanted you to know our view as well."
"Truth is hard to come by in Afghanistan," Quigley said, and for confidence on bin Laden's whereabouts "you need to see some sort of physical concrete proof."
Franks has told subordinates that it was vital at the Tora Bora battle, among the first to include allies from Afghanistan's Pashtun majority, to take a supporting role and "not just push them aside and take over because we were America," according to Quigley.
"Our relationship with the Afghans in the south and east was entirely different at that point in the war," he said. "It's no secret that we had a much more mature relationship with the Northern Alliance fighters." Franks, he added, "still thinks that the process he followed of helping the anti-Taliban forces around Tora Bora, to make sure it was crystal clear to them that we were not there to conquer their country . . . was absolutely the right thing to do."
With the collapse of the Afghan cordon around Tora Bora, and the decision to hold back U.S. troops from the Army's 10th Mountain Division, Pakistan stepped in. The government of President Pervez Musharraf moved thousands of troops to his border with Afghanistan and intercepted about 300 of the estimated 1,000 al Qaeda fighters who escaped Tora Bora. U.S. officials said close to half of the detainees now held at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were turned over by the Pakistani government.
Those successes included none of the top al Qaeda leaders at Tora Bora, officials acknowledged. Of the dozen senior leaders identified by the U.S. government, two are now accounted for -- Muhammad Atef, believed dead in a Hellfire missile attack, and Abu Zubaida, taken into custody late last month. But "most of the people we have been authorized to kill are still breathing," said an official directly involved in the pursuit, and several of them were at Tora Bora.
The predominant view among the analysts is that bin Laden is alive, but knowledgeable officials said they cannot rule out the possibility that he died at Tora Bora or afterward. Some analysts believe bin Laden is seriously ill and under the medical care of his second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, an Egyptian-trained physician. One of the theories, none supported by firm evidence, is that he has Marfan syndrome, a congenital disorder of some people with bin Laden's tall, slender body type that puts them at increased risk of heart attack or stroke.
The minority of U.S. officials who argue that bin Laden is probably dead note that four months have passed since any credible trace of him has surfaced in intelligence collection. Those who argue that he is probably alive note that monitoring of a proven network of bin Laden contacts has turned up no evidence of reaction to his death. If he had died, surely there would have been some detectable echo within this network, these officials argue.
In public, the Bush administration acknowledges no regret about its prosecution of Tora Bora. One official spokesman, declining to be named, described questions about the battle as "navel-gazing" and said the national security team is "too busy for that." He added, "We leave that to you guys in the press."
But some policymakers and operational officers spoke in frustrated and even profane terms of what they called an opportunity missed.
"We [messed] up by not getting into Tora Bora sooner and letting the Afghans do all the work," said a senior official with direct responsibilities in counterterrorism. "Clearly a decision point came when we started bombing Tora Bora and we decided just to bomb, because that's when he escaped. . . . We didn't put U.S. forces on the ground, despite all the brave talk, and that is what we have had to change since then."
When al Qaeda forces began concentrating again in February, south of the town of Gardez, Franks moved in thousands of U.S. troops from the 101st Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division. In the battle of Shahikot in early March -- also known as Operation Anaconda -- the United States let Afghan allies attack first. But when that offensive stalled, American infantry units took it up.
Another change since Tora Bora, with no immediate prospect of finding bin Laden, is that President Bush has stopped proclaiming the goal of taking him "dead or alive" and now avoids previous references to the al Qaeda founder as public enemy number one.
In an interview with The Washington Post in late December, Bush displayed a scorecard of al Qaeda leaders on which he had drawn the letter X through the faces of those thought dead. By last month, Bush began saying that continued public focus on individual terrorists, including bin Laden, meant that "people don't understand the scope of the mission."
"Terror is bigger than one person," Bush said March 14. "He's a person that's now been marginalized." The president said bin Laden had "met his match" and "may even be dead," and added: "I truly am not that concerned about him."
Top advisers now assert that the al Qaeda leader's fate should be no measure of U.S. success in the war.
"The goal there was never after specific individuals," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week. "It was to disrupt the terrorists."
Said Quigley at the Central Command: "There's no question that Osama bin Laden is the head of al Qaeda, and it's always a good thing to get rid of the head of an organization if your goal is to do it harm. So would we like to get bin Laden? You bet, but al Qaeda would still exist as an organization if we got him tomorrow."
At least since the 1980s, the U.S. military has made a point of avoiding open declaration of intent to capture or kill individual enemies. Such assignments cannot be carried out with confidence, and if acknowledged they increase the stature of an enemy leader who survives. After-action disclosures have made clear, nonetheless, that finding Manuel Noriega during the Panama invasion of 1989 and Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf War were among the top priorities of the armed forces.
The same holds true now, high-ranking officials said in interviews on condition that they not be named. "Of course bin Laden is crucial," one said.
In Britain, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram told BBC radio yesterday that bin Laden's capture "remains one of the prime objectives" of the war.
Staff researcher Robert Thomason contributed to
NOW COLIN POWELL SAYS WE WERE NOT SURE IF BIN LADEN WAS THERE, HE ADMITS THE IT WAS A DECISION ON THE GROUND BY COMMANDERS TO NOT USE GROUND FORCES
next debate is town hall format, any subject is up for grabs
It is definitely out there that it was a verified voice match
hahahah, who are you kidding, the republicans are the dirtiest in the political game, ask McCain about that
you're a funny guy, we fight them there so they don't fight us here, oh yeah that's it, there are no terror cells here because they are all fighting in iraq, you are clueless
the biggest tragedy is that bin laden and his top henchmen have all gotten away with the biggest attack on american soil, no way this guy gets reelected, and if he wanted to do iraq he should have finished the job in afghanistan, i still can't believe he got away with taking most of the troops out of there without bin laden, i guess that is what happens when you scare the american public with lies about a mushroom cloud
It has been well documented that the U.S. screwed up Tora Bora, I don't know what you were watching but we had a division right there and we were pounding those caves non stop, that is why those warlords negotiated a cease fire, they needed that time to get Bin Laden out
By the way you are full of it when you make it sound like the generals have full control, because right now we are fighting with our balls tied behind our back, we could not kill al-sadr, big mistake when he comes back even stronger, and we are not allowed to go into the cities and take them back