CIA Commander: U.S. Let bin Laden Slip Away

From Newsweek via MSMBC courtesy of the Daily Kos:

But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. "Bin Laden was never within our grasp." Berntsen says Franks is "a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was."

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This is not surprising at all. Armando over at the Daily Kos speculates that the reason the Pentagon didn't send troops after bin Laden is because they were being held in reserve for the Iraq invasion, and of course, that's entirely possible. My thinking, however, is that Bush doesn't really want to capture the 9/11 mastermind: bin Laden is far more useful politically as a supervillain who strikes fear in the hearts of Americans; ideally, frightened Americans will vote for Republicans, who have done a great job over the years of cultivating a reputation as hardcore badass motherfuckers who can kick Muslim butt far more effectively than the pussy-boy Democrats. After all, this is old hat to the Republicans; they used the same kind of fear mongering in the 80s substituting the word "communism" for "terrorism," and it worked really well. My prediction is that bin Laden will die a natural death, a free man, still US enemy numero uno. That's just the way the White House wants it.

For further explanation of all this, check out what I wrote last June, here and here.

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