Still Blowing Smoke
Posted on | October 31, 2004 |
One of the main criticisms Senator Kerry has of George Bush is the President “outsourced” the job of capturing Osama bin Laden to Afghan warlords and that resources were taken from Afghanistan and relocated to Iraq.
“It was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them [bin Laden and his lieutenants] to Afghan warlords who a week earlier were fighting against us, instead of using the best-trained troops in the world who wanted to avenge America for what happened in New York and Pennsylvania and Washington,” Kerry said Saturday at a rally in Appleton, Wis.”It was wrong to divert our forces from Afghanistan so that we could rush to war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace,” he said.
However, according to FOX News, these charges have upset just a few Special Forces Soldiers.
Several Army special forces soldiers who served in Afghanistan told FOX News that numerous teams were deployed to the Tora Bora area to root out bin Laden and his allies. Plus, they said that Kerry was ignoring their contributions in battle.”If you want to win a war in someone else’s backyard, you have to use locals who know the area,” one soldier told FOX News.
Another soldier told FOX News that Kerry’s promise to increase the size of the special forces was an empty one.
“He also has no idea on what it takes to double [the number of troops in] special forces. I spent 13 years in special forces and we have been trying to do just that. The only way that special forces can be doubled is to drop the qualification standards. If that happens then we all loose. The quality will be zero,” the soldier said.
General Franks concurred saying,
“The Afghans weren’t left to do the job alone,” Franks wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “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.”
Responding to claims that resources were diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq, the General added,
“Neither attention nor manpower was diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. When we started Operation Iraqi Freedom we had about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, and by the time we finished major combat operations in Iraq last May we had more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan,” Franks wrote.
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