Al Qaeda Trainees Were “Cannon Fodder”

So instead of Tom Clancy-style special ops, the New York Times claims to have discovered that the Al Qaeda training camps were in fact basic infrantry training camps for the Taliban.

The documents show that the training camps, which the Bush administration has described as factories churning out terrorists, were instead focused largely on creating an army to support the Taliban, which was waging a long ground war against the Northern Alliance … “The vast majority of them were cannon fodder,” a United States government official said.

I guess overstating the abilities of your enemy in advance is necessary when you outmatch them so completely in conventional terms. During the Gulf War we heard endless discussion of how badass the Iraqi crack troops were, but in the end they were so shell-schocked and terrified, cowering, that the US just buried them using bulldozers and that was the end of that.