From The Department Of 20/20 Hindsight; John Kerry, Chairman

Now that John Kerry is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he has a useful platform for his second-guessing.  Kerry continues to confuse hindsight with insight, presenting a committee report on the failure of the US to capture Bin Laden at Tora Bora in December 2001.

We have kicked this around too many times.  First, Kerry is being a retroractive genius - no one has produced any contemporaneous criticism from Kerry of the Pentagon/Administration strategy in Afghanistan, but he gave a Larry King interview from December 2001 that can certainly be read as supportive (or see Kaus or Geraghty; Media Matters questions the context).  As a comic bonus, Kerry also ruminated about the importance of expanding the war beyond Afghanistan and cited the need to keep pressure on Saddam Hussein; I guess it was only later that he realized Saddam was a distraction and a Bush obsession.

Secondly, the new Senate report gives one paragraph to a point that I hammered later - why do we think that Osama would have waited and watched while US troops surrounded him?  This is from "Dalton Fury", a Delta Force major who was the senior US officer at Tora Bora, speaking to the Senate staffers (p. 22):

‘‘My opinion is that bin Laden would have left even earlier as soon as he received word that the U.S. troops were surrounding him,’’ Fury told the Committee staff. ‘‘I think he only stayed as long as he did because he thought the mujahedin would not aggressively pursue him.’’

Unless Osama got stupid up in those caves, I agree.  But the point is not addressed by either the Kerry staffers or the NY Times (pardon my redundancy).

MAYBE LATER:  Perhaps Kerry's staffers can chime in on Bill Belichicks's decision to go for it on 4th and 2 against the Colts.

Comments

[clarice]

Mr. O he dead, boss. Been dead since bora bora.

[bad]

John Kerry

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho

[BR]

Kerry's hindsight - looking through purple-colored glasses.

[Captain Hate]

I can't imagine any historian, no matter how badly things turn out, regarding Kerry as anything but a complete imbecile.

[Gregory Koster]

Not at all Cap'n. Failing upwards so effortlessly, conning the Navy into ladling medals onto him, snagging a Mass. Senate seat as Teddy's flunky, then latching onto a billion, is an impressive demonstration of the Peter Principle.

[Captain Hate]

GK, not to mention gulling nearly half the voters into believing that such a noxious gasbag who ran such a horrible campaign (he made Muffer Stalin-Rodham's efforts to connect with the common folk seem genuine) would make an acceptable CIC.

[Cecil Turner]

They finally get to it, here:

No one should underestimate the logistical difficulty and danger of deploying even specially trained troops into hostile territory at altitudes of 7,000 to 10,000 feet. Landing zones for helicopters would likely have come under fire from Al Qaeda positions and drop zones for paratroopers were few and far between . . .
CentCom went so far as to develop a plan to put several thousand U.S. troops into Tora Bora. Commanders estimated that deploying 1,000 to 3,000 American troops would have required several hundred airlift flights by helicopters over a week or more.
DeLong defended the decision not to deploy large numbers of American troops. ‘‘We didn’t have the lift,’’ he told the Committee staff. ‘‘We didn’t have the medical capabilities. [emphasis added]

DeLong, btw, is a transport helicopter pilot by trade (and former CG, 3d MAW), and an expert on this particular subject. The medical stuff is secondary, but the lift is a show-stopper.

Bottom line is that we got more troops there faster by using locals. Could fewer US troops have made a difference because their hearts were pure? Maybe. (I doubt it.)

[PD]

I can't imagine any historian, no matter how badly things turn out, regarding Kerry as anything but a complete imbecile.

Douglas Brinkley?

Before you laugh, remember this, about _Tour of Duty_: Joe Klein of Time called the book "stunning". (per Wikipedia)

*Now* you can laugh.

[Jack is Back!]

Geez, another waste of tax-payer monies to satisfy the unquenchable ego of the new senior comedian from Mass. All he had to do is get this and read it. Best account yet and also the most accurate since this guy was there in person dealing with all this stuff unlike going to fund raisers and being a jerk.

[srp]

This is why we need giant dirigible airlift capability. Also, it would be really cool and freak out the enemy.

[J]

Sadly, being a MA native, I must say if it comes from massachusetts, it must be rotten.

[MarkC]

Hey naysayers-KERRY WAS RIGHT IN 2004-you can laugh all you want,but he was right and Bush was a failure. The evidence now confirms this.

[Paul Zrimsek]

Armchair General Kerry reporting for duty!

[Terrye]

Yeah, well, if Clinton had killed Osama in the 90's it would not have been necessary to go after him after 9/11. In fact, there might not have been a 9/11 attack at all.

Everyone can play this game.

[Terrye]

markC:

No, the evidence does not confirm anything of the kind. The only thing this confirms is that the Democrats can change their minds more often than their underwear.

[Captain Hate]

KERRY WAS RIGHT IN 2004

About what? Did he say "Elect me or the donks will nominate an even bigger a-hole next time"? I'll defer to you if he was right about that because I consider it too close to call. btw, Bush got over 50% of the popular vote against Lurch, something Slick couldn't pull off even against Bob Dole.

[Joseph Brown]

Mark, spoken like a true "toe the line Democrat".
Oh wait, Kerry was right about what in '04? I'm a southerner, we want facts, not BS.

Cecil, I agree with you to a point. Exactly how do we know how many of the local militias/A'stan Army are true to their leaders and not Talban supporters?

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Hey naysayers-KERRY WAS RIGHT IN 2004-you can laugh all you want,but he was right and Bush was a failure. The evidence now confirms this.

Okay, JOM, I promise I'm counting to ten. Breathe deep Sara, breath deep.

[reliapundit]

gwb should have nuked tora bora.

saddam would've converted to buddhism.
iran would've become sunni.

by fighting with "limited" warfare we have ceded too much to the enemy.

plus: the msm and the left has been and remains a fifth column.

with an adversary which won;t use all its weapons, and with a powerful fifth column - (which now runs the WH an Congress and the MSM) - the enemy cannot lose very easily.

and might win.

yes win: they might win in pakistan and afghanistan and palistan and kashmir and south philippines and so on.

just as the commies took SE Asia after the dems/doves pulled the plug on the SVG in 1975 - two years after the last US combat troop exited Vietnam.

[Dennis D]

Kerry has said many times that terrorism is a police issue not a military issue. Suddenly he thinks massive military force would have been the answer? Kerry has also said many times that Bush acted alone like a cowboy without a coalition. But when he used Northern Alliance fighters Kerry said Bush outsourced the Military.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Okay, I can't stand it. John Fin' Coward Kerry is not only one of the stupidest men in politics, he is a pathological liar and total snake. He should be serving a life sentence for treason.

[Terrye]

Sara:

Well, you tried, that is all anyone can ask.

[clarice]

Cecil--Imagine an airlift fromOkinawa..

[sbw]

Sara, as seamy as Kerry's lies may be, I can't abide his and his wife's Tides Foundation money laundering support of questionable causes.

[Jane]

Halp uz Jon Carey, we R 2 stoopid to no 4 Rselfs

[drjohn]

Yeah, and Osama would never have gotten to Tora Bora if Clinton had taken him from the Sudanese in 1995.

Lurch missed that one.

[pagar]

Sara @11:36AM

No truer words were ever spoken.

[LTC John]

Osama has been Purina Vulture CHow for many, many moons. Now, if Sen. Kerry knows otherwise, pray, tell us where he is. Perhaps he used a magic hat to escape to Cambodia?

[N/A]

Yeah, and Bush said he was not that concerned about him (Bin Laden). If not, why were we over there, if not to capture him and his crew.

Of course, Kerry is an idiot, as are most politicians. But to pretend that the war on terror is anything more than a fraud on the American people is just as idiotic as anything coming from Mr. Kerry.

[bgates]

N/A - did Bush say he wasn't that concerned about bin Laden's "crew"?

By the way, we weren't over there to "capture" anybody, necessarily.

What do you think the war on terror is for?