Retired U.S. General Tommy Franks Accuses John Kerry of "Distorting the Facts" Relating to Bin Laden, Tora Bora, Afghanistan and Iraq

Kerry's Exaggerations

According to the General who planned and commanded the successful operations in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq, recently wrote in a New York Times Op-ed article titled: "War of Words", "I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality".

During the debates and on the campaign trail, John Kerry said, “Unfortunately, bin Laden escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded”. General Tommy Franks took issue with these statements and explained the actual facts this way. "First, take Mr. Kerry's contention that we "had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden" and that "we had him surrounded." We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp".

In another misleading statement made by John Kerry "The president relied on Afghan warlords and he outsourced that job too. That's wrong".  According to Ret. General Tommy Franks, this is not true. Word for word, this is how Ret. General Tommy Franks described and corrected the inaccuracies relating to the "outsourcing" to the Afghan Warlords. "Second, we did not outsource military action. We did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora, a mountainous, geographically difficult region on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is where Afghan mujahedeen holed up for years, keeping alive their resistance to the Soviet Union. Killing and capturing Taliban and Qaeda fighters was best done by the Afghan fighters who already knew the caves and tunnels".

Then In another false and misleading statement put forth by John Kerry during the debates and on the campaign trail when he said "But we didn't use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him (Bin Laden). In the Op-Ed piece, Ret. General Tommy Franks corrected Kerry's false statement by writing, "U.S. special forces were used in the operation at Tora Bora". The General expanded on the actual facts of the Tora Bora operation this way. "Third, the Afghans weren't left to do the job alone. Special forces from the United States and several other countries were there, providing tactical leadership and calling in air strikes. Pakistani troops also provided significant help - as many as 100,000, sealed the border and rounded up hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban fighters".

Finally, the retired General disputed John Kerry's false charges that President Bush “took his eye off the ball” and there was a premature transfer of military assets from the Afghan front to Iraq. General Franks who was in a position to know, set the record straight in the op-ed stating "Afghanistan remained a center of focus. Neither attention nor manpower was diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. When we started Operation Iraqi Freedom we had about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, and by the time we finished major combat operations in Iraq last May we had more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan".

The facts and statements as set forth by Ret. Gen. Franks do differ greatly from Kerry's, and do raise some serious questions about John Kerry's character, as to the possibility of whether he intentionally distorted the actual facts to the American public for votes, or whether he has some sort of a serious inability to accurately gather information concerning U.S. military operations. And its not that Kerry didn't have access to the actual information, because he did. After all, his running mate Sen. John Edwards, did sit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during that time period. TW 10/22/2004

To Read the entire Op-Ed by Ret. General Tommy Franks, click on the second source link here: Tommy Franks: War of Words or if you have a NYTimes.com subscription to their website, you can search their site using the keywords: "Tommy Franks: War of Words"