Did Bush intentionally let Osama get away?

Cenk Ugar posted this today on The Huffington Post.

The New York Times reported this weekend that we sent in 36 U.S. Special Forces troops to get Osama bin Laden when we knew he was in Tora Bora. By contrast, we sent nearly 150,000 soldiers to get Saddam Hussein. In case you're keeping count at home, we got Saddam and we didn't get Osama.

What does that tell you about this administration’s priorities? This goes beyond incompetence. If you send only 36 soldiers to get somebody in the middle of Afghanistan, it means you don’t want to get him.It gets worse. The piece in the Sunday New York Times Magazine also says there was an American commander with 4,000 marines standing by within striking distance. Brig. Gen. James N. Mattis requested permission to join the fight. He was denied.

Why wouldn’t you want to send in whatever we have at our disposal to get the guy who attacked us on 9/11? Why would you care so little about the person who actually attacked this country and so much about someone like Saddam who had no role in attacking us?

I can't forget that Bush gave both Tenet from CIA and General Tommy Franks (who commanded the Afghanistan operation during Tora Bora) the Medal of Freedom. We know that Tenet got his for screwing up the Intelligence on Iraq and WMDs. Did Franks get his for letting Osama get away?

Was Osama's escape intentional or purely a typical Bush administration screw-up? Because by the looks of the New York Times Magazine story, if Franks had wanted Osama he would have had him. I have read eleswhere that the CIA Commander at Tora Bora has stated publicly that he knew for a fact Osama was there.

I'll speculate that Bush and Cheney did not want Osama caught then, because he was the impetus needed to get the invasion of Iraq started. If Osama had been caught at Tora Bora it is unlikely that we would have invaded Iraq.

Anyone who does not consider that a top possibility simply does not understand how utterly stupid and unscrupulous Cheney and Bush really are. That is "unscrupulous" because they think they can actually do stuff like that, and "stupid" because they really think it will work.

If they really did this, then as Ugar says, it borders on Treason.

So - tell me again - Why did Tommy Franks get the Medal of Freedom?