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Army Rangers
ready to parachute into southern Afghanistan before the commando
raid. (Official DoD photo)
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U.S. Commando Raid Botched,
Reports Say
St.Petersburg Times
November 08, 2001
WASHINGTON -- Last month, hours after U.S. Special
Operations forces in Afghanistan raided a compound belonging to the
Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Pentagon characterized
the mission as nearly flawless.
Not only did commando teams manage
to gather intelligence during the Oct. 20 operation, the Pentagon said,
but by literally taking the fight to the Taliban's front door, they
demonstrated America's ability to strike freely inside Afghanistan. Gen.
Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that
U.S. forces had suffered only two minor injuries during the parachute
drops.
Since then, however, the official Pentagon version of the
raid has come under attack. For at least two weeks, rumors have swirled
both here and abroad that the mission was rough going for the Americans.
The word in London was that the United States got a "bloody nose."
In recent days, the New Yorker magazine and the Guardian newspaper
in London, citing unnamed sources, have portrayed the mission as a botch,
rather than a success. That bad publicity has touched off some debate in
Washington about the Pentagon's handling of the ground war.
The
Pentagon, meanwhile, denies that anything went seriously wrong.
On
Wednesday, however, in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, retired
Army Gen. Wesley Clark, the U.S. European Command commander who directed
the war in Kosovo, helped bolster the news accounts of a mission gone
awry. Clark said British military sources told him during a visit to
London eight or nine days ago that the United States indeed sustained 12
injuries as reported in the New Yorker.
The New Yorker said three
people had suffered serious injuries; Clark said he heard two people had
suffered serious injuries. The injuries were not life-threatening, he
said.
U.S. forces, Clark said he was told, encountered
"significant contact" with the Taliban.
Clark insisted that he
believed Myers when he said that everything had gone according to plan.
Asked what his gut told him about the operation, Clark said, "Have
you seen another one?"
"If it was such a success, we haven't done
another one. That's how successful it was."
U.S. officials have
stressed that the war against terrorism often will be fought in the
shadows with no Pentagon acknowledgement.
The Pentagon has
acknowledged that Special Operations forces are on the ground with the
Northern Alliance, the main opposition group in Afghanistan.
In
Tampa, the U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base, which is
running the war in Afghanistan, referred a reporter with questions about
the operation to an interview Gen. Tommy R. Franks gave ABC's This Week on
Sunday.
Franks, the commander of the Central Command, specifically
was asked about the accuracy of the article in the New Yorker, written by
the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh.
"I don't think
it's right for me to talk about accuracy or not. I will say this, that I
think . . . we are best-served when informed sources really are, really
are informed," Franks said. "I will not characterize the Hersh report as
either accurate or inaccurate."
Were 12 people wounded?
"It depends on how one defines wounds," Franks said. "We had young
people, and I think we had some pretty good video of them who jumped in,
who jumped in on one of these objectives with parachutes.
"We had
a bunch of these . . . young people who, you know, had scratches and bumps
and knots from rocks and all this sort of stuff. And so, it's probably
accurate to say that maybe, maybe five or maybe 25 people were quote,
"wounded.' We had no one wounded by enemy fire, and I think that probably
is worthwhile noting."
If, indeed, something went wrong, the
Pentagon may be holding back because of a feeling, even inside the Bush
White House, that the war is not going well. Clark, for one, said he
believed the Taliban was winning the propaganda war. That is why, he said,
President Bush began a media offensive this week, addressing a
counterterrorist conference in Poland by satellite, for example.
Today, for the first time since the air campaign got under way,
Franks is scheduled to conduct the Pentagon news briefing.
While
the Pentagon denies it, there have been rumblings that Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld is not entirely happy with the way Franks is
prosecuting the war.
While Rumsfeld is pushing for creative
thinking, Franks is seen as a traditional warrior. Rumsfeld reportedly is
a big advocate of Special Operations.
In addition to Rumsfeld,
Clark said Franks also has been getting direction from Vice President Dick
Cheney on how to run the war.
"When you're a commander, you take a
lot of s---," Clark said. "A lot of people on the sidelines think they can
do better."
Speaking of Franks, Clark said, "I imagine he feels
tremendous pressure."
The New Yorker quoted members of the
super-secret Delta Force as saying that during the raid on Mullah Omar's
compound, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
Instead of
going in quietly, the attack "was initiated by sixteen AC-130 gunships,
which poured thousands of rounds into the surrounding area but
deliberatedly left the Mullah's house unscathed," Hersh wrote.
After coming out of the house, Hersh said, the Special Operations
forces were ambushed.
"The Taliban were firing light arms and
either R.P.G.'s -- rocket-propelled grenades -- or mortars. The chaos was
terrifying."
Delta Force, Hersh wrote, found itself in a "tactical
firefight and the Taliban had the advantage."
"The team
immediately started taking casualties and evacuated."
Quoting a
senior military official, Hersh said the ferocity of the Taliban response
"scared the c--- out of everyone."
To see more of The St.
Petersburg Times, go to http://www.sptimes.com .
© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.
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