U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight (washingtonpost.com)

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

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Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A at a Town Hall Meeting in Carroll, Ohio

Q Good morning, Mr. Vice President. It's a great honor. I appreciate the opportunity. John Kerry has stated on several occasions that the United States had Osama bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora in Afghanistan, and then in his characterization that we diverted our resources and troops to Iraq and outsourced that particular mission or job to the warlords of Afghanistan. I personally doubt the veracity of his statement and I would just like you to respond to that, please.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I happen to agree with you. (Laughter.) No, the facts are -- and this issue was addressed just yesterday or the day before by General Tommy Franks. General Franks was the CENTCOM commander; he was the four-star in charge of or operations for that whole part of the globe, including both Afghanistan and Iraq. He was the man in charge of those operations. He was the one who developed and executed the plans that worked in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and he came just within the last 24 or 48 hours and said, it's absolute garbage. It's just not true.

The fact of the matter is that we get speculation about where Osama bin Laden might have been, but we went down and went in and took down a great many bad guys, and killed a lot of other members of al Qaeda. There is no evidence that there was any diminution of the effort in Afghanistan because of what we did in Iraq. We clearly are capable of doing both operations. We did both operations. The man in charge of both operations, who is a highly decorated, distinguished veteran of over 30 years service in the United States military says basically it's hogwash. And he was there; he ought to know. (Applause.)