War Is The Health of the State

We don't really know if we can trust anything that comes out of the Senate, since each member is wholly involved in a personal quest for undeserved wealth and power. By the same token, we can't trust the words of the various minions of the Administration, either. For the same reasons.

Apologists for the GW Bush Administration have, since sometime during the second year of his Presidency, been falling all over themselves trying to tell us that not taking Obama bin Llama at Tora Bora was either not feasible, not possible or not a good idea at the time.

I distrust any and all of this rhetoric. It's my opinion bin Llama wasn't captured because a shortened war over there wouldn't fulfill the President's not-quite-sane dreams of a fully pacified Middle East under the control of the US.

Such dreams are now, and were at the time, the musings of a fool, but they were his dreams, and would also serve to further another function dear to most elected officials in the past hundred years or so: erode the Bill of Rights and severely lessen individual liberty in the United States. Along with the war came the evil Patriot Act, under the umbrella of an entirely new herd of jack-booted thugs in an unConstitutional goon squad called Homeland Security. Can't you just hear the goose-stepping heels thudding in a death rhythm for American freedom?

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Middle Easterners are peaceful and at least as civilized as are most Americans. My biggest problem with them is that, like leftists, they rarely condemn their members at the wacko end of the scale.

Back to the point: According to this story in Yahoo News, there's a report issued by the US Senate to the effect that the GW Bush military could have captured bin Llama had they mounted "a rapid assault with several thousand troops at least" It further states that "a review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants 'removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora.'"

Yet the troops, while nearby and ready, were never ordered to mobilize. A "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, "fewer than 100 U.S. commandos, working with Afghan militias, tried to capitalize on air strikes and track down their prey."

On or about Dec. 16, 2001, bin Laden and bodyguards "walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area," where he is still believed to be based."

And we're still fumbling around in Afghanistan, under an incompetent Commander-in-Chief. The best military units on earth, virtually leaderless, under the constant threat of Courts Martial for insulting, scaring and/or injuring the enemy.

Thank you, President Bush, for mucking up what should have been a quick attack and capture and turning it into another forever war.

War is, indeed, the health of the state.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California