Bush let bin Laden escape...

The recent ABC docudrama Path to 911 had a fictional scene where the CIA is looking at Osama bin Laden through binoculars and the Clinton administration inexplicably lets him go. It turns out that the incompetence of the Bush administration is the reason bin Laden is alive and free.

From a CNN interview with Gary Berntsen, who led the CIA's paramilitary unit chasing bin Laden after he fled from Kabul, from the transcript posted at Political Cortex:

AMANPOUR: ... the CIA was sure it knew where he was, thanks in large part to a radio taken off a dead al Qaeda fighter.

BERNTSEN: We listened to bin Laden for several days using that radio, listened to his communications among him and his men. We listened to him apologize to them for having led them into this trap and having led them into a location where they would be having airstrikes called on them just relentlessly.

BERNTSEN: In the first two or three days of December, I would write a message back to Washington, recommending the insertion of U.S. forces on the ground. I was looking for 600 to 800 Rangers, roughly a battalion. They never came.

BERNTSEN: By my calculation, there were more American journalists than American soldiers at the battle of Tora Bora, and that fact kind of speaks for itself.