I can assure you that Tommy Franks knows more about what went on in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq than John Kerry's "supporters" will ever know combined. He was in charge of the whole operation. Please read his autobiography if you really want to understand what went on in the planning and operational stages of these wars.

On more than one occasion, Senator Kerry has referred to the fight at Tora Bora in Afghanistan during late 2001 as a missed opportunity for America. He claims that our forces had Osama bin Laden cornered and allowed him to escape. How did it happen? According to Mr. Kerry, we "outsourced" the job to Afghan warlords. As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East, I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality.

First, take Mr. Kerry's contention that we "had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden" and that "we had him surrounded." We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp.

Second, we did not "outsource" military action. We did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora, a mountainous, geographically difficult region on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is where Afghan mujahedeen holed up for years, keeping alive their resistance to the Soviet Union. Killing and capturing Taliban and Qaeda fighters was best done by the Afghan fighters who already knew the caves and tunnels.

Third, the Afghans weren't left to do the job alone. Special forces from the United States and several other countries were there, providing tactical leadership and calling in air strikes. Pakistani troops also provided significant help - as many as 100,000 sealed the border and rounded up hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban fighters.


Paul Krugman even saddles Bush with imaginary policy decisions on reinstituting the draft becuase he FEELS that it's what Bush would do. His one analogy is to the tax cuts of the President's first term and the resulting deficits that Bush said would not be produced. This is a bad analogy first because Bush did keep his word as to the tx cuts, it's the result that was unforeseen. Secondly, how do you not take into account 9/11 and the subsequent response?

If I remember correctly it was a couple of Democrats who tried to reinstitute the draft recently in Congress. No one is has seriously suggested that we need a few million more people in the army.

Also, I'm finding it hard to reason with the claim that our forces are stretched too thin (versus the idea that we may not have enough people in Iraq). I have to assume that using all those guard units is a tactical decision. Didn't we have about twice as many people over there in '91? Where did they all go? As General Franks mentioned there are only about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. If we didn't have enough troops to take on Iraq properly to begin with, we've got a lot more problems than we think. This also means by default that Clinton weakened our armed forces terribly since the first Gulf War.