Al Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's Trail

This book conjures up a litany of incompetencies. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, our commander-in-chief vowed to take down the chief perpetrator "dead or alive." Despite the mild rebuke he received at the time from his wife, the President stuck with his determined sounding language. The fiasco that unfolds for us to see in "Al Qaeda's Great Escape," exposes both hubris and hypocrisy. After vowing to get bin Laden, the White House did not bother to coordinate a military plan that would have concentrated our forces -- conventional and special forces -- on the senior AQ leadership that masterminded 9/11. Mr. Smucker provides convincing evidence that AQ was goading for a major ground confrontation with US troops in Afghanistan. When, instead, we unleashed a massive aeriel campaign, the AQ leadership decided to pack it in, slip over the border into Pakistan and hope to fight another day. Ironically, the expanded Islamist insurgency -- with bin Laden still at the helm -- has found what it was after in the Iraqi theater. The argument put forth by Pentagon officials -- Rumsfeld in particular -- that a major infusion of US forces into Afghanistan risked alienating the Afghan population no longer washes. Afterall, we've now become bogged down in a country that had no dog in that attack. And since several thousand US infantry made it to the 2-mile high battle of Anaconda a few months after Tora Bora, the Pentagon/White House warning of a "logistical nightmare" that would ensue if we sent in thousands to surround the old Soviet redoubt doesn't fly either. The American public is still paying for strategic mistakes at Tora Bora to this day. Beyond that, the Admin's contention that bin Laden might not have ever been there is rendered moot with the testimony of the Green Beret commander, Col.Mulholland, within the text of this book, not to mention the massive amount of circumstantial evidence provided by eyewitness testimony of AQ and Afghans. I noticed that the other day, Pentagon lawyers actually used as "summary evidence" to hold one Gitmo prisoner his complicity in helping bin Laden escape Tora Bora. So apparently the Pentagon is now convinced enough that he was there -- despite vehemently denying it for over 3 years -- to use it as proof to detain the enemy. Given all we've learned -- and with the help of this fascinating and gritty account -- one wonders how the incompetents managed to escape a broader rebuke from the US public for their gross errors of judgement. No wonder that when pressed to express his regrets of his first term, Mr. Bush now lists the statement "dead or alive" as something he might not have said given a second chance.

This book is a gem. I picked it up in Detroit after I read the below review on the web in the Washington Post. I must agree that the author makes reading about the Bush Admin's massive strategic mistakes at Tora Bora both fascinating and, {Allah forbid,}FUN. Wash Post Book World wrote: The book is a devastating critique of Bush, Rumsfeld, other politically oriented strategists imposing their will on U.S. military forces and -- as the subtitle suggests -- quite a few of Smucker's fellow journalists. The critique is delivered with such humor and irony, however, that casual readers could easily underestimate its full impact. For all but the most avid Bush-Rumsfeld detractors, the humor and irony will be welcome. Smucker is a superb stylist; it is difficult to grasp how reading about something so depressing can be so much fun. The book instructs pleasurably from the first page, as Smucker and his Afghan guide explore a remote tribal area of Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan. Smucker notices a sign reading "Winston Churchill's Picket." Winston Churchill, later to become the renowned British statesman? Yes, it turns out that just before 1900, Churchill spent time as a journalist in that very spot, writing about a frontier war dear to the empire. When Smucker learns that Churchill published a book about his experiences -- "The Story of the Malakand Field Force" (1898) -- he obtains and just about memorizes it. Then, in a brilliant touch, he opens his own chapters with apt quotations from Churchill's book. It is as if almost nothing has changed in that part of the world for more than a hundred years. But the news reported by Churchill is not the same as the news Smucker reports. Churchill knew something about indigenous warriors from Pakistan, Afghanistan and other seemingly exotic territories whose thought patterns were so different from those found in the ruling U.S. and British citizens. He also knew quite a bit about government propaganda -- trying to make a losing cause seem not so bad. But Churchill knew nothing about airplanes flown into two New York skyscrapers and the Pentagon. Everything Smucker writes must be read in the shadow of Sept. 11, 2001. When he wrote that al Qaeda terrorists had escaped their Tora Bora hideaway despite the vaunted U.S. military combining with native warriors to stop just that eventuality, Bush administration spokesmen all the way up to Rumsfeld said otherwise. As Smucker notes, "If it had not been for the Pentagon's diligent efforts to deny that bin Laden could have slipped out the back door, the story might well have been lost among all the other stories, rumors and propaganda. Instead, the Pentagon's denial mode boosted interest in our story of bin Laden's slippery moves." Read it to believe it. Six Stars

When historians finally begin writing the comprehensive stories of the "War on Terror", something better willl probably come along than this book. But for the time beingthis is a very enjoyable and enlightening read. Enjoyable because the author - a bit of an eccentric perhaps - takes usalong with him as he wanders througout eastern Afghanistan in the hope of interviewing or capturing Bin Laden. Along the way we are given snapshots of othermember of the foreign correspondant trade - with theexception of Geraldo Rivera, who's arrival and subsequentreporting fills five pages, with a mixture of respect, bemusement and envy at the whole coterie of assistants that accompany him. And then we have the two Afghan warlords hired by the Pentagon to conduct most of the ground operations. Smucker captures their ideosyncrasies perfectly, and the reader is not ultimately surprised to learn that they find no problem in being bribed by both sides.The second half of the book is less folksy, as it concentrateson the two major battles the US took part in: Tora Bora andthe Anaconda campaign. Here we learn how Rumsfeld's naivety perhaps didn't cost us Bin Laden per se, but allowed most of his high command to cross the border to Pakistan.As for Anaconda, the only drawn out battle, Smucker reports it mainly from interviews and military records, describing it with a journalistic "you are there" eye. And it is an eye-opener to see that were it not for our air power our ground forces might have actually taken a beating.Smucker wisely refrains from writing about what he doesn't either observe or learn first-hand. For that reason the reader doesn't get much insight into what the Pentagon was thinking when it did what it did. In any case, this book will help prepare for the fact that the "war" in Afghanistan is farfrom finished, and may not yet turn out the way we want.

The hunt for Bin Laden, post 9-11, was the featured media story during the Oct. - Dec. 2001 timeframe. As much media coverage as the "Bin Laden" hunt garnered at that time - this book takes the reader to the next level of understanding, on the scene, in the scene, about what was taking place in Afghanistan.Mr. Smucker offers an account that is interesting, fast-paced and insightful. It provides a vivid recording of his movements through the wild and rugged terrain of Afghanistan, and will introduce a cast of characters more interesting than a year's worth of so-called "TV Reality" shows. Fasten your seatbelt, and enjoy the ride!

When my friend recommended this book, I wasn't too interested because I don't usually like tedious military histories or heavy analysis. This book had enough of that kind of stuff that I felt like I learned something, but it is written in such a way that the book read like an adventure novel. I finished it in a couple of days. A great read!