Community | November 30, 2009 | 49 comments

Senate report: Rumsfeld decision let Bin Laden escape

source: http://rawstory.com/2009/11/rumsfeld-decision-bin-laden-escape-senate-report/

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bansheewail
Osama bin Laden was "within the grasp" of US forces in late 2001 but escaped because then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected calls for reinforcements, a hard-hitting US Senate report says.

The report, set for release Monday, is intended to help learn the lessons of the past as President Barack Obama prepares to announce a major escalation of the conflict, now in its ninth year, with up to 35,000 more US troops.

It points the finger directly at Rumsfeld for turning down requests for reinforcements as Bin Laden was trapped in December 2001 in caves and tunnels in a mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan known as Tora Bora.

"The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the marine corps and the army, was kept on the sidelines," the report says.
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49 comments // Senate report: Rumsfeld decision let Bin Laden escape

  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • That dossier was as fucked up as anything the Bush executive branch touched ;)
      Those traitors should all be in fuckin' jail ...if there was a shred of dignity left in this growing nation of village idiots on meth !

      They stole 2 elections… the first by perverting the supreme court…nothing happened…Then 9-11 and a war based on a 1000 lies + the treacherous hoisting of a CIA agent… nothing happened… ENRON…zzzzzzzzz….they proceeded to shred the constitution, kidnapped imprisoned & tortured the world over…nothing…spied on one & all, fired top US attorneys, destroyed evidence… nada… conducted Katrina’s thinly veiled ethic cleansing …zilch…seeing how compliant we all where…then they took us to the cleaners…

      "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not traitor, he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared." - Cicero, 42 B.C.

      WAKE UP AMERICA !
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTU9q_e1Ew

    • 2 years ago
  • manfreddrake
    • 0
      manfreddrake  

    • Not a fan of Rumsfeld (had enough of him under previous presidents) but, this admin. is not above a little deflection too. Brings back my point to vote all out and start over in next elections.

    • 2 years ago
  • BKsaysAction
    • 0
      BKsaysAction  

    • Honestly what it boils down to is rumsfeld ruined everything for the sake of money and politics. He let bin laden get away to keep that war going and he let people riot and loot baghdad which has caused most of the nasty turf wars following the invasion. Then he got to resign with out any punishment and still gets payed.

    • 2 years ago
  • desertcat
    • 0
      desertcat  

    • bin Laden was never the issue, the hijackings were never the issue The real issue was how do we get into Iraq. bin Laden was a blessing from the gods, what he does is not the issue never has been, the issue was control of Iraq oil fields.

    • 2 years ago
  • Nephwrack
  • turboboy
    • 0
      turboboy  

    • If we killed him then,How else could his buddy Dick Channey make another 10 billion. Think the unemployment is bad now, think how bad it would be if all our troops came home.

    • 2 years ago
  • snaganalf
    • 0
      snaganalf  

    • This whole war on terror is so we have justification to be over there in the first place. There is an international natural gas pipeline going in there and it is to be protected. That's what our presence is for.

      If they really wanted Bin Laden, if he's still alive that is, all they would have to do is stop looking for him. However, I lean more toward him being dead already.

    • 2 years ago
  • ALLNATURALVEGANS
    • 0
      ALLNATURALVEGANS  

    • Ummmm, we let him escape when we let his family members leave our country days after 9/11 happened, funny how all flights were grounded but the Bin Ladens were allowed to leave America and head back to their daddy...

    • 2 years ago
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  

    • .bush and his croines did not want to catch him. Don't you folks understand his family is close and personal friends with the bush's. There for they let him slip out the back door. besides the fact the bush and chaney are both neck deep in oil money. So they don't want to rock the boat to much. there friends might lose money if they do.

    • 2 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • This documentary goes a long way explaining the narrative being pushed by Mindfuck Inc. ;)

      THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES 1: THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR

      "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" consists of three one-hour films, consisting mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis's narration.

      The films compare the rise of the American Neo-Conservative movement and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and suggesting a strong connection between the two. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organized force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is in fact a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries — and particularly American Neo-Conservatives — in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies.

      "The Power of Nightmares" has been praised by film critics in both Britain and the United States and have also been the subject of various critiques and criticisms from conservatives and progressives. The first episode explains the origins of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism. It shows Egyptian civil servant Sayyid Qutb, the founder of Islamism, visiting America to learn about the education system, but becoming disgusted with what he saw as a corruption of morals and virtues in western society through individualism.

      At the same time in the United States, a group of disillusioned liberals, including Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, look to the political thinking of Leo Strauss after the general failure of President Johnson's "Great Society". They come to the conclusion that the emphasis on individual liberty was the undoing of the plan. They envisioned restructuring America by uniting the American people against a common evil, and set about creating a mythical enemy.

      PS : Doesn't Sayyid Qutb look like a tea-bagger version of Obama ;)

    • 2 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
  • WhiteNoise
  • Nephwrack
  • treewolf39
  • CalPal
    • 0
      CalPal  

    • You know, it's funny that people keep considering the war on terror a "war", considering that wars can only be declared on ANOTHER NATION.

      Al Qaida and other terrorist cells aren't bound to national boundaries or international rules, and that's why the war can't be won... because they can always travel to other nations as illegal immigrants, travel in friendly nations, etc., and all the while not giving a damn about the (rather weak) enforcement of the UN.

      Other than that point, it's despicable this person let him go, just to continue the "war"... a person in my politics class asked "so what" if he was captured. At first, I thought he was just being foolish and stupid, but then I kinda realized that anyone else could take up the cause as their leader, and even though America might have felt victorious, their enemy would still exist...

      So, this is what should be done: fight the "war" with books rather than bombs, because knowledge and inquiry is the best weapon against both radicalism and people simply unaware to the knowledge everyone else accepts. It worked back in the Reformation, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and it still works today.

    • 2 years ago
  • ssppeencceerr
    • 0
      ssppeencceerr  

    • it's all about money and power. keeping bin laden alive means more money for the middle east and for the us. there's so much shite that goes on behind the scenes that we don't know about but if you have enough wits about you it's easy to figure out that money and power are what it's all about.

    • 2 years ago
  • mjsmith11
    • 0
      mjsmith11  

    • Bill Clinton let Bin Laden go. It has been known since the event occurred that osama bin laden was allowed to escape. The decision was made because his capture is not worth American lives. If we did catch him, then what? President Obama would have him tried in a U.S. Civilian Court in New York. This is not new news. The report might be newly released, but this information has been public since 2001. bin laden paid his way out of Tora Bora.

    • 2 years ago
  • Daimyo
  • Manatee_man
  • prg
    • 0
      prg  

    • Rumsfeld let Bin Laden go??? But he is one of our finest Americans and we should never question the known knowns that he knows.
      Can we please put Rumsfeld in a court of law under oath to answer a few questions to help America move out of this muck? Why do we continue to protect this pitiful little man?

    • 2 years ago
  • loupetho
    • 0
      loupetho  

    • What ... kill off the big bad boggy man ... you'd have to create something new ... first communism ... now Bin Landen and co. ... who's next?

    • 2 years ago
  • samthesixth
  • Varex_Sythe
    • 0
      Varex_Sythe  
    • samthesixth:

      Actually, Clinton tried to have Bin Laden assassinated as a terrorist threat during his presidency. However, the conservative majority at the time prevented the assassination attempt because it was not legal for the United States to assassinate a political figure/leader. It turns out Bin Laden was not a political figure/leader, but the congress had enough conservative votes to shoot down the assassination attempt, so they did.

    • 2 years ago
  • samthesixth
  • bansheewail
    • 0
      bansheewail  
    • samthesixth:

      The Clinton Administration didn't have any "Actionable Intel" , until toward the very end of Clinton's term. Bush and Rice were thoroughly briefed on Bin Laden and the did nothing with the intel. Clearing brush in Crawford, TX took presidence over protecting America.

    • 2 years ago
  • partyrager
    • 0
      partyrager  

    • All they need to do it is take out about a $5000 credit card in Bin Ladin's name and don't make any payments for a few months...the creditors would find him!

    • 2 years ago
  • lu7cky
  • Budoshi
    • 0
      Budoshi  

    • We should make a new game, based on the Waldo-games...

      "Where's Osama":D hehehe.. And put Rumsfield on the playingfield...

    • 2 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • These days, I'd rather be a little skeptical than a media carpet ;)

      “Conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.” – Gore Vidal

    • 2 years ago
  • rickm8
    • 0
      rickm8  

    • I mean clinton had him too but let him keep rollin back in the day. It looks like both parties made their mistakes with him. He could also be dead like the semi-conspiracy theory sounding post from whitenoise.

    • 2 years ago
  • Daimyo
    • 0
      Daimyo  
    • rickm8:

      lol.. that was when Osama was fighting the war on our side. But when A. the towers got hit, and B. Osama is in possession, Mr. Rumsfeld didnt go to preschool to put A and B together.

    • 2 years ago
  • mcjk
  • bansheewail
  • AtomUniverse1
  • bansheewail
    • 0
      bansheewail  

    • It's hard to scare the kids without the boogie man.

      Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's book Kingdom of Fear is now required reading. He was a man ahead of his time.

    • 2 years ago
  • retro_Syl
  • retro_Syl
  • WhiteNoise
  • dudefromtherock
  • mjsmith11
  • Kamilo
    • 0
      Kamilo  
    • WhiteNoise:

      If this were true, don't you think that Obama would have made it public as soon as he possibly could? The political fallout for the Republican party in particular would be catastrophic and give him pretty much free reign over American society.
      There is also the fact that for the Islamic extremists, a dead bin Laden would be a powerful martyr symbol, one that would likely be played up as much as possible in as public a way as possible. An impotent leader hiding in the hills of Pakistan and only able to release one or two audio tapes a year is much less powerful then the pius martyr, dying at the hands of infidels in the name of his faith, the exact image which would have developed had bin Laden actually been killed as early as Dec 2001. No matter how powerful the US government is over popular media, there is no way they could control that of their enemies for over a decade. Word would have gotten out by now; again, because it would be a major political coup against the Americans, particularly the hawkish Republicans.

    • 2 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
  • AmericanStandard
  • ssppeencceerr
  • eydazil
    • 0
      eydazil  

    • hmm....what a surprise.
      can we just, as a nation, go ahead and accept the fact that we were never really after him in the first place?
      and perhaps he was just a mere "distraction" for us (the American people) to be focused on instead of the REAL issue...

    • 2 years ago
  • rojomo
    • 0
      rojomo  

    • Not a surprising decision coming from a man who was notorious for never listening to what any of his commanding General's had to say regarding battle plans unless they were in agreement with his way of thinking.

      "Stupid is as stupid does"; Forrest Gump!

    • 2 years ago
  • nkeg87
  • cadex
  • bansheewail
    • 0
      bansheewail  

    • Now that we have a few more conservative friends here on Current, it seems pertinent to post things that the rest of us already know. This is a new Senate report, and thus, current.

    • 2 years ago
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