Excerpt: When the bombing around Jalalabad intensified, bin Laden fled into the fortified caves of Tora Bora, about 35 miles south of the regional capital. Bin Laden knew the territory; as a young man, he had driven bulldozers there as Afghan resistance fighters excavated miles of tunnels.
In late November, probably within days after bin Laden had arrived in the area, Berntsen's team tracked him to a mountainous area called Milawa, just below the peaks of Tora Bora. Berntsen's men called in airstrikes - a barrage from B-52s, F-15s and plenty more - that lasted nearly 60 hours.
"Our guys were exhausted; they had been hammering Osama for days," Berntsen said. "Finally, bin Laden fled deeper into the mountains."
Berntsen, who was back in Kabul, summoned several members of his team to tell him what they would need to take down bin Laden now that they thought they knew where he was. The response: "We need 800 Army Rangers between bin Laden and the border."
Berntsen wrote to his superiors, begging for troops. His pleas went unanswered, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on Tora Bora. Without more manpower, Berntsen couldn't risk a ground assault.
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December of 2001, and they were already planning for the Iraq invasion and couldn;t be beothered with bon Laden. What a POS Bush was...
