Around the Web: The battle of Tora Bora
At the New Republic, Peter Bergen has an extensive account about Osama bin Laden and the battle of Tora Bora.
“Tora Bora was not yet a familiar name to many Americans. But what would unfold there over the subsequent days remains, eight years later, the single most consequential battle of the war on terrorism,” Bergen writes.
“Presented with an opportunity to kill or capture Al Qaeda’s top leadership just three months after September 11, the United States was instead outmaneuvered by bin Laden, who slipped into Pakistan, largely disappeared from U.S. radar, and slowly began rebuilding his organization.”
Declan Walsh of the Guardian reports that “American special forces have conducted multiple clandestine raids into Pakistan’s tribal areas as part of a secret war in the border region.”
“A former NATO officer said the incursions, only one of which has been previously reported, occurred between 2003 and 2008, involved helicopter-borne elite soldiers stealing across the border at night, and were never declared to the Pakistani government,” Walsh writes.
Two Special Forces soldiers awarded the Silver Star
Two U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers - Master Sgt. Anthony Siriwardene (left in the above photograph) and Staff Sgt. Linsey Clarke (right in the photograph) - were recently awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest combat medal, for their actions during combat in Afghanistan.
