WASHINGTON – Just moments after Gen. Tommy Franks bragged about prosecuting the most accurate war in U.S. history, a Republican senator blasted him for letting Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders escape from Afghanistan.
The heated exchange, largely ignored by the mainstream media, took place Feb. 7 during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that featured a lot of back-patting over the Pentagon’s accomplishments so far in the war on terror.
But Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., punctured the hype with a sharp dose of reality.
“If our mission was to seek out and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaida,” he grilled Franks, “why were so many able to flee Afghanistan?”
Bunning noted that only a small number – some 500 – of the thousands of terrorists are in custody at U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Cuba. Many, including leaders Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar, have escaped, and are “regrouping and preparing to launch
additional attacks on the United States,” he said.
“I’m not pleased, and I don’t think any Americans are pleased, that we haven’t done a better job on al-Qaida,” Bunning scolded Franks, who’s running the war as commander in chief of U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla.
His dressing-down came just moments after Franks appeared very pleased with himself and the administration’s accomplishments.
“One of the obvious characteristics of this campaign [in Afghanistan] has been the accuracy that I described – 18,000-plus weapons having been delivered, 10,000 of those precision munitions,” Franks said. “By far and away the greatest application of precision munitions in the history of our country at any point at any place at any time.”
Of course, they weren’t precise enough to hit their primary targets – bin Laden and Omar and most of their top henchmen, who are still at large and a threat to America.
“I think we’re half-way there,” Bunning groused, to which Franks had to agree.
“I wouldn’t argue with you a bit,” the general said.
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