Gary Bernsten on CNN: "I called for ground support at Tora Bora"

[bigtree]

Ex-CIA. Says he was the one calling in logistics at Tora Bora the day we had bin Laden cornered. He's certain bin Laden was there, despite Tommy Franks' statement that 'we still don't know'.

Bernsten says he requested ground troops but was turned down because of concerns for casualties. Air support was decided on instead by Franks.

Franks was back here at home in Florida calling the shots to those on the ground in Tora Bora. Gary Bernsten was there, Franks wasn't.

Who do you believe?


Did he finally get his book out? Looks like it. CIA tried to block it.



from August:

CIA Blocks Book Detailing How US Let Bin Laden Escape in Tora Bora
August 8, 2005

As reported in the latest Newsweek, Gary Bernsten commanded a CIA team searching for Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora. His new book accuses Donald Rumsfeld of letting bin Laden escape by not providing enough support to complete the capture.

CNN interviewed Gary Bernsten's lawyer in Aug. who criticizes the CIA for holding up the book:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/cnn_am_cia_blocks_osama_book_050808a.wmv

[Clark2008]

1. His book is out. It's called "Jawbreaker."

eom

[napi21]

2. Yes, I saw him on CNN & MSNBC last night.

I think his book is titled "Jawbreaker".

The CIA redacted a whole lot from what he had written.

[bigtree]

5. thanks. now I remember, he was holding up a redacted page

Jawbreaker. Yow!

[Skidmore]

3. But General Tommy got a Medal of Freedom...

[BushOut06]

4. So, are you saying that Franks might be the modern Westmoreland?

Surely you're not implying that we might be repeating the mistakes of the Vietnam War, are you? Surely we wouldn't let some REMF (rear-echelon mother fucker for you non-military types) call the shots, telling those on the ground that they know more than they do?

[bigtree]

7. Some history perhaps?

"On November 17, 2001, as the Taliban regime was self-disintegrating, Osama bin Laden, his family and a convoy of 25 Toyota Land Cruisers left Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan headed toward the mountains of Tora Bora. In late November, surrounded by his fiercest and most loyal Yemeni mujahideen in a cold Tora Bora cave, bin Laden delivered a stirring speech. One of his fighters, Abu Bakar, later captured by Afghan mujahideen, said bin Laden exhorted them to "hold your positions firm and be ready for martyrdom. I'll be visiting you again very soon."

A few days later, around what would probably have been November 30, bin Laden, along with four Yemeni mujahideen, left Tora Bora toward the village of Parachinar, in the Pakistani tribal areas. They walked undisturbed all the way - and then disappeared forever.

By the time the merciless American B-52 bombing raids were about to begin, bin Laden had already left Tora Bora - as a number of Afghan mujahideen confirmed to Asia Times Online at the time. They said they had seen him on the other side of the frontline in late November. Hazrat Ali, the warlord and then so-called minister of "law and order" in the Eastern Shura (traditional decision-making council) in Afghanistan, was outsourced by the Pentagon to go after bin Laden and al-Qaeda in Tora Bora. He bagged a handful of suitcases full of cash. He put on a show for the cameras. And significantly, he was barely in touch with the few Special Forces on the ground.

The crucial point is that while bin Laden was already in Pakistan, General Tommy Franks at US Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, was being directed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to concentrate on toppling Saddam Hussein. According to Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, on "December 1, a Saturday, Rumsfeld sent through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a Top Secret planning order to Franks asking him to come up with the commander's estimate to build the base of a new Iraq war plan. In two pages the order said Rumsfeld wanted to know how Franks would conduct military operations to remove Saddam from power, eliminate the threat of any possible weapons of mass destruction, and choke off his suspected support of terrorism."

http://atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FJ27Ag02.html

[gratuitous]

8. The most important part of that excerpt is . . .

November 17, 2001. Too early for a lasting impact on the 2002 elections. People forget the success if the story ends too soon, and fear is a far better motivator than anything else the Republicans have to peddle.

[bigtree]

10. you think Bush wanted him alive to support his campaign of fear?

stands to reason.

[FreedomAngel82]

20. Exactly

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. The US gave Osama a free ride out of Tora Bora

I first heard about this story in the fall of 2002 from someone that was there. Special Ops teams had gone in while the dust was still settling on the WTC. They work in small teams and are totally on their own. This one group had Osama cornered in Tora Bora. They were ready to go in for the kill/capture when all of a sudden US military showed up and told them to stand down. The brass took over. The helicopters came and Osama flew away. Haven't seen much of him since.

BTW: Remember those suicide/murders among a bunch of Fort Bragg troops who had been in Afghanistan? I believe most of them were special ops guys who had been at Tora Bora.

[bigtree]

11. a lot of what happened there doesn't make sense

especially if you want to believe that our government really intended to catch bin Laden. After Tora Bora, most of their focus was on Iraq.

[FreedomAngel82]

21. Which brings up a lot of question's with me

If they're so concerned with 9/11 and protecting us why not get the person who supposivley did it (if you buy the official story)?

[bigtree]

22. Bush's campaign of fear helped in his re-ascendance to the WH

"The fear-mongering has been relentless and revolting — bottoming out with a sewer-level attack ad put together by a 527 largely financed by a pair of longtime Bush-backers. The TV spot shows pictures of Osama bin Laden, 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, the Chechen school murderers, and the Madrid train bombings and asks: "These people want to kill us. Would you trust Kerry up against these fanatic killers?"

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-11.htm

[FloridaPat]

12. There was a soldier who printed this story. Says the helicopters

were from Pakistan.

[DoYouEverWonder]

13. Here's one that I remember reading

Officials deny bin Laden
escaped November capture

by J.S. Newton, Fayetteville Observer, 2 August 2002



A Special Forces soldier says that troops had Osama bin Laden pinpointed in Afghanistan in November, but leaders took too long to decide to go after him and he slipped away.

Military officials have discounted the story.

The soldier, who said he was on the ground at Tora Bora when bin Laden was located, agreed to talk about the incident on condition that his name not be used.

The Observer has been unable to find other soldiers who can corroborate his account, and official military spokesmen say they have no knowledge of it.

Reporters are rarely permitted to accompany special operations troops into battle, so verification of battlefield accounts can be difficult.

But the story is consistent with previous reports from other sources that bin Laden was seen in the Tora Bora cave complex. American and Afghan troops spent weeks attacking and searching the caves late last year in the hunt for bin Laden and al-Qaida terrorists.

"We had `the man' and lost him," said the Special Forces soldier. "We knew the exact cave he was in and had the coordinates. It was 30 minutes away from our position. But we couldn't get orders quickly enough."

Following the operation, military leaders were criticized in the press and in Congress for allowing hundreds of al-Qaida members to escape into Pakistan.

On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in the region, acknowledged that many al-Qaida members had escaped the assault on Tora Bora. Franks was testifying before a Senate Armed Service Committee examining the hunt for the terrorists.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/linkscopy/OdbLeNc.html

[eridani]

37. linky linky?

This needs to be documented

[rosesaylavee]

9. Oh yeah, this one gets kicked and recommended.

Thanks for posting.

[GuvWurld]

14. Concern for casualties? WTF!

I have never heard this excuse before and it sure doesn't sound right. If there is concern for casualties, you don't start a war. Surely there are plenty of examples of more dangerous missions, even if not as high profile.

[Geek_Girl]

30. Think about it

They were afraid of someone important getting hurt. Makes perfect sense to me :tinfoilhat:

[robbedvoter]

15. Again, who needed OBL? We needed a reason to attack Iraq and he

was IT! After all, he was offered more than one time:



New offer on Bin Laden
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,575593,00.html
Minister makes secret trip to offer trial in third country
Rory McCarthy in Islamabad
Wednesday October 17, 2001
The Guardian
A senior Taliban minister has offered a last-minute deal to hand over Osama bin Laden during a secret visit to Islamabad, senior sources in Pakistan told the Guardian last night.
For the first time, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial in a country other than the US without asking to see evidence first in return for a halt to the bombing, a source close to Pakistan's military leadership said.

[bettyellen]

16. this jibes with Bin Ladens side of the story too, said he was in Tora Bora

with very few troops protecting him... and we only struck by air, if we had been willing to take some casulties by sending in ground troops, they would have got him. it was in vanity fair very recently, maybe the dec issue.

[bettyellen]

19. Here is Bin Laden's own version of events.....

The Real bin Laden, an Oral History
(page 7 of 9)
A Q&A WITH PETER L. BERGEN
Vanity fair, Dec 2005

"Osama bin Laden on an audiotape that aired on Al Jazeera on February 11, 2003:
Now, I am going to tell you a part of that great battle so that I prove to you how cowardly are. We were only 300 fighters. We had already dug 100 trenches, spread out in a space that didn't exceed one square mile. On the morning of the 17th of Ramadan , very heavy bombing started, especially after the American leadership made sure that some of the leadership of al-Qaeda were in Tora Bora, including myself and the mujahid brother Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. The bombing became around the clock. Not a second would pass without a fighter plane passing over our heads day and night. American forces were bombing us by smart bombs that weigh thousands of pounds and bombs that penetrate caves.

in addition to the forces , whom they pushed to attack us for a continuous month. We fought back against all their attacks. And we defeated them every time. In spite of all that, American forces did not dare to go into our posts. What sign is more than that for their cowardice? With all its forces that were fighting against a small group of 300 mujahideen in the trenches, inside one square mile, in minus 10 degrees of temperature. The result of the battle was that we lost 6 percent of our force <18 men>.

Abdel Bari Atwan, who interviewed bin Laden at Tora Bora in 1996:
I wasn't surprised . I expected him to be there. I was in the Gulf region, and I met somebody from al-Qaeda, and he told me that Osama bin Laden was injured during the Tora Bora bombing, and he was operated on his left shoulder. And then when I saw his first videotape, immediately after Tora Bora, I said something is wrong with his left shoulder. His left shoulder was very stiff, and he couldn't move his left hand. And many people from al-Qaeda actually were extremely furious I said that , because they don't want him to be reported as injured.

Why did the U.S. military not seal off the Tora Bora region, instead relying only on a handful of Special Forces on the ground? Part of the answer is that the U.S. military was a victim of its own success. Scores of Special Forces calling in air strikes, in combination with thousands of Afghans on the ground, destroyed the Taliban army in a few weeks of fighting. However, this approach was a failure at Tora Bora, where large numbers of Americans on the ground were needed to throw up an effective cordon around al-Qaeda's leaders. Apologists for the U.S. military failure at Tora Bora will no doubt provide some compelling reasons why this was the case, including a lack of airlift capabilities from the former U.S. air base known as K2, in neighboring Uzbekistan. However, such explanations are hard to square with the fact that scores of journalists managed to find their way to Tora Bora, a battle covered on live television by the world's leading news organizations. Sadly, there were more American journalists on the ground at the battle of Tora Bora than there were U.S. soldiers. The battle was a missed opportunity to bring bin Laden to justice.

http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/051226roco01?page=7

[jackstraw45]

17. Our media will jump right on this and find out....

if he's a democrat.

:eyes:

[FreedomAngel82]

18. Very interesting

So what are they trying to hide? John Kerry was right. I remember a few months ago this guy talking about Tora Bora. I'm glad he got his book out so he can tell everything. I wonder why Franks is lying. So they can continue the "war on terror"?

[roody]

23. If he is still alive,

maybe he has a nice pad in the basement of the whitehouse.

[LibertyorDeath]

24. bin Laden is CIA....Imo

and has been for decades.

[Generator]

25. Damn it

This makes a person think they let him get away on purpose. Willful neglect? Or their utter incompetence as usual? It's so fucking hard to tell with these clowns. BUT damn it, even if you don't LIHOP or MIHOP and even with their worthless hand at everything they touch, they didn't even try. The gig is up. They wanted him to go free. They needed the boogeyman. When can we send these criminals where they belong? When? I will do my best to live to see it happen. I don't care if I'm 105. Then I can rest.

[EFerrari]

26. I seem to remember Wes Clark being all over this even

as it was happening? He was on CNN or MSNBC raising questions about the lack of US ground forces? Does anyone else remember that?

[Schema Thing]

32. He mentioned it several times during his campaign

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he had inside info soon after it happened.

[Auntie Bush]

33. I remember! Clark was on CNN and I was love'n every minute of him.

[EFerrari]

34. I'm not a clarkie but I remember thinking, God, THIS

is a leader, a thoughtful man.

Compare and contrast. :(

[BamaBecky]

27. I just ordered this book today!

[bigtree]

28. book report

due

[BamaBecky]

29. lol - it will take me a while

[librechik]

31. will they finally stop shrieking about Clinton

calling off the assassins for similar humanitarian reasons? No, the hypocrites.

[stepnw1f]

35. Unfucking Real... They Are Playing Games in Order

to continue on their mission for World Domination.

[Disturbed]

36. Is Osama a deep cover CIA asset?

Is he so deep that even his followers do not suspect him? It is an interesting concept, eh?

[Garbo 2004]

38. Larry Johnson's comments on Bernsten's book are a rave review.

The book the CIA didn't want you to read, JAWBREAKER by Gary Berntsen, is out and it kills. I've sent Gary a nasty note because his story kept me up till 4 am today. Just couldn't put it down. Gary spent most of this year battling CIA censors, who were refusing to release the book. They insisted on excising parts of the story that have already appeared in other books about CIA operations in Afghanistan written by Steve Coll and another CIA veteran, Gary Schroen.

Gary Berntsen was the second CIA officer sent to Afghanistan and put in charge of directing the destruction of Al Qaeda and the hunt for Bin Laden. He arrived in the fall of 2001, replacing veteran officer Gary Schroen, who had led the first CIA element into Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. Gary 2, i.e., Berntsen, built on Schroen's foundation and played a critical role in directing the offensive that broke the back of the Taliban and scattered Al Qaeda.

The key news from Gary's book is that we had Bin Laden in our sights but Tommy Franks and JSOC Commander, Dell Dailey, dilly dallied and did not deploy U.S. troops requested by Berntsen to the battle at Tora Bora. We could of had him; we should of had him; but we let Bin Laden get away.

Full article here: http://www2.boomantribune.com/story/2005/12/29/164612/77

[ngGale]

39. Kick....

:kick: