If the objective was to kill or capture Bin Laden or at least so disrupt his operations so that he could not launch any further terrorists attacks on the scale such as those perpetrated on 911, then we have succeeded very well. That was the reason for launching the attack on Afghanistan, not to overthrow the Taliban or to kill bin Laden.
"Scheuer's point is that we could have done better, and we could be doing better."
Scheuer is a Monday Morning Quarterback of the vilest sort. In a perfect world, everything would be perfect, but we do not live in a perfect world. The perfect is the enemy of the good enough.
If we would have waited to attack Afghanistan until after we had airlifted in the thousands of troops and tons of equipment needed to surround Tora Bora, then bin Laden may well have been long gone lone before we were ready to attack him.
If we had gone to the big footprint model of using all US troops to carry out the war in Afghanistan, we may well have provoked a negative response from the non-Taliban population of Afghanistan and become bogged down in a long war along the lines of that which did the Soviets in.
I like the Monday morning quarter-back analogy, but think about it, he is Monday morning quarter-backing himself. lol.
But just think about how dumb his statement is about it being no problem taking out the United Arab Emirate princes along with OBL.
On one hand, he is saying we are pissing off the arabs so bad that they are attacking us now. On the next, he says we should have killed a bunch of arab princes from a state that has lots and lots of money with which to finance terrorism and to whip up anti-US support.
Sorry, no CIA agent in his right mind would kill UAE princes (who are on our side by the way) as collateral damage.
The guy is just way too dumb to be a CIA agent, let alone be the guy in charge of getting OBL. The CIA cannot have anywhere near the number of talented and intelligent people that are needed if this guy rose in the ranks at all.