corrente

Top Dog (via Josh Marshall) constructs this handy timeline from Woodward's Plan of Attack. He shows the correlation between Bin Laden's escape and Frank's doing war planning for Iraq. Funny how Woodward hid the truth in plain sight, isn't it?

NOVEMBER 2001
14. Kabul is taken by Northern alliance.
15. -- 16. --
17. Osama last seen leaving for Tora Bora.
18. --
19. Al Qaeda vows last stand at Tora Bora.
20. --
21. Bush asks CENTCOM to prepare for Iraq.
22. --
23. London paper says Osama is at Tora Bora.
24.
25. NY Times writes that Osama is at Tora Bora.
26. --
27. Franks meets with Rumsfeld about Iraq.
28. Osama is able to escape by...
29. ...walking into the mountains...
30. ...over the border to Pakistan.

DECEMBER 2001
1. Rumsfeld issues new Iraq orders for Franks.
2. -- 3. --
4. Franks reports to Pentagon on Iraq.
5. -- 6. -- 7. -- 8.

[ed note: For Top Dog's interactive graphic version of timeline above select link at top of post.]

So, while Bin Laden was escaping from Tora Bora, General Franks was "in meetings" on Iraq.

And from the decidedly non-whorish Knight-Ridder (via Atrios), here's what happened when Franks stopped paying attention, because Bush took his eye off the ball:

Knight Ridder reporters Barry Schlachter of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Jonathan S. Landay and photographers Carl Juste and Peter Andrew Bosch of The Miami Herald were at Tora Bora during the battle, and photographer David Gilkey of the Detroit Free Press and reporter Drew Brown traveled there a year later, interviewed Afghan fighters, retraced al-Qaida escape routes and talked to Pakistani intelligence officers who were tracking al Qaida.

Their reporting found that Franks and other top officials ignored warnings from their own and allied military and intelligence officers that the combination of precision bombing, special operations forces and Afghan forces that had driven the Taliban from northern Afghanistan might not work in the heartland of the country's dominant Pashtun tribe.

While more than 1,200 U.S. Marines sat at an abandoned air base in the desert 80 miles away, Franks and other commanders relied on three Afghan warlords and a small number of American, British and Australian special forces to stop al-Qaida and Taliban fighters from escaping across the mountains into Pakistan.

"We did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora . . . ," Franks wrote.

Military and intelligence officials had warned Franks and others that the two main Afghan commanders, Hazrat Ali and Haji Zaman, couldn't be trusted, and they proved to be correct. [The warlords] were slow to move their troops into place and didn't attack until four days after American planes began bombing - leaving time for al-Qaida leaders to escape and leaving behind a rear guard of Arab, Chechen and Uzbek fighters.

"Ali and Zaman both assured our people that they had forces in blocking positions on the Spin Ghar (mountains) when there were, in fact, no people there," a U.S. military official who played a key role in the campaign said. "So besides taking Afghans at their word, we had no plans to bring up sufficient forces to make up for perfidy."

U.S. reconnaissance photos showed what appeared to be campfires at high altitudes along the trails across the mountains into Pakistan. The Afghans said the fires belonged to sheep herders. Instead, "they were exfiltrators, pure and simple," said an AmZaman and Ali began trying to negotiate an al-Qaida surrender even before they began their ground attack. Then, on the second day of the attack, Zaman declared a cease-fire. Ali and a third commander, Haji Zahir, who joined the attack at the last minute, resumed fighting after a few hours, and the U.S. bombing never stopped. But Zaman left open an escape route through the Waziri Tangi valley.erican military official.

Sheep, huh? If it had been goats, my faith in Bush's competence might be shaken! But as it is, phew! No worries, eh?

UPDATE Alert reader riggsveda points out:

It might be of interest to recall that Sy Hersh, in Chain of Command, recounted that on November 25, 2001, the Northern Alliance took Kunduz, to the north, where it laid seige and surrounded about 4000 Taliban and Pakistani Al Qaeda fighters and sympathizers. The American command then allowed, on the White House's direction, about 3500 of the beseiged enemy to evacuate to Pakistan via Pakistani airlifts. It was supposed to be a limited evacuation for just crucial Pakistani intellligence people, but of course far more than those who were supposed to get out did. So just days before Franks spoke to the White House about Iraq, based on the timeline you have here, we were already clearing the airspace for the safe escape of thousands of little Osamas.