Nevertheless, a grim-faced Rumsfeld predicted on the 19th day of air strikes that U.S. forces eventually will track down the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks who is thought to be hiding in Afghanistan with the help of the ruling Taliban regime.
“There isn’t any progress,” Rumsfeld said at a news briefing. “You either have him or you don’t. … Until he is no longer functioning as a terrorist, he is functioning as a terrorist.”
Rumsfeld backed off remarks he made in a USA Today article that quoted him as saying the Saudi fugitive ultimately may elude capture. “I don’t know whether we’ll be successful,” Rumsfeld told the newspaper.
As the Bush administration struggled to find the best way to publicly define its mission in the campaign against terrorism and justify its methods, the likelihood of a ground war increased Wednesday.
British leaders were expected to make an announcement, possibly Friday, about the deployment of ground troops in Afghanistan. Britain has 23,000 troops assigned to a military exercise in the Omani desert, 600 miles from Afghanistan.
That force could consist of about 1,000 British marine commandos launched from aircraft carriers, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.
Speaking aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, U.S. Marine Corps commandant Gen. James Jones said the Marines’ top special operations unit is ready to deploy in Afghanistan on six hours’ notice.
“The Marines in the region are ready to execute all missions assigned … and that includes ground operations,” Jones said.
Rumsfeld said the U.S.-led air campaign has destroyed “a large number” of Taliban surface-to-air missiles, MiG fighter jets and helicopters, paving the way for anti-Taliban forces to launch a ground offensive.
However, leaders with the rebel group, the Northern Alliance, insist the Taliban has not been weakened enough to set the stage for a major rebel attack, and that the time for a U.S. ground offensive is now.
“If America wants to finish off terrorism and the Taliban in Afghanistan, they must bring in ground troops,” said Eztullah, Northern Alliance commander. “This should be quick.”
U.S. warplanes targeted key Taliban frontline strongholds near Kabul for a fifth day Thursday. Bombing raids also were reported near the strategic northern city of Mazar-e Sharif and the Taliban’s home base, Kandahar.
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Taliban officials claimed one of those strikes hit a crowded bus near Kandahar and killed 10 civilians, though the report could not be confirmed.
In other developments Thursday, the Senate sent President Bush legislation giving police new and expanded powers to track, punish and detain suspected terrorists. Bush is expected to sign the bill by week’s end.
Ashcroft warning
Also, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft warned terrorists that authorities will use every law and immigration violation to put them behind bars and to intercept communications, even electronic and voice mail.
Since the U.S. began its air attack on the Taliban regime and bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network Oct. 7, Bush administration officials have emphasized that part of the mission to eradicate terrorism involves bringing to justice the elusive bin Laden and his lieutenants.
But Rumsfeld acknowledged that while the U.S. continues to develop intelligence on bin Laden’s movements in Afghanistan, that intelligence has consistently been a step behind, or as he put it, “after the fact.”
He likened the effort to find bin Laden to “looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“Does he move? Sure, he moves. Have we located him? No, not in a way that allowed us to do anything about it,” Rumsfeld said. “Are we continuing the effort? You bet. Do we expect to get him? Yes.”
Wiping out threat
The administration still defines success in the war on the Taliban and Al Qaeda as “creating a situation where the Al Qaeda and the Taliban are no longer committing terrorist acts or harboring terrorists in that country and creating a threat to the rest of the world,” Rumsfeld said.
In an effort to convince hundreds of thousands of skeptical Muslims that the U.S. campaign to eliminate the terrorist network is not a conflict with Islam, the administration will distribute statements by Muslim clerics denouncing the Sept. 11 attacks to U.S. Embassies, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
While the massive effort to root out bin Laden continues, he remains a potent threat. Two British media outlets, the London Times and British Channel Four television news, quoted Western intelligence sources as saying bin Laden has illegally obtained nuclear materials from Pakistan.
Both outlets added, however, that the Saudi dissident still doesn’t have the technology necessary to use the materials to create nuclear weaponry.
Rumsfeld said he did not think the American people would become impatient with the war on terrorism, adding that he believes the public knows the war is being fought on several fronts. The campaign entails military action, but it also involves a worldwide law-enforcement effort to root out terrorists and the freezing of bank accounts linked to terrorist networks.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. warplanes were continuing to direct their efforts at Taliban military forces along front lines near Kabul.
The U.S. has been using B-1 Lancer bombers, which are particularly useful in dropping large numbers of cluster bombs, and B-52s, which normally carry general purpose or “dumb” bombs. B-2 stealth bombers based in Missouri also have been contributing to the air effort, most notably dropping 5,000 pound “bunker buster” bombs on Taliban caves.
Myers showed video footage of Navy jets hitting a motor transport facility and an armored car near Kabul, as well as a rocket launcher carrying explosive munitions.
Myers was pressed on whether the U.S. should be doing more bombing or deploying large numbers of ground troops to root out Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders and units and to assist the Northern Alliance in its fight. Some have described the U.S. effort as piecemeal.
“I don’t know what the definition of `piecemeal’ is,” Myers said. “One of the things we ask [Gen.] Tom Franks, the Central Command commander, every day is, `Do you have what you need to prosecute the campaign?’ And the facts are that he does.”
Rebels were amassing troops in anticipation of an eventual offensive on Kabul, but Abdullah, chief spokesman for the Northern Alliance, said the group was willing to hold off until leaders of the country’s ethnic groups reached a consensus on its political future.
Just what role leaders of the Northern Alliance would play in Afghanistan’s postwar government remains to be seen. The rebel organization, made up largely of a disparate, fractious array of Uzbek and Tajik fighters, has been locked in a five-year war with the country’s ruling Taliban forces.
But exiled Afghan elders meeting in Peshawar, Pakistan, warned that a protracted U.S. bombing in Afghanistan could create a political vacuum that would allow “a particular group through military operation” to wrest control of the beleaguered nation. The allusion was believed to be a reference to the Northern Alliance.
The elders also agreed that the nation’s former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, should play an “effective role … to put an end to this crisis.” Shah has been in exile in Rome since 1973.
The group also called for an end to U.S. operations in Afghanistan and for a grand council of Afghan leaders to convene to decide the future of the south Asian nation.