Location of Tora Bora

It has been several years of failure for US military to find out the most wanted man on their list. On Sunday the Senate foreign affairs committee released a report that US military missed an great opportunity to kill or capture the al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden. A US report revealed that in December 2001 Osama was within grasp in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan.

The report said,

“Removing the al-Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat,”

In report it is stated,

“But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost kill Osama opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism.”

The report comes out in a very critical time because within some days the US president, Barack Obama is going to announce his decision of sending more troops to Afghanistan to fight against the Taliban forces. 35,000 US troops are likely to deployed in Afghanistan to finish the incomplete work. The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld and US general, General Tommy Franks were criticized in the committee’s report because they didn’t ordered to send more troops to Tora Bora to seal the mountain paths to Pakistan which could be the only way out for Laden.
The report said,

“The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the army, was kept on the sidelines. Instead, the US command chose to rely on airstrikes and untrained Afghan militias to attack bin laden and on Pakistan’s loosely organized Frontier Corps to seal his escape routes.”

According to report on December 14, 2001, Bin Laden wrote a will to his wives not to remarry and he apologized to his children for devoting himself for jihad. Bin Laden convinced that he would have been killed but later on he escapes to tribal areas in Pakistan. Rumsfeld clearly have different approach on this matter as he thought that by sending more troops to search Bin Laden would cause hatred against America and it supports Al-Qaeda.