Truemors
In an article by Gary Thomas, discusses a new book titled "Kill Bin Laden", that says that the United States missed many opportunities to catch Bin Laden while hunting for him in the mountain caves of Afghanistan. The book has statements from many soldiers and officers that were involved in the hunt for Bin Laden, who say that a prime chance to catch the terrorist was lost. The book is supposedly written by an officer who led the secret hunt for Bin Laden, who goes by the pen name of Dalton Fury. Fury states that he is "certain" that his team was within 500 meters of Bin Laden at one point during the hunt. Fury claims to have been an officer in the elite 30 member Delta Force team that was tasked with hunting down Bin Laden in December of 2001.
"The intelligence was probably the best we've ever had," Fury noted. "But, again, it's impossible to know if he was there at the time we got the intelligence given to us. He might have been there at one time. He certainly was because that's what the signals intelligence told them. Now when we got it, it could have been several hours dated."
Fury says that his team had come up with a plan to come at Bin Laden from behind from across the rugged Pakistan mountains. The plan was vetoed, and though he does not know why, he speculates that it is because Pakistani officials were nervous about using their country as a staging area. Fury also claims that the Delta Force team wanted to impede any chance that Bin Laden and his team had of escape by littering the Tora Bora area with landmines. That too was apparently turned down by government officials. One unnamed intelligence officials is cited as saying he actually saw Bin Laden get into a vehicle and leave the area with his team. The official says that the team had human intelligence all over the Tora Bora area with satellite phones, so that they could watch and track Bin Laden's movements.
"I think that they [al-Qaida] were clearly oriented toward the north," Fury said. "They had some defenses on the east and west, and the high ground was to their rear. We're talking about 14,000 foot [i.e., about 4300 meter] snow-covered peaks. I don't think that they believed that anybody would come over the mountains. That was definitely their Achilles' heel and that was clearly the way that we wanted to go in at first."
At one point, Fury says that the Delta Force team and the CIA were able to watch and track Bin Laden for a number of days before he disappeared. The Delta Force team was ordered to leave the area on December 18, because United States officials believed that a massive bomb had killed Bin Laden in a cave, though no body or evidence of this was ever found. Most intelligence sources agree that Bin Laden is now in the lawless tribal area of Pakistan.
One has to take these kinds of reports with some consideration that they could be totally true or entirely made up. If the United States was able to kill Bin Laden at any point during the hunt and declined to take action, then there should be some issues raised. Apparently, the most difficult part of the intelligence business is deciding what sources are real and what sources are fake. I can understand that there are difficulties in the logistics and execution of an attack on Bin Laden. When one gets intel, it is already somewhat dated and therefore it is hard to pinpoint where the target may be at the time, since the given intelligence is from the past. Apparently, this was the biggest issue for the Delta Force team and intelligence officials that were hunting Bin Laden.
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