The NY Times has an article about the recent revelation of a six-year archive of classified military documents (released by WikiLeaks). In it, we find this lil' tidbit:
There are fleeting -- even taunting -- reminders of how the war began in the occasional references to the elusive Osama bin Laden.
This isn't mission creep, this is mission rocket-blast-to-the-moon. If, when the Afghan occupation started, we had announced that we were going to stay for nearly a decade (and with no withdrawal in sight) in order to bring light unto the heathenengage in nation building, no one would have supported the invasion. The stated goal was to find and either capture or kill bin Laden, and destroy the rest of his Al-Queda group in response for the Sept. 11th attacks.
There was an opportunity at Tora Bora to do so in 2003, and the Bush Administration failed. Either change the mission to finding bin Laden, or else bring them home now.
... and the Bush Administration failed.
Why don't we see these words 100 times a day, in 100 different contexts?
Pls note the same riff was played again for the conquest of Iraq 1.5 years later, to the same results, and is now being warmed up once more with only that last letter changed.