Here’s the important bit, though:
“Removing the al-Qaida leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat,” the report says. “But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism.”
See, they let bin Laden go back in ’01 because we had Iraq to start getting ready for. No one gave a damn about Afghanistan really, it was just a convenient pretext to go ahead with the already-planned Iraq assault. Turns out that doing so (surprise) made the situation far worse than it should have been.
Anyone still want to claim that we were safer with the Bush administration in charge?
