Chalk up another fuck up...

Oh how the Bush Junta squeeled when Kerry asserted that Bush's blundering and outsourcing of the Tora Bora operation allowed Bin Laden to escape.

When that criticism was made Cheney, naturally, made the most outrageous protestation when he mumbled...

[I]t's absolute garbage. It's just not true.

There were many bloggers that pointed out just who was really peddling garbage at the time, the most effective probably being Josh Marshall.

But now comes this additional support:

A commander for Osama bin Laden during Afghanistan's war with the Soviet Union who helped the al-Qaida leader escape American forces at Tora Bora is being held by U.S. authorities, a government document says.

The document represents the first definitive statement from the Pentagon (news - web sites) that bin Laden, the mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was at Tora Bora and evaded his pursuers.

President Bush (news - web sites) and Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) asserted during the presidential election that commanders did not know whether bin Laden was at Tora Bora when U.S. and allied Afghan forces attacked there in December 2001. They dismissed assertions by Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), the Democratic presidential nominee, that the military had missed a chance to capture or kill bin Laden while al-Qaida made a last stand in the mountainous area along the Pakistan border.

...

While campaigning for president last fall, Kerry said Bush had erred in relying on Afghan warlords to hunt down bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora in December 2001, contending on Oct. 22 that the president had "outsourced" the job.

Cheney said Oct. 26 that Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, had "stated repeatedly it was not at all certain that bin Laden was in Tora Bora. He might have been there or in Pakistan or even Kashmir (news - web sites)," the Indian-controlled Himalayan region.

Franks, now retired, wrote in an opinion column in The New York Times on Oct. 19, "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001." He added that intelligence assessments of his location varied, but bin Laden was "never within our grasp."

On several occasions Bush cited the column as evidence that bin Laden could have been in any of several countries in December 2001. "That's what Tommy Franks, who knew what he's talking about, said," Bush said on Oct. 27.

So when the Bushinistas SCREAMED that they still had no idea in the Summer and Fall of 2004 whether Bin Laden was at Tora Bora or not...SURPRISE, they lied.

Hey, that Clinton thing, it wasn't about the blowjob, but the lying right?

But apparently, it's okay to lie your ass off about military decisions?

Funny how these things keep dripping out without coverage from the broadcast media because of one manufactured human interest story after another isn't it?