Kerry's Rapid Response On Tora Bora

Team Kerry has a rapid response on Tora Bora. Or is that a "tepid" response? Mickey is not impressed.

Our most recent post, with many links and updates, is from Oct. 19; let's comment on this Kerry effort:

George Bush accused John Kerry of throwing out a “wild claim” about Bin Laden’s whereabouts in the fall of 2001. Apparently, George Bush thinks Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Myers were also making wild claims when they said that bin Laden was at Tora Bora in the fall of 2001.

Let's just roll the tape from the first debate:

Kerry: ...And they believe it because they know I would not take my eye off of the goal: Osama bin Laden.

Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn't use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords and he outsourced that job too. That's wrong.

Pretty clear - Osama was at Tora Bora and escaped. Here is Kerry from the third debate:

KERRY: Yes. When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.

Not quite as specific, but when placed with the first quote, we think we know what he means. And Kerrywas very clear at a rally in Nevada:

``Can you imagine trusting them when you have your 10th Mountain Division, the United States Marine Corps, when you had all the power and ability of the best-trained military in the world?'' Kerry told a rally at the University of Nevada-Reno. ``I would have used our military and we would have gone after and captured or killed Osama bin Laden. That's tough.''

Now, the Kerry Rapid response is to argue that Dick Cheney, Gen. Myers, and Paul Wolfowitz all said Osama was at Tora Bora. Well, yes they did, subject in each case to the sort of hedging and nuance that Kerry left out of his own pronouncement.

Cheney: "according to the reports that were coming in";

Myers: Can't be sure. But we think we know."

Wolfowitz: "Well, I guess there's a question what constitutes belief... we don't have any credible evidence of him being in other parts of Afghanistan, or outside of Afghanistan. But the kinds of reports that we're working on are very fragmentary, not very reliable. We're not talking about eyewitnesses who came in right afterwards and said, 'I saw him in such and such a place.' So--but the reports that we get, tend to leave him in that area.

Look, some people get confused about their own whereabouts pretty routinely. Shouldn't they hedge a bit when describing someone else's whereabouts? [UPDATE: As I was saying, people can move so quickly they seem to be in two places at once. Maybe Osama moved quickly too.]

As to the question of whether Kerry actually criticized the Afghan outsourcing contemporaneously, the Kerry Team has an excerpt of Kerry saying this:

SEN. KERRY: “Not just air attack. No, no. I'm talking about people on the ground, the very people I talked about earlier, the level of engagement here with either rangers or Special Forces…”

Please. We had Special Forces and Rangers on the ground at Tora Bora. A few days ago, Kerry was calling for the 10th Mountain, which had not yet been deployed to Afghanistan.

If someone can get a copy of the transcript, it might be interesting to see what Kerry meant by "the very people I talked about earlier". Otherwise, this excerpt weakens his case, rather than strengthens it. Citizen Smash discussed troop availability.

As further evidence that you ought to read at least a bit of what you link to, the Kerry Team pulls the Cheney quote from this Christian Science Monitor article.

One wonders whether they noticed this, a bit further down from the Cheney excerpt:

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.

The WaPo has a slightly different version of events from April 2002. And they update the second-guessing here. Very briefly:

Soon after arriving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Oct. 1, 2001, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers raised doubts about the war plan -- days from execution -- to topple the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Gen. Tommy R. Franks, then chief of U.S. Central Command, planned a single thrust toward the Afghan capital from the north.

Franks anticipated, correctly, that resistance from Taliban and al Qaeda fighters would collapse. He did not, however, position a blocking force to meet them as they fled. Some Bush administration officials now acknowledge privately they consider that a costly mistake.

As do we all. But are we blaming Bush for failing to overrule his generals, when they were not willing to overrule each other? Myers was the boss - he didn't need Bush's authority to change the plans. If Myers did not feel strongly enough about his objections to present them to Bush or overrule Franks, why blame Bush now? Other than the obvious reasons, of course.

That is some fine job by the Kerry people. Maybe it is the Backward Response Team.

Comments

[perfectsense]

As a Navy lieutenant, Kerry commanded five men and a small boat. His military performance was so pathetic, no one was sorry to see Kerry run home from Vietnam after three months of command. In fact, all of Kerry’s former superior officers have declared Kerry unfit to be CinC.

But, ever eager to criticize the military for personal gain, and after previously praising the use of Afghans at Tora Bora, Kerry is now denouncing these operations. The Tora Bora’s operation was well beyond Kerry’s skill set. Mountain operations are a bit different than making day trips cruising on a river in a small boat.

Kerry offers no proof that Osama was in the area. If he was, Kerry offers no proof that Osama escaped as opposed to being reduced to atoms from the heavy bombardment. Nevertheless, based on this empty bag, Kerry believes he should be President and Commander in Chief. Only the sophisticated and nuanced could be so stupid.