If this dramatic story has been posted elsewhere on dKOS, my apologies. I found it at cursor.org. The story shows a Katrina-type ineptitude by the Bush administration in December of 2001.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/magazine/11TORABORA.html?pagewanted=print
Excerpt:
One of them was Brig. Gen. James N. Mattis, the commander of some 4,000 marines who had arrived in the Afghan theater by now. Mattis, along with another officer with whom I spoke, was convinced that with these numbers he could have surrounded and sealed off bin Laden's lair, as well as deployed troops to the most sensitive portions of the largely unpatrolled border with Pakistan. He argued strongly that he should be permitted to proceed to the Tora Bora caves. The general was turned down. An American intelligence official told me that the Bush administration later concluded that the refusal of Centcom to dispatch the marines - along with their failure to commit U.S. ground forces to Afghanistan generally - was the gravest error of the war."