Tora Bora: America's First Major Battle Of The Twenty-First Century

January 29, 2010 10:38 AM

That afternoon, American signals operators picked up bin Laden speaking to his followers. Fury kept a careful log of these communications in his notebook, which he would type up at the end of every day and pass up his chain of command. “The time is now,” bin Laden said. “Arm your women and children against the infidel!” Following several hours of high-intensity bombing, the Al Qaeda leader spoke again. Fury paraphrases: “Our prayers have not been answered. Times are dire. We didn’t receive support from the apostate nations who call themselves our Muslim brothers.” Bin Laden apologized to his men for having involved them in the fight and gave them permission to surrender.
posted by jason's_planet (25 comments total)

Next on MetaFilter's bin Laden Friday: His recipe for chicken shawarma, just the way his mother used to make it.
posted by Joe Beese at 10:42 AM on January 29, 2010 [13 favorites]

That bin Laden guy's a total douche.
posted by spilon at 10:59 AM on January 29, 2010 [4 favorites]

Yeah, but how does he feel about the iPad?
posted by loquacious at 10:59 AM on January 29, 2010 [6 favorites]

I just want to say that FuryParaphrases would be an awesome name for a sock puppet.
posted by jquinby at 11:00 AM on January 29, 2010

Please link to the printer-friendly version when possible.
posted by jcruelty at 11:04 AM on January 29, 2010 [4 favorites]

Wait, we had a shot at killing Bin Laden and we let him get away? Why am I just now hearing about this??!!
posted by nathancaswell at 11:11 AM on January 29, 2010 [4 favorites]

Thanks for the link, interesting to see the gory details on how that went down.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:13 AM on January 29, 2010 [2 favorites]

the "Fury" character mentioned here is described as

a 37-year-old major in the elite and secretive Delta Force, who would later write a memoir using the pen name Dalton Fury.

which is not just the most fucking stupid pseudonym ever adopted but a totally dubious source for what is supposedly the word of Osama himself. yeah right, signal corps memoir man.
posted by Hammond Rye at 11:22 AM on January 29, 2010

the "Fury" character mentioned here is described as

       a fictional World War II army hero and present-day super-spy

would be much more awesome. Of course, if the Colonel was there, Osama would be much more dead.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:39 AM on January 29, 2010 [2 favorites]

Especially if that was Ultimate Nick Fury. He's one bad motherfucker.
posted by entropicamericana at 11:47 AM on January 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

That's exactly the kind of brilliant military strategery I'd expect from an administration filled with aging chickenhawks.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:50 AM on January 29, 2010 [2 favorites]

Now, a politician might notice the optics on a "Mission Accomplished: Osama's Dead" celebration and wonder how you could get anyone to then go hoo-rah for invading Iraq: it having nothing remotely plausible to do with 9/11... but, none of these sterling characters cared a whit for politics and a professional and neutral press would have made mince meat of anything that looked like political opportunism.
posted by ennui.bz at 12:35 PM on January 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Why, it's almost as if they didn't want to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. /tinfoilhat
posted by mrgrimm at 1:08 PM on January 29, 2010

I always thought Bush & his administration would really like to have gotten to Bin Laden, but he's a rich guy from a rich family, and they couldn't go against their most basic principles: 'Protect the rich & Advance the interests of the rich'.
posted by hexatron at 1:16 PM on January 29, 2010

I always thought Bush & his administration would really like to have gotten to Bin Laden

HA. Bush Sr. was in the middle of a meeting with Osama bin Laden's brother on 9/11. [source]

I'm sure that's all just a coincidence. Soma. Soma. Soma.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:58 PM on January 29, 2010

"Dalton Fury." Black-ops major, Road House fan, Marvel Zombie, and holding out for that fallback career in porn, no doubt.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 2:19 PM on January 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Its about time we got S.H.I.E.L.D. on this.
posted by cmoj at 2:36 PM on January 29, 2010

the "Fury" character mentioned here is described as

a 37-year-old major in the elite and secretive Delta Force, who would later write a memoir using the pen name Dalton Fury.

oh, my ass he did. Listen, Dalton Fury is really a character in the Candlelight Ecstasy Romance _Bargain With The Devil_ by Jayne Castle, whose real name is Dolores Bunce, of Omaha Nebraska. Put down the headphones, fellers, we've been had.
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:20 PM on January 29, 2010

Senate Report: Bin Laden Was Within Grasp

How Bin Laden Got Away
posted by kirkaracha at 3:26 PM on January 29, 2010

Ah, fond memories of the comment Bush made about Obama bin Laden that actually made me froth at the mouth. With this attitude from the CIC, no wonder the article says, among other things:

[O]n the U.S. side, all was not well. A dispute was raging among officials about how to conduct the battle. By late November, Crumpton--a soft-spoken Georgian widely regarded as one of the most effective CIA officers of his generation--feared that bin Laden might try to escape Tora Bora. He explained this to Bush and Cheney personally at the White House and presented satellite imagery showing that the Pakistani military did not have its side of the border covered. . . .


That bin Laden was at Tora Bora was not, by this point, a secret. The New York Times had reported it on November 25. Four days later, when asked by ABC News whether the Al Qaeda leader was at Tora Bora, Dick Cheney said, “I think he’s probably in that general area.”

Meanwhile, the additional forces that Crumpton and Berntsen were requesting were certainly available.

Speaking as someone who knew people who died in the 911 attacks . . . well, I'm still too angry about this to say anything that is very coherent or for that matter printable.
posted by bearwife at 3:46 PM on January 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ah, fond memories of the comment Bush made about Obama bin Laden

I bet you wish you had that 3-minute-edit window now!
posted by Justinian at 1:12 AM on January 30, 2010

OT: Speaking of funny name-changes, I have in front of me the FBI WANTED poster from March 29, 1999 for USAMA Bin Laden. I wonder when they took the "USA" out of Usama, so to speak.
posted by Ron Thanagar at 5:40 AM on January 30, 2010

Sorry about the typo. (My apologies especially to our current excellent president.) I think my point is clear, though. Bush's willingness to dismiss Osama bin Laden as a threat or worth our attention is unforgivable.
posted by bearwife at 1:59 PM on January 30, 2010

Dalton Fury responded to a negative review of his former Delta teammate's book "Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom" (by Lieutenant General William "Jerry" Boykin--the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Pentagon, overseeing the gathering and exploitation of intelligence during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq).

Fury wrote, "Carol, I think you mean Boykin sacrificed a career in say, corporate America were [sic] greed, back stabbing, and self serving blowhards fill the boardrooms for a profession that required extraordinary sacrifice and where courage, integrity, and honor permeated the battlefields. I'd be happy to buy your copy of Never Surrender off of you and pass it to an American with a little more red, white, and blue in their veins."

Later he edited the post to apologize and deleted another moronic post altogether.
posted by whatgorilla at 8:29 PM on January 30, 2010

NO BLOOD FOR VIBRANIUM
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:01 PM on January 31, 2010