According to the Guardian the Bush administration pulled the 5th Special Forces Group (and other assets) off the hunt for Bin Laden in March of 2002 in order to re-deploy them for the Iraq war.
This is simply incredible to me. I cannot believe that the 5th SFG would be necessary for the invasion. They had already spent five months in Afghanistan tracking down Bin Laden and trying to establish relationships with the locals.
Why is this story coming out in the British press and not the American?
On a side note, I got up a 6am this morning to watch Meet the Press and I was fairly displeased with Tim Russert. I think he sacrificed an opportunity to really delve into Richard Clarke's claims that the Iraq war came at the cost of the hunt for Bin Laden (he got 5 minutes near the end of the hour to expound on this) in an attempt to be "hard hitting". In reality, Russert made himself look a tool of the current administration. He spent much of the hour questioning Clarke on the accuracy of claims made by the Bush administration that Clarke had perjured himself or lied in his book. Doing exactly what the Bush administration wanted rather than focusing on the substantive issue that I think we can all agree is more important--Iraq for Bin Laden. Clarke pointed out numerous times that this shouldn't be about him.
I had thought better of Russert before this (though I have become unhappy with him of late because of the virtual pass he gave Condi Rice a couple of weeks ago).
Posted by artandscience at March 28, 2004 07:28 AM