60 Minutes: Kill bin Laden

[Steve Blair]

Originally Posted by Bodhi

He instructed me as well for AMU's UW seminar a couple of years ago. Definitely a solid instructor; I learned a good deal from him, and he made the class really interesting. He also developed a great reading list for that course.

I took the same course and found it a bit spotty, although I did go in with a great deal of background knowledge.

[Entropy]

Originally Posted by Rank amateur

Could you please explain. Isn`t a blocking force one of the simplest and most basic ways to deploy troops.

...I've been busy for a couple of days.

To answer your question, yes, in theory a blocking force is easy to deploy, but in practice I'll quote Ken: METT-TC applies. That blocking force has to be adequate to the task, able to deploy and operate along a stretch of 10k+feet series of peaks and saddles, in wintertime, with adequate supply and support. Assuming all that is available, there is the opportunity cost and risk which must be weighed against other missions for all the assets involved. Maybe the Rangers that were at Bagram could have done it (which was the only force available in a timely matter, IMO), but I don't know.

And even if the decisions had been different and the Rangers were in put in place, there's still no guarantee they would have got UBL.

[Tom Odom]

Reading the book now for a SWJ review. I will save my comments for that purpose but so far it is interesting read.

Tom

[Culpeper]

Originally Posted by Tom Odom

Reading the book now for a SWJ review. I will save my comments for that purpose but so far it is interesting read.

Tom

Could you let us know on this thread when you get the review online? Thanks.

[Tom Odom]

Originally Posted by Culpeper

Could you let us know on this thread when you get the review online? Thanks.

WILCO

finished the book just gathering post-read thoughts to write

best

Tom

[ilots]

Originally Posted by sullygoarmy

Back in 2001, we were buying loyality...plain and simple.

Renting; not buying. You don't buy Afghan loyalty, you only rent it.

[davidbfpo]

Wayback in the days of Imperial (British) India and along the Afghan border the Brits recruited and paid a mainly local military, known as the South Waziristan Scouts for example to defend the frontier and police what is now the FATA. Yes, Pashtun loyalty maybe different from Afghan, but it was effective and occassionally bloody. The Scouts had a tiny cadre of British officers and some, technical NCOs.

I understand the current Pakistani para-military forces along the same frontier, usually referred to as the Frontier Corps, largely follow the Imperial mould and have more local officers.

If an Afghan soldier or dirt farmer can earn more fighting for the Taliban, is there any surprise he changes sides?

From a distant armchair.

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

The link to Tom Odom's excellent review on SWJ Blog: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/200...ill-bin-laden/

Thanks Tom; your review combines experience and perspective.

davidbfpo

[SWJED]

Ditto David's comments Tom.

[SWJED]

Part 1



Part 2

[Entropy]

A third ditto on David's comments. I'll have to get this book to compliment the others I have - it sounds like it provides a new perspective on the hunt for UBL at Tora Bora.

[Tom Odom]

Thanks guys but DF deserves the credit. I merely reviewed it.

It does offer a no BS view of what happened and I can see why highers would not be happy that it is out. DF is objective in laying out the facts and conditions as he faced them, especially conditions beyond his control. Factual accounts like his make flights of fancy analysis on what went wrong or what should have been done read like the fantasy most are.

Good book. Great soldier leading great soldiers.

Tom

[Entropy]

Steve Coll's blog has a bit about Dalton's book at the end of an interesting post on Haqqani:

I keep up with the Bin Laden news so you don’t have to; this includes reading the recently published book, “Kill Bin Laden,” authored by the pseudonymous Delta Force commander who was present at Tora Bora in December 2001. Despite all of the pseudonyms and uncertainties about source material, it seems to be a reliable account and it has some interesting bits in it about the battle and about Delta. Overall, however, it does not provide a fundamentally new picture of what happened at the battle. It tracks other accounts in key respects: Osama was there; on December 14th, he was under heavy bombardment and thought he would die; sometime after that, he escaped; the Afghan militias that the United States relied upon did not see the battle as we did and were unreliable, under-motivated partners; and our intelligence about Bin Laden’s movements and inner circle, then and later, was incredibly poor. Delta, at least, had virtually no human sources to work with, and it could not even be sure Bin Laden was alive or dead for long after the battle, never mind figure out where he might be hiding.

[davidbfpo]

This article by Peter Bergen appeared 22nd December 2009, sub-titled 'How Osama bin Laden slipped from our grasp: The definitive account':http://www.tnr.com/article/the-battl...m_medium=email

I am sure there were other threads on the battle, but this I think is the most recent and Dalton Fury does get a mention.

[Pete]

Tom Ricks was writing about Tora Bora in his blog the other day. Click below to read it.

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts...a_who_is_right