Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man Read Free Page A

dozens of reporters who camped in the foothills a few miles from the front lines, perched upon an odd place we called Press Pool Ridge. Because the timesensitive story submitted via satellite phone secured their next paycheck, scrutiny and accuracy were sometimes sacrificed in order to soothe an excitement-starved general public. After all, who was to say what exactly happened at Tora Bora, particularly if a television camera wasn’t present? Afghan warlords fed the press frequent briefings, and the very, very few people who might challenge whatever was reported would not talk to the media. Delta and the SBS avoided the press.
    British newspaper writer Bruce Anderson penned my favorite story in a February 2002 edition of the London
Spectator
. His account provided significant impetus and motivation for my literary attempt to tell the true story. Although his article was full of international intrigue, shadow warrior mystery, and cries of rival elite counterterror units, it also fell far short of the truth on several counts.
    Anderson claims an undisclosed member of the SAS, Britain’s famed Special Air Service commandos, shared the information that the American Delta Force wanted to kill bin Laden. That Delta fought in Tora Bora. And that two squadrons of 22 SAS commandos, roughly 130 men, fought alongside them. American author Robin Moore made the same claim in
The Hunt for Bin Laden
. See how an error grows?
    Well, they got it half right! Yes, Delta was there, but those large SASsquadrons were not. It was a group of twelve brave members of the British Special Boat Service, or SBS, men equal to America’s most skilled Navy SEALs, who ventured into al Qaeda’s formidable stronghold alongside Delta.
    Each of us, to a man, American and British alike, wanted to take the final shot, to drop the most wanted man alive with a single bullet. Or at least be witness to our mate’s skill of arms and accuracy.
    Finally, and something I hope to sufficiently explain, America’s generals were not alone in losing this one. The generals provided the game land, but it was Delta’s responsibility to develop a hunting strategy that would harvest the trophy buck. Since this particular trophy buck eventually eluded his hunters and got away, the questioning about why and how quickly surfaced among scholars, military strategists, politicians, and the public. The Monday-morning quarterbacks portrayed a military blunder and cried mission failure.
    If Delta couldn’t deliver the goods or offer proof of having achieved the objective, then, yes, it was a failure. Even the most seasoned operator, our squadron sergeant major, said to me before we left the battlefield, in true realist fashion, “Sir, what was the mission? We failed!” A tough pill to swallow. An even tougher point to argue.
    However, battles often veil the valuable lesson that failure at the strategic level by men and women in conference rooms can easily obscure an enormous tactical victory by the boys on the ground.
    Pete Blaber, one of the brightest minds to ever serve in Delta, once said in reference to manhunting, while we were in another third world dump, that a hunter must venture into the woods time after time before he harvests the big one. Bin Laden got away, but not before we kicked his butt around the block.
    The fact is that we went into a hellish land that was considered impregnable and controlled by al Qaeda fighters who had helped defeat the Soviet Union on that same turf. They had stalled the attempts of Afghan military forces to get rid of them. We killed them by the dozen. Many more surrendered. The vaunted complex of caves and bunkers was crushed and destroyed, one by one. And we heard the demoralized Usama bin Laden speak on the radio, pleading for women and childrento fight for him. Then he abandoned them all and ran from the battle-field. Yes. He ran away.
    We also eventually had to leave that game preserve without the main trophy, but we didn’t turn our