This is an update/revision of a diary originally posted 10/24/2009. This is the final 12/30/2010 version.
Injustice in American foreign policy is a primary cause of the terror against us. We will not end terror without justice and a return to American ideals. (1)
Terror must be fought with law enforcement. It is not primarily a military problem (2). A million men-at-arms are required to fight conventional wars and insurgencies as in Afghanistan and Iraq. The FBI, CIA, other intelligence services, and the military’s Special Forces are required to fight terror. The deployment of hundreds of thousands of our troops indicates we are fighting for some purposes other than stopping terror – purposes such as empire, cheap natural resources, and war profits for those who have contrived this war on terror.
We cannot now bring many Guantanamo detainees to trial because we did not build the legal cases necessary to prosecute them. Only 23 of 770 Guantanamo detainees had been charged with war crimes as of October 2008 (3).
Torture was used to build the lie. It is unreliable, counter-productive, and not a means to the truth. Torture was used to get Guantanamo detainees to confess and implicate others whether or not they and those they implicated were guilty. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi’s torture in Egypt produced the lie that Saddam Hussein trained al Qaeda in biological and chemical weapons (4). Abu Zubaydah while subjected to torture/ waterboarding told his interrogators that al-Qaeda had links with Saddam Hussein (5). These lies helped rationalize the Iraq war.
The Bush administration refused to fight and win the war on terror. They intentionally allowed al-Qaeda and bin Laden to escape Afghanistan in December 2001 and subsequently refused to take the actions necessary to capture or destroy them. The Administration, after being clearly briefed that “the back door was open,” refused to send 1,200 marines to Tora Bora (6), refused to authorize 800 Rangers or alternately mines to block the passes at Tora Bora, and then fired the CIA station chief in the middle of the operation. (7,8) If al-Qaeda and bin Laden had been captured or destroyed in December 2001, the war on terror would have come to a premature end, leaving no quasi-rationalization for perpetual war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and less quasi-rationalization for a possible future attack on Iran.
Conclusion: The “war on terror” as a lie. It was used as cover for other purposes in a gross contravention of American ideals. America is existentially threatened by those who have contrived this war on terror - our domestic enemies, not by foreign terrorists.
See the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s 11/30/2009 Report on Tora Bora at:
http://foreign.senate.gov/...
The Committee concluded the escape from Tora Bora was a senior management failure, but the senior managers they faulted were Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and CentCom General Franks not President Bush and Vice President Cheney who were fully informed of the situation. See footnotes 6, 7, and 8 on Tora Bora.
Sources and Footnotes:
(1) Author’s notes: Stopping Terror with Justice
The “Big Truth” is that the war on terror is a lie; we are fighting for other purposes in a gross contravention of American ideals. Justice in American foreign policy would eliminate 90% of the terror against us. The Muslim world dislikes us for many substantive reasons, including the following:
• Our aid to Egypt’s Mubarak and petrodollars to the Arab monarchies enable them to oppress their people.
• We have done grave harm to the people and state of Iran, while they have done little harm to us. We overthrew the popular prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddeq, in 1953 and replaced him with the Shah who with his Savak secret police oppressed his people for a generation. We supported Iraq, the clear aggressor, in the 1980s Iraq/ Iran war, and 400,000 Iranians died. In 1979 Iran took Americans hostage. One of their primary demands was that we not interfere in their internal affairs. Their actions were not unreasonable given our actions in 1953, and all hostages came home.
• We supported an arms embargo of Bosnia that left Serbs well armed and Muslims less able to defend themselves against genocide, systematic rape, and ethnic cleansing. In addition, we allowed Karadzic and Mladic, the President and General of the Bosnian Serb Republic, to live in NATO controlled areas with impunity for years even though they were two of the most egregious, genocidal terrorists on the planet.
• We have helped pay for Israel’s aggression in the Occupied Territories for a generation. The settlement of 500,000 Israelis East of the green line is aggression and/or conquest. These terms apply.
• We committed unprovoked aggression against Iraq, and John Hopkins University Reports estimate hundreds of thousand of Iraqis have died.
Actions such as these have combined to create the hatred against us. But, we can eliminate this hatred and its resultant terror with justice. Where America has been in error, we must recognize those errors and make amends. We don’t need to spend the additional hundreds of billions we have been spending since 9/11 on defense, security, and intelligence. We don’t need to be occupiers and torturers. We don’t need an empire to be secure – quite the opposite. We’re creating more terrorists than we are eliminating. We don’t need to give up our privacy and our freedom. We don’t need a strong defense more than we need to be strong in the defense of truth and justice.
(2) Rand Study – “How Terrorist Groups End”
http://www.rand.org/...
The Study’s authors conclude that policing and intelligence, rather than military force, should form the backbone of U.S. efforts against al Qa'ida. And, U.S. policymakers should end the use of the phrase “war on terrorism” since there is no battlefield solution to defeating al Qa'ida.
Author’s notes: The destruction of al Qaeda camps and sanctuaries in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries has and will require military action. For example, the battle of Tora Bora was a military operation against up to 1,000 primarily al-Qaeda fighters including terrorists and insurgents.
Al-Qaeda is both a terrorist and an insurgent organization. Terrorism by itself cannot be an existential threat to a government. Terrorism supporting an insurgency can be such a threat. “The (al-Qaeda) training camps… though they turned out a few thousand terrorists; they turned out a hundred thousand or more insurgents. The graduates, in turn, trained tens of thousands more insurgents after returning home.” (Imperial Hubris by Michael Scheuer, Potomac Books - Paperback edition p. 222)
(3) The Guantanamo Effect by Laurel Fletcher and Eric Stover 2009
(4) 5/12/2009 Newsweek web exclusive http://www.newsweek.com/...
“Death in Libya” by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
http://www.newsweek.com/...
by Michael Isikoff 5/11/2009
(5) 11/9/2010 Guardian UK -- British deny George Bush's claims that torture helped foil terror plots. By Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Black
Update - FBI Agent Ali Soufan was the first to interrogate Zubaydah after his 2002 capture in Pakistan. Soufan has condemned the CIA for waterboarding a prisoner he considered cooperative. One official said most all of the critical threat-related information from Zubaydah was obtained during the period he was questioned by Soufan well before he was interrogated by the CIA and waterboarded 83 times. (Source: Classified 2014 Senate Report by the Senate Intelligence Committee per Washington Post article “Report: CIA misled on interrogations” in the 4/1/2014 SDUT p.A1.)
(5 ½) On 11/21/2001 Bush ordered Rumsfeld to update plans for an attack on Iraq. Rumsfeld called Franks while he and an aide were working on plans for air support at Tora Bora and ordered Franks to update Iraq plans and get back to him in a week. The shift in resources from Afghanistan to Iraq began even before Tora Bora.
Source: http://foreign.senate.gov/... quoting Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward and American General by Tommy Franks.
(6) The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind Excerpts:
Hardcover edition
p. 58-59 Hank Crumpton headed up the CIA’s Afghan campaign from Langley. He briefed the President in late November 2001:
“…Crumpton…showed Bush how the Campaign’s prime goal- to capture bin Laden- was in jeopardy.”
“…Bush asked about the passage to Pakistan. Musharraf had assured the administration…that his troops would seal the passages into Pakistan, the most logical escape route. Crumpton, using his map, showed how the border between the countries was misleading, that the area on the Pakistan side of the line was a lawless, tribal region that Musharraf had little control over. In any event satellite images showed that Musharraf’s promised troops hadn’t arrived, and seemed unlikely to appear soon.”
“What’s more, Crumpton added, the Afghan forces were ‘tired and cold and, many of them are far from home.’ They were battered from fighting in the south against Taliban forces, and ‘they’re just not invested in getting bin Laden.’”
“A few days before, on November 26, a force of about 1,200 marines… had settled around Kandahar… Crumpton, in constant contact with the Military’s CENTCOM center in Tampa, Florida, had told General Tommy Franks over the past week of the concerns of the CIA’s managing operatives in Afghanistan that “the back door was open.” He strongly urged Franks to move the marines to the cave complex. Franks responded that the momentum of the CIA’s effort to chase and corner bin Laden could be lost waiting for the troops to arrive; and there was concern marines would be mired in the snowy mountains.”
“As Crumpton briefed the President- and it became clear that the Pentagon had not voiced the CIA’s concerns to Bush- he pushed beyond his pay grade. He told Bush that “we’re going to lose our prey if we’re not careful,” and strongly recommended the marines, or other troops in the region, get to Tora Bora immediately. Cheney said nothing.
Bush, seeming surprised, pressed him for more information. ‘How bad off are these Afghani forces really? Are they up to the job?’
‘Definitely not, Mr. President,’ Crumpton said. ‘Definitely not.’”
p. 74 “Classified CIA reports passed to Bush in his morning briefings of early December, however, warned that ‘the back door is open’ and that a bare few Pakistani army units were visible gathering near the Pakistani border. None had crossed into Afghanistan, a fierce tribal area Pakistan had always been reluctant to enter.”
(7) Jawbreaker by Gary Berntsen Excerpts:
Crown Publishers / New York - Original Hardcover edition
Gary Berntsen was the CIA station chief in East Afghanistan in 2001. He documented the ineffectiveness of Afghan troops and repeatedly requested 800 Rangers to block the passes between Tora Bora and Pakistan. His requests were denied, and he was relieved in the middle of the operation. Al-Qaeda was allowed to escape to Pakistan.
p. 211 Colonel Alexander was a SF (Special Forces) Colonel working with CIA Special Activities Division for the past two years. “He’d also been part of multiple plans to capture bin Laden during 1999 and 2000, all of which had been canceled at the last minute.”
p. 239 “Two days before the fall of Kabul (on November 12), the London Sunday Times reported that the al-Qaeda leader was seen entering Jalalabad in a convoy of white Toyota trucks surrounded by commandos… At mid-afternoon as US bombs fell on the city…”
“…bin Laden…left in a convoy of four wheel drive vehicles.”
“This same convoy of approximately two hundred Toyotas and Land Cruisers was seen two days later passing through the village of Agam two hours south.”
p. 241 “On the night of November 23rd Northern Alliance sources claimed that two Pakistani planes landed in Kunduz under the cover of darkness to extract key Pakistani advisors to the Taliban and several high-ranking Taliban officials. I had no way to confirm this, but wasn’t surprised. Pakistan’s ISI Directorate had helped create the Taliban and had been a close ally of their government for years…”
Tora Bora
p. 275 “From the start it was clear that the men leading this new Afghan force did not have the same desire we did to pursue and destroy al Qaeda. And many of the foot soldiers were followers of local religious leader Maulawi Mohammad Younus Khalis, who had instructed them to allow al-Qaeda to escape.”
p. 290 “Day and night, I kept thinking, We needed US soldiers on the ground! We need them to do the fighting! We need them to block a possible al-Qaeda escape into Pakistan! I’d sent my request for 800 US Army Rangers and was still waiting for a response. I repeated to anyone at headquarter who would listen: ‘We need Rangers now! The opportunity to get bin Laden is slipping away!!’”
“…I’d made it clear in my reports that our Afghan allies were hardly anxious to get at al-Qaeda in Tora Bora. So why was the US military looking for excuses not to act decisively? Why would they want to leave something that was so important to an unreliable Afghan army that’d been cobbled together at the last minute? This was the opportunity we’d hoped for when we launched this mission. Our advantage was quickly slipping away.”
p. 296 Tora Bora 12/14/2001 Berntsen is relieved.
(12/9/2001) “I heard Hank clear his throat. ‘We’ve selected a permanent chief which will allow you to return to your post in South America.’… ‘It’s Rich the chief of (Alec Station),’ Hank answered… ‘He should get to you by the fourteen of December.’ That was five days away.” (Richard Blee was head of Alec Station, the Bin Laden Issue Station)
p. 297 “… Now that we finally had bin Laden and his al-Qaeda cadres trapped in the White Mountains why was headquarters pulling us out? And why was Washington hesitant about committing troops to get bin Laden? These were the questions that kept me up at night.”
(8) Kill Bin Laden by Dalton Fury Excerpts:
St. Martin’s Press/ New York - Hardcover edition
Dalton Fury is the nom de plume of the Major in charge of Delta Force on the ground at Tora Bora.
p. XXIV “At the end of the day, the men and women farther up the ladder normally take the word and recommendations of us- the guys on the ground. At some critical times, that did not happen with the complex fight in Tora Bora. Instead, at times, we were micromanaged by higher-ups unknown, even to the point of being ordered to send the exact coordinates of our teams back to various folks in Washington.”
“The muhj (Mujahideen) allies turned their guns on our boys to stop an advance.”
“When we arrived in Afghanistan in December 2001, the US was pulling troops out of the area in a weird ploy to trick Usama bin Laden while stripping us of a quick reaction force.”
“The muhj… routinely left the battlefield when it got dark, at times abandoning our small teams in the mountains.”
p. 72 “Then we were slammed by a silly deception plan that had been dreamed up by parties unknown. The majority of the Rangers and our Delta teammates were being sent home! Somebody had decided to try and fool Usama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Taliban into thinking that the Joint Special Operations Task Force had left the theater of operations, so that bad buys would let down their guard. The naïveté’ of that idea still boggles my mind today.
‘Aren’t we at war?’ we asked. Why were we not pouring all available assets in Afghanistan, rather than withdrawing our strength?”
p. 75 “Where were the satellite photos? Where were those maps of the cave entrances?”
p. 76-77 “There was another intriguing option, and we liked it enough to plan it out. What about going in the back door, across the 14,000 foot mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border? What if several teams could insert safely by helicopter into Pakistan, on the far side of the highest Tora Bora peaks. They would have bottled oxygen and acclimate themselves as they ascended even higher, and once they crested the peaks and found any sign of al Qaeda, they would be in business.
The commandos would own the high ground and could accurately target bunkers and cave openings with lasers for US warplanes to strike them with relative impunity.
A tactical plan drawn up by the Delta experts is rarely denied, and in fact I cannot remember anyone ever saying no once Delta determined what it needed to do to accomplish its assigned mission. This one worked its way up through our various commanders, but somewhere way, way above us, it was denied. We would not be allowed to infiltrate through Pakistan.
Any plan has negatives, including this one. Just re-supplying such recon teams with water, ammunition, and radio batteries would have been a tall order. That did not mean, however, that we should not do it. We were Delta and we could overcome such things. Having Delta guarding the far side of the mountain passes, closing the ring, would have made a huge difference. But our plan was shot down.”
p. 78 “…the air fleet was being downsized in a strange attempt to fool the terrorists.”
“Ashley (Delta Force Squadron Commander of Fury’s team) wanted to make those possible exit routes even more dangerous by dropping some CBU-89 Gator mines into the passes. The Gators would spread a minefield that would both deny enemy foot soldiers their escape routes and also knock out vehicles, leaving the enemy trapped and shaping the battlefield more to our liking.
Even this logical request was disapproved at some higher level, most likely even above the four-stars at CENTCOM.”
p. 210-215 December 12, 2001 An alleged al Qaeda surrender
Haji Zaman Ghamshareek – Pashtun warlord who controlled Jalalabad and was one of the senior Afghan commanders at Tora Bora. He later fled the country and was on the run when this book was written.
MSS Grinch – Mission Support Site MSS under the command of Sergeant Major Jim code named Grinch. The mission consisted of 25 American and British commandos.
“The (local) commander said that al Qaeda had thrown in the towel! A full surrender of all al Qaeda forces was about to take place!
As Jim’s fury grew, the local commander raised Zaman on his radio, and the warlord himself issued an order that the foreign commandos were not to proceed any farther into the mountains.
‘Whatever it takes,’ Zaman said in Pashto. ‘Under no circumstances are the Americans allowed to attack al Qaeda. We must see the negotiations through.’
…Jim knew the surrender gambit was nonsense, and said so. He responded that he had his own orders and intended to see them through…Within twenty minutes after hearing Zaman insist that Americans would not be allowed to take another step, Jim and MSS Grinch began humping up the ridgeline.
They had covered only about fifty meters when Zaman’s men appeared on the high ground and leveled their weapons- eighty AK-47s- at the commandos… the odds in a fire fight were probably about even… but getting into a shootout with your supposed allies was not the most diplomatic of moves. So MSS Grinch had little choice but to hold in place and let the cease fire situation play out a little more. An hour passed uneventfully except for the commandos stewing about being held back.
A few minutes after 6:00 AM, Zaman arrived with another dozen of his fighters… he took full credit for arranging the surrender…
Jim couldn’t figure out just yet who was doing the stalling. Was al Qaeda using Zaman to buy time? Or could Zaman perhaps be in cahoots with al Qaeda and delaying the fight to allow the enemy to consolidate its forces, reposition, or even escape?
…Jim intuitively decided that Zaman was dirty.”
…While Jim was dealing with Zaman, I dialed up Ashley on the satellite phone and filled him in. He agreed that we had to let the alleged surrender run its course until 5:00 PM, since we really had no choice.”
p. 243 “With the two original observations posts forced to shut down because of the advancing… forces… an opportunity presented itself to increase the relentless pursuit of bin Laden.
We now had twelve Green Berets out of a job (They had manned the posts which were now too far in the rear to be effective.), and several of General Ali’s subordinate commanders … were begging for commandos to direct bombs along their particular axis of advance. We wanted to oblige, as this would give us better visibility and at the same time provide firm locations on each group of muhj. With the Green Berets from Cobra 25 (one of the posts) now available, problem solved. Or so I thought. (General Hazret Ali was Zaman’s senior warlord.)
The decision to not allow them to enter the mountains dumbfounded me and frustrated the quiet professionals from Cobra 25. The Green Berets were now out of the fight completely…”
p. 246-247 “The dreadful weather also was playing havoc with some of the aircraft flying missions to blast the mountainous position, and visibility would change by the hour. We had to replace the fire support of those planes during the bad weather with some organic all-weather assets as soon as possible. The Rangers back at Bagram owned just such weapons, and we put in several requests from some Ranger mortars. Request denied. The reasons elude me still, particularly, since some of their officers told me that they were anxious to comply and get into the fight.”
p. 248 “When MSS Grinch had moved into the mountains days earlier, we had been unable to locate or bargain for donkeys (to move supplies). MSS Monkey had some, but even a donkey had its limits in this place. Once Grinch entered the radically steep terrain where they were now fighting, donkeys wouldn’t have helped at all.
We had another idea, and we once again went back to the Rangers… Two platoons of Rangers were sitting around back at Bagram, and we asked for one platoon to help. They could serve as a human logistics train from the last vehicle drop-off point in the foothills all the way up to MSS Grinch, which was located several klicks away and at an elevation several thousand meters higher. Rangers could do what helicopters and mules could not. Request denied. Again, I never learned the reasons for that refusal.”
p. 294 “Leaving the back door open gave the rat a chance to run.”
Addendum: My original 10/20/2009 article and the Senate Committee’s 11/30/2009 Report
There is an extraordinary similarity between my 10/20/2009 article at opednews.com and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report of 11/30/2009. All interviews noted in the Report’s footnotes were conducted in October and November. No specific dates were given for these interviews. General Franks through a 10/27/2009 email from an aide declined to address discrepancies about bin Laden’s location or conclusions by Special Operations Command historians. My article was also published on 10/24/2009 at dailykos.com. Note – although dailykos.com allows indefinite editing, policy of opednews.com does not allow editing of an article by non- Premium members after 24 hours. I do not believe I edited either of these blogs and certainly wouldn’t have done so after reading the Committee’s Report. See the original opednews.com article at:
http://www.opednews.com/...
The Committee’s Report was a Committee majority (Democratic) staff Report not the results of a full Committee hearing.
As a bank examiner when I finished an unwanted, controversial analysis another examiner would be detailed to write a rebuttal. The rebuttal provided cover for my management. I suspect a similar tactic has been employed here to provide cover for President Bush and Vice President Cheney. I suspect Senator Kerry requested a report on Tora Bora after 10/20/2009, and that my article was a rough draft for the Committee’s Report.
Full disclosure – the Report was issued just before President Obama’s 12/1/2009 West Point announcement to add an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. No doubt earlier failures to add troops when necessary helped Obama sell the additional surge of troops. This doesn’t change the fact the Report attributed no blame to Bush and Cheney who were Rumsfeld’s and Franks’ fully informed superiors.