Why Aren the Marines Searching Tora Bora?!
December 27, 2001 Doesn’t there still seem to be a massive disconnect between the claimed vital importance and urgency of our effort to stop Osama bin Laden, and the manner in which the Bush administration is carrying out certain aspects of that undertaking? Early in the conflict I wrote about the slow-motion, take-our-time nature of the war that U.S. forces were waging. Other people with undoubtedly greater access to Bush’s ear complained also, since the pace was soon stepped up and the Taliban routed. What I’m referring to now is the decision to not have the Marines search the caves of Tora Bora, but to bribe a local Afghan commander to do so. The search’s purpose would be to look for a dead or injured Osama bin Laden and/or other Al Qaeda leaders, as well as to gather any intelligence information — including a “paper trail” — that may have been left behind in the caves. Such intelligence information could give clues to bin Laden’s whereabouts, and might even reveal plans for futur
