http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek/
According to Newsweek: in an upcoming book, the CIA field commander at Tora Bora will say that he "had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora--intelligence operatives had tracked him--and could have been caught."
He goes on to fault the DoD for not providing enough support to the CIA/Special Ops forces to allow them to capture Bin Laden.
The man Bush said he wanted "dead or alive" was in our sights, and the Pentagon let him slip through its grasp? I hate to say this, but was this deliberate or was it just negligence? Either way, I'm, unfortunately, not very surprised.
I would put very little past this administration, but saying that they let Bin Laden escape seems a little far-fetched...
However, think about it:
- Not long after Tora Bora, Bin Laden virtually disappeared from announcements to be replaced by plans for Iraq.
- My memory may be a little hazy on this, but it seems that a lot of the play on Al Qaeda was that if Bin Laden went, so too would Al Qaeda. If we captured Bin Laden, that would take out a lot of their justification behind the whole GWOT.