Howrah News Service -  Latest news and headlines on Howrah,West Bengal and World: ‘Plan to kill Osama aborted in 2001’

‘Plan to kill Osama aborted in 2001’
================================================================================
ASIANAGE on 06 October, 2008 03:11:33
 
New York, Oct. 6: America’s best chance to eliminate Al Qaeda mastermind Osama
bin Laden came in 2001 itself, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, but this plan was
nixed, according to a former officer of the elite Delta Force.
A CBS report says that shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon issued a simple order
to a top secret team of American commandos in Afghanistan — "Kill Osama bin
Laden".
The officer in command of that operation has decided to break his silence after
seven years to set the record straight.
"Our job was to go find him, capture or kill him, and we knew the writing on
the wall was to kill him because nobody wanted to bring Osama bin Laden back to
stand trial in the United States somewhere," the mission commander said.
In 2001, just 10 weeks after 9/11, he was a 37-year-old Army major leading a
team of America’s most elite commandos. He calls himself "Dalton Fury," and is
the author of Kill Bin Laden, a new book out this week.
In 2001, his entire team transformed themselves in Afghanistan. "Everybody had
their beard grown. Everybody wore local Afghan clothing, sometimes carrying the
same weapons as them," he explained.
"The idea was that if this all worked out Osama bin Laden would be dead, and no
one would ever know that Delta Force was there."
Delta developed an audacious plan to come at bin Laden from the one direction
he would never expect.
"We wanted to come in on the back door. The original plan that we sent up
through our higher headquarters, Delta Force wants to come in over the mountain
with oxygen, coming from the Pakistan side, over the mountains and come in and
get a drop on bin Laden from behind." But they didn’t take that route, because
Fury says they didn’t get approval from a higher level. Four days after
arriving in Tora Bora, Dalton Fury was faced with a fateful command decision:
three of his men were in trouble behind enemy lines, and at the same time the
CIA had been listening to bin Laden’s radio transmissions and had a
breakthrough.
"And this is where it gets complicated. At about the same time, the CIA,
George, comes into our room and he says, ‘Guys, I got a location for Osama bin
Laden.’ That’s probably the best location data we’ve had on UBL ever."
It was night, so Mr Fury was without his Afghan allies. Still, he rescued his
men and then found himself approaching bin Laden’s doorstep. "We’re about
2,000 metres away from where we think bin Laden’s at still. From where we’re
at. Now we have to make a decision," he remembers.
Fury had two choices: advance his small team with no Afghan support, or return
to camp and assault in the morning. He was under orders to make the Afghans take
the lead, and intelligence said there were more than 1,000 hardened fighters
protecting bin Laden.
He says that his decision to abort the mission while regrettable; wasn’t
worth the risk at that particular moment.
"It was better to be cautious, refit, go up there with the entire force the
next day and play the battle out as we had planned," he added.
In the morning, bin Laden was on the radio. The CIA, Delta, and their Afghan
allies were listening. The radio intercepts gave Delta a fix on bin Laden’s
location.
—ANI