“Officials we interviewed flatly said that neither Congress nor the American public would
have supported large-scale military operations in Afghanistan before the shock of 9/11—despite repeated attacks and plots, including the embassy bombings, the Millennium plots, concerns about al Qaeda to acquire WMD, the U.S.S. Cole, and the summer 2001 threat spike. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz warned that it would have been impossible to get Congress to support sending 10,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan to do what the Soviet Union failed to do in the 1980s. Vice Admiral Scott Fry, the former operations director for the JCS, noted that “a two-or-four division plan would require a footprint [troop level] and force that was larger than the political leadership was willing to accept.” – 9/11 Commission The Military: Staff Statement No 6, 2004 p.12