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Bin Ladens escape blamed on geriatric Bush hawks
[Iran Press TV Latest] The former US defense chief and his top commander withheld the correct military generalship and reinforcements required for the capture of al-Qaeda's number one, says a high-profile US report. As al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was "within the grasp" of the US servicemen, former defense secretary, Donald Henry Rumsfeld and former commander of the United States Central Command, General Tommy Franks refused to authorize them to block his escape route and disallowed the extra deployment needed for an effective assault, read a recent Senate report. Bin Laden, consequently, escaped from his alleged eastern Afghanistan hideout to neighboring Pakistan, the report continued. The former secretary had reportedly argued that extra logistics on the ground could turn the locals against the forces. The US invaded neighboring Afghanistan in 2001, alleging bin Laden's capture and associating the ruling Taliban regime with al-Qaeda, which Washington accuses of engineering the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. The failing mission has been invariably used as an excuse for prolonging the war. The US-led counterinsurgency operations have so far left many thousands of Afghan civilians dead while failing to enable the elimination or capture of any key militant leader. The report reasserted the widely-questioned justification, claiming that the alleged blunder had "altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism, leaving the American people more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today's protracted Afghan insurgency." Now divested of their authority, many former administration officials have, meanwhile, been depicted in various such reports as the culprits behind the US-led interventionism worldwide and the ensuing bloodshed. Posted by: Fred 2009-12-09 |
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