Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed To Get Bin Laden And Why It Matters Today
A Report To Members Of The Committee On Foreign Relations United States Senate
John F. Kerry, Chairman
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
NOVEMBER 30, 2009
2. THE AFGHAN MODEL: A FLAWED MASTERPIECE OR JUST FLAWED?
A Shift in Attention and Resources
On November 21, 2001, President Bush put his arm on Defense Secretary Rumsfeld as they were leaving a National Security Council meeting at the White House. ”I need to see you,” the president said. It was 72 days after the 9/11 attacks and just a week after the fall of Kabul. But Bush already had new plans.
According to Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, the president said to Rumsfeld: ”What kind of a war plan do you have for Iraq? How do you feel about the war plan for Iraq?” Then the president told Woodward he recalled saying: ”Let’s get started on this. And get Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to.” Back at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld convened a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draft a message for Franks asking for a new assessment of a war with Iraq. The existing operations plan had been created in 1998 and it hinged on assembling the kind of massive international coalition used in Desert Storm in 1991.
In his memoir, American General, Franks later described getting the November 21 telephone call from Rumsfeld relaying the president’s orders while he was sitting in his office at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Franks and one of his aides were working on air support for the Afghan units being assembled to push into the mountains surrounding Tora Bora. Rumsfeld said the president wanted options for war with Iraq. Franks said the existing plan was out of date and that a new one should include lessons about precision weapons and the use of special operations forces learned in Afghanistan.
”Okay, Tom,” Rumsfeld said, according to Franks. ”Please dust it off and get back to me next week.”
Franks described his reaction to Rumsfeld’s orders this way: ”Son of a bitch. No rest for the weary.”
For critics of the Bush administration’s commitment to Afghanistan, the shift in focus just as Franks and his senior aides were literally working on plans for the attacks on Tora Bora represents a dramatic turning point that allowed a sustained victory in Afghanistan to slip through our fingers. Almost immediately, intelligence and military planning resources were transferred to begin planning on the next war in Iraq. Though Fury, Berntsen and others in the field did not know what was happening back at CentCom, the drain in resources and shift in attention would affect them and the future course of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
