By any means necessary - Kerry will say anything to get elected....
Mickey Kaus -
I'd always figured Kerry was on relatively strong ground criticizing the "outsourced" approach at Tora Bora because he must have criticized it at the time. But Tom Maguire of JustOneMinute has come up with a transcript of a "Larry King Live" broadcast on Dec. 14, 2001, near the end of the battle, in which (responding to a question about why we weren't getting up in the caves and using "napalm or flamethrowers"**) Kerry appears to actually endorse a play-it-safe approach:
"But for the moment, what we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way." [Emphasis added]
If anyone has evidence of real-time Kerry criticism of the Tora Bora strategy (which may well exist) I'll be glad to reference it. ...
P.S.: Earlier in the same interview, Kerry generally praises the U.S.'s military strategy in Afghanistan, which heavily relied on proxies. ("I think we have been smart, I think the administration leadership has done it well and we are on right track.")
He certainly isn't critical of the "outsourcing." ... Nor was this interview at the beginning of the Tora Bora battle, when its contours were unclear. It was near the end of the battle, more than a week after bin Laden (by some accounts) had already escaped, at a time when even Donald Rumsfeld was having public doubts about our likely success. ...
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