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Tora Bora Mountain Search Runs Dry
Tuesday, January 8, 2002
By Tim Jones
Chicago Tribune staff reporter.
Tribune news services contributed to this report

"We are not going to repeat the mistake that was made after the Soviets were pushed out of here and the rest of the world essentially walked away," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said after meeting near Kabul with Afghan interim Premier Hamid Karzai.

The commander of the American war effort in Afghanistan said troops will leave the mountainous region of Tora Bora by midweek without finding clues to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

Gen. Tommy Franks said the weekslong search of the eastern region found evidence that bin Laden and his supporters had used the caves as a hideout, but nothing that revived what once was thought to be a promising path to the capture of the Saudi exile.

"We'll have that pretty well cleared and be out of there in the next day or so," Franks told The Associated Press on Monday.

A military spokesman said U.S. forces are going to stop "chasing the shadows" of bin Laden and the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, top targets in the Afghan war, and focus on wiping out remaining pockets of Al Qaeda resistance while building better intelligence on the elusive leaders.
(More: ChicagoTribune.com News Source)
2002 © The Chicago Tribune.

Dan