Rumsfeld Dismisses Report of Bin Laden Escape:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday dismissed a report that a U.S. decision not to put ground troops at Tora Bora last year let Osama bin Laden escape.

Rumsfeld bridled when asked whether U.S. Afghanistan war commander Army Gen. Tommy Franks had made a major mistake in his approach to the Tora Bora campaign, as alleged by unnamed U.S. government sources in a Washington Post story.

“My view of the whole thing is that until the lessons learned are known and have been developed — they’re still being worked on — I wouldn’t be able to answer a question like that, and it impresses me that others can from their pinnacles of relatively modest knowledge,” Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing.

(This amounts to saying “I won’t know until I know (if ever)”, of course.)

Rumsfeld said he never has had any conclusive evidence of the whereabouts of bin Laden, whom the United States holds responsible for fatal Sept. 11 attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. “We have seen repeated speculation about his possible location,” Rumsfeld said. “But it has obviously not been verifiable. Had it been verifiable, one would have thought that someone might have done something about it.”

(It’s either ineptitude or ineptitude, it appears. We either had no idea where he was or, if we did, bungled it. Choose your poison…) Yahoo! News

Here’s the April 17th Washington Post story to which Rumsfeld is reacting: U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight