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Posted on 10/08/2001 2:27:41 AM PDT by ppaul

WASHINGTON — The strikes on the Taliban government opened what senior Pentagon and military officials said would be a weeklong, nearly day-and-night bombing campaign carried out by supersonic jets from aircraft carriers and heavy bombers flying from air bases as far away as Missouri.

In a sign of the intensity and duration of the planned campaign, the Air Force's stealthy, bat-winged B-2 bombers did not return to their hangars at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., after striking their targets halfway around the world, but rather flew on to Diego Garcia, a British island in the Indian Ocean, where they will reload for more bombing runs. It is the first time the stealthy, sophisticated B-2, built at a cost of $2 billion each, has been based overseas for a combat mission.

Today's strikes opened with a synchronized barrage of 50 cruise missiles fired from British and American ships and submarines, and continued through the clear, moonlit Afghan night, senior military officials at the Pentagon said.

The attacks hit airfields where the Taliban military has a modest air force, air-defense gun and missile batteries and command centers across Afghanistan, including targets in the capital, Kabul, and in the center of the Taliban's political power, Kandahar, they said.

The first attacks also apparently devastated a concentration of Taliban tanks and armored vehicles near Mazar-i-Sharif, in the north, where Taliban forces had recently battled opposition forces, the officials said.

Another primary target was the Taliban's defense headquarters on the outskirts of Kabul, they said. "You don't attack the Pentagon and not expect your defense ministry to be destroyed," one official said.

A wave of B-52 bombers dropped streams of huge unguided bombs across several training camps in the Baghlan Province north of Kabul that the officials said had recently been used by terrorist groups, including Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. Though terrorists are likely to have fled in advance of the strikes, one senior military official said the camps had buildings and equipment worth destroying and military commanders chose a tactic intended to create widespread devastation.

As the attack planes returned, it was too early to say how successful the attacks had been or whether there were many casualties on the ground. Officials said they could better access the damage once reconnaissance aircraft were able to survey the targets after sunrise in Afghanistan on Monday.

Significantly, the strikes did not specifically target Mr. bin Laden, according to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and other officials, because intelligence services are not certain of his location.

The initial attack involved 15 American bombers, including heavy B-1 and B-52 bombers, also based on Diego Garcia. There were also 25 F- 14's and F/A-18's from the aircraft carriers Carl Vinson and Enterprise, both in the Arabian Sea, and scores of aerial refuelers and reconnaissance aircraft, both American and British, operating from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

Many of the bombs were guided by satellite, a tactic that does not require flying so low or involve special forces on the ground to shine lasers at individual targets.

Even as the first air strikes continued, two C-17 cargo planes left Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany and lumbered this evening toward Southwest Afghanistan, dropping 37,500 packets of food and medicine in an area where thousands of refugees have fled.

In a sign of the Pentagon's wariness of the Taliban's air defenses, the C-17's flew at altitudes so high that their crew members risked suffering the bends.

Mr. Rumsfeld said that the Taliban military had a limited number of surface-to-air missiles, as well as hand-held rockets that could destroy aircraft overhead. Other officials said the Taliban forces appeared to put up little significant defense. Aging aircraft at several air bases in Afghanistan made no effort to scramble, one official said.

A B-52 pilot who took part in the mission said tonight that he and his crew did not encounter any air defense threat for which they were unprepared, though he declined to discuss specifics. "There was nothing that put us unduly at risk," the pilot said in a telephone interview, speaking on condition he be identified only by his call name, Woodstock. By late this evening, no American aircraft were reported damaged, missing or downed in the first strikes.

While the Pentagon deployed nearly 1,000 soldiers to an airfield in Uzbekistan to guard search-and-rescue teams, the initial phases of the war plan did rely on any sizable use of American forces on the ground in Afghanistan, beyond small squads of commandos searching for targets, senior officials said.

The attack began just after 11 a.m. Eastern time — nearly two hours before President Bush spoke from the Treaty Room of the White House — when four American cruisers and a submarine, joined by one British submarine, began firing cruise missile after cruise missile toward Afghanistan. Crew members aboard some tankers even listened to the President's speech as they took part in the operation.

The first blasts — from the cruise missiles — were reported in Afghanistan at 12:27 p.m. Eastern time, or 8:57 p.m. in Afghanistan.

They were followed by several hours of strikes by bombers and fighters, many flying over Pakistan, which had allowed American aircraft to fly over its territory.

The B-2's unloaded their satellite- guided bombs, called Joint Direct Attack Munitions, used against targets that must be demolished with precision. The B-52's carried payloads of 500-pound gravity bombs, called Mark-82, which are more traditional explosives intended to kill massed troops, to destroy tanks or other weapons or to level structures like those found at military training camps or to gut airstrips.

Appearing with Gen. Richard B. Myers, the newly installed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. Rumsfeld said the American military had already begun psychology operations to undermine the Taliban's grip on Afghanistan, including radio broadcasts. In addition to food packets, the Pentagon also plans to drop leaflets, imploring Afghanis to oppose the Taliban.

"Thank God for allowing GWB to win the election."

Amen!


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The B-2's unloaded their satellite- guided bombs, called Joint Direct Attack Munitions, used against targets that must be demolished with precision

Initially, the terrorists may burrow deeper into caves and other entrenched hiding places.
Our military action is also designed to clear the way for sustained, comprehensive and relentless operations to drive them out and bring them to justice.
President George W. Bush

You better dig deep, Osama. We are coming after you!
Delta 21

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