Losing Bin Laden

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has a new report out (pdf) on the failure to kill or capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora in December 2001. In it, the Committee notes:

There were enough U.S. troops in or near Afghanistan to execute the classic sweep-and-block maneuver required to attack bin Laden and try to prevent his escape. It would have been a dangerous fight across treacherous terrain, and the injection of more U.S. troops and the resulting casualties would have contradicted the risk-averse, ‘‘light footprint’’ model formulated by Rumsfeld and Franks. But commanders on the scene and elsewhere in Afghanistan argued that the risks were worth the reward.

This jibes with other accounts that suggested that a fear of casualties stayed the American hand at Tora Bora. Which is very strange, when you think about it. After all, Secretary Rumsfeld, President Bush et. al. countenanced a much, much riskier danger in invading Iraq. Why they wouldn't put a far lower number of American lives at risk to nab bin Laden escapes me.

(AP Photos)