What about this?
Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn't use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords and he outsourced that job too. That's wrong.Who was leading the charge to capture Bin Laden? It was not Afghans. It was the British SAS. And not without American support -- support, indeed, of the first water.
The SAS was fighting alongside Delta Force, the US army's special forces, and though the Brits did not think that the Yanks were quite their equal, our men were impressed by their men. Delta Force is not the same as the SAS. Much larger, its nearest British equivalent would be the SAS, merged with 3 (commando) brigade and 16 (air assault) brigade. As a result of Afghanistan, there are now pressures in the Pentagon to create an inner-core special force on British lines. Donald Rumsfeld's enthusiasm for the SAS goes beyond tributes at press conferences; he wants one of his own.Handing the SAS the responsibility for this is the farthest thing from irresponsible. They are, I think it does no disservice to our soldiers to say, among the very best in the world.
Yet, allowing for the fact that Kerry has misrepresented the situation, there is an honest complaint to be made here. Once it had trapped Bin Laden, the military was indeed set aside in favor of CIA operations.
There followed hours of fiffing and faffing, while gold coins were helicoptered in, to encourage the Northern Alliance. The USA is the greatest military power in the history of the planet, spending well over $300 billion a year on defence, yet everything was paralysed because it would not allow its fighting men to fight.It's hard to say that Kerry has a point, since he has run entirely on the platform of outsourcing all operations: "sharing the burden," as he likes to call it. Still, I sympathize with the fighting forces. They should have been allowed their kill. They were ready to pay any cost.
No comments:
Post a Comment