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

back to the fight and we never flinched.

    I was the senior ranking American military officer at the Battle of Tora Bora. As a Delta troop commander I was given the honor of leading about ninety or so Western special operations commandos and support personnel and helped draw up, along with some of Delta’s most talented sergeants, the tactical concept of the operation to hunt down and kill bin Laden. This had nothing to do with me being the best man for the job. I wasn’t specially selected for the mission. Truth be told, I was simply in the right place at the right time.
    Primarily, this book is to set the record straight, so to speak, as much for America as for our British friends. Much is written about the presumed failure of the general officers calling the shots at U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, back in Tampa, Florida. The critics argue that the generals engineered what amounted to a spectacular military blunder for three basic reasons: One, by not committing additional conventional troops to the battle; two, by opting to rely on Afghan proxies to do the dirty and dangerous groundwork while relying on American bombing from 30,000 feet; and, finally, by relying on the Pakistanis to seal off the border to prevent bin Laden’s escape. The generals, however, were not operating alone. Civilian political figures were also at the control panel.
    I will leave the overall strategic debate to the critics and scholars, for I was not in those air-conditioned rooms with leather chairs when they came up with some of the strangest decisions I have ever encountered. And I could care less. When it comes to tactical issues on the ground, in the dirt and rocks and snow, face-to-face with the enemy, American general officers and political decision makers typically are not involved in the tactical planning. They provide the macro task, issue vague guidance, andarticulate the big-picture intent. Ultimately, they approve or disapprove the final plan. Tora Bora would be no different.
    At the end of the day, the men and women farther up the ladder normally take the word and recommendations of us—the guys on the ground. At some critical times, that did not happen with the complex fight in Tora Bora. Instead, at times, we were micromanaged by higher-ups unknown, even to the point of being ordered to send the exact grid coordinates of our teams back to various folks in Washington.
    Many times we had to think and act instantly, with no guidance at all, but that is why Delta picks the kind of operators that it does. They have to be able to think as well as fight. The muhj allies turned their guns on our boys to stop an advance. Rival warlords weighed their military decisions according to personal agendas. When we arrived in Afghanistan in December 2001, the United States was pulling troops out of the area in a weird ploy to trick Usama bin Laden while stripping us of a quickreaction force. The muhj that were supposed to be doing the bulk of the fighting, and were sucking up the glory, routinely left the battlefield when it got dark, at times abandoning our small teams in the mountains. Some people within the U.S. command system were extremely reluctant to commit highly trained forces because they might get hurt. Some of the highest-ranking people in the Pentagon had no idea of what Delta was trained to do. The CIA bought loyalty out of duffel bags filled with American cash only to learn later that money does not buy everything in Afghanistan. Some of this might have been funny had it not been so serious.
    When one of these problems would come up, and they frequently did, trying to figure out what to do was always a puzzle. Particularly for a tired operator standing in subfreezing temperatures on a snowy mountain without radio contact, talking to people who didn’t understand him while guns blazed away nearby. But for the Delta boys, it was just another day at the office.
    My intent in this book is very narrow, to provide an accurate and