TPM: Consider the following scenario: U.S. intelligence gets a tip about the whereabouts of a senior Al Qaeda figure inside Pakistan. Plans are drawn up to fly into the airspace of an uneasy ally. Elite U.S. forces are readied. The administration is asked for the go-ahead.
In 2005, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reportedly called off such a mission, despite the fact that intelligence officials had “unusually high confidence” about the whereabouts of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s then-second-in-command. According to a 2007 New York Times report revealing the aborted raid, Rumsfeld was concerned about both the size of the operation — which grew to include several hundred military personnel and CIA operatives — and the potential reaction from the Pakistani government.
In 2011, President Obama was faced with a similar decision that obviously ended differently.
Ok so let's recap. Willard said he would not risk going into Pakistan to get Bin Ladin for fear of upsetting the Pakistanis. The Bush administration had the chance to get Ayman al-Zawahiri but didn't. And of course Bush chose to let Bin Ladin get away at Tora Bora. The question is why? They obviously were willing to needlessly sacrifice thousands of American lives in Iraq so risking American military personal couldn't be the issue. Really the most likely explanation is that they wanted these people alive and well so they could scare people into voting Republican and transfer a few trillion more dollars of tax payer money to their crony war profiteers. For that they should be in prison, not our government.
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