TORA BORING

The world is moving on from the Tora Bora miniscandal, if it even qualifies as one. I’m going to post these links to and from Talking Points Memo anyway, just to be a completist — and to reinforce the notion that I’m right sometimes, which is always a relief.

I said retired Gen. Tommy Franks’ defense of our failed attempts to grab Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora — echoed by others, such as Vice President Cheney — was nonsense. Talking Points memo, with its superior although unpaid staff of reader/researchers, revives for the record:

A December 2001 article from The Christian Science Monitor in which an Afghan alliance commander says they had evidence bin Laden was in Tora Bora but now “don’t know where he is.” What Kerry said in mid-2004 has been the accepted narrative for far more than two years.

A March 2002 Monitor article noting that bin Laden broadcast his plans to stick to Tora Bora and “teach [the Americans] a lesson, the same one we taught the Russians.”

A Washington Post story from April 2002 saying that the Bush administration itself ...

... 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.

Here, here, here and here is some TPM analysis.

So there! Take that!