Dear Donald Rumsfeld

via The Los Angeles Times:

John Kerry:
Eight years ago this month, Osama bin Laden walked out of the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan and disappeared into Pakistan. U.S. intelligence agencies have no real idea where he is today, but it is clear that the world's most wanted man and the terrorist organization he leads have reemerged as a powerful force behind the increasingly deadly insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Three senior Obama administration officials warned last week that Al Qaeda is more dangerous than at any time in the last 18 months. They gave the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a frightening bill of particulars: Al Qaeda is providing training and resources for militants attacking U.S. troops in Afghanistan, assisting suicide bombers in Pakistan and helping extremists plot new attacks on India. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described Bin Laden's Al Qaeda as a "syndicate of terrorism." Underscoring the danger, she said the terrorists are seeking nuclear weapons.

If we had captured or killed Bin Laden, the world would look very different today. His death or imprisonment would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat, but our failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism. It left the American people more vulnerable, and it inflamed the strife that now threatens to engulf Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Now that John Kerry has basically confirmed what we all knew for years, it's time to go in on you Mr. Rumsfeld. If there was one thing that you (or the rest of the Bush administration) were not conservative about, it's your rapid military deployment of military force to Afghanistan and Iraq. We were in that war before we even knew what we were looking for. That said, I have a question for you: When you had the chance, why didn't you NAB OSAMA?? I mean for God's sake, if you're looking for someone in the nether regions of the planet, where the wilderness is expansive, and you have that person within a 5 mile radius, why don't you just finish the job? Why do you let a man synonymous with ACTUAL terrorism (not the kind you guys were doing in the Middle East) just walk out of a cave and find his way into Pakistan? A move like that just makes me believe moreso that it really wasn't bin Laden you guys were looking for in the desert.

I love that conservatives still defend the war to this day. The Man will never admit that he is wrong, even when all signs are pointing right down that alley. It just shows how short-sightedness can waste 7 years of military action. The fact that President Obama has decided to re-deploy 10,000 troops to clean up something that could have been done 3 years ago is atrocious. Mr. Rumsfeld, you should learn the proverb that 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'. Even if your aim in being in Afghanistan and Iraq was to find oil (which it was), at least accomplish the goal that you set out to. That way if and when you do ruin two countries, you can at least say you 'rid the world of terrorism'. Now that we've lost Osama, you don't suppose you guys have stumbled on any weapons of mass destruction (minus the ones we brought with us) we were looking for? I hope not. That'll give politicians like yourself more wherewithal to peddle your outdated ideologies on war and nation-building...