Return-Path: <sentto-279987-1961-1000743475-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com> Delivered-To: fc@all.net Received: from 204.181.12.215 by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.1.0) for fc@localhost (single-drop); Mon, 17 Sep 2001 09:19:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 22028 invoked by uid 510); 17 Sep 2001 16:18:11 -0000 Received: from n24.groups.yahoo.com (216.115.96.74) by 204.181.12.215 with SMTP; 17 Sep 2001 16:18:11 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-279987-1961-1000743475-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.4.52] by ef.egroups.com with NNFMP; 17 Sep 2001 16:17:55 -0000 X-Sender: fc@big.all.net X-Apparently-To: iwar@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_2); 17 Sep 2001 16:17:54 -0000 Received: (qmail 76276 invoked from network); 17 Sep 2001 13:21:53 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 17 Sep 2001 13:21:53 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO big.all.net) (65.0.156.78) by mta1 with SMTP; 17 Sep 2001 13:21:53 -0000 Received: (from fc@localhost) by big.all.net (8.9.3/8.7.3) id GAA10006 for iwar@onelist.com; Mon, 17 Sep 2001 06:21:52 -0700 Message-Id: <200109171321.GAA10006@big.all.net> To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List) Organization: I'm not allowed to say X-Mailer: don't even ask X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL1] From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net> Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list iwar@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:iwar-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com> Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 06:21:52 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com Subject: [iwar] [fc:Experts.Predict.U.S..Will.Fight.1st.Extended.Commando.War] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit USA Today September 17, 2001 Experts Predict U.S. Will Fight 1st Extended Commando War By Bill Nichols and Dave Moniz, USA Today WASHINGTON - Imagine a war in which U.S. forces rely on Russian spies, Pakistani airspace, Iranian political pressure and support from six of the seven nations on the U.S. list of terrorist sponsors. Imagine a conflict in which there would be no marching of massed troops against the enemy, no seizing of capital cities, no huge formations of tanks and warplanes squaring off in dramatic, high-stakes battles. Such a campaign was unthinkable before last week's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. But Bush administration officials and military experts say this is the very kind of war being plotted by the president and his closest military counselors. It is shaping up to be a lengthy, broad-based assault on a far-flung set of terrorist targets by an international coalition of unlikely allies. It almost certainly will yield significant U.S. casualties. And it will be different from any war Americans have ever seen. President Bush told reporters as he returned to the White House from Camp David on Sunday that his administration is readying a "crusade" against terrorism. "We will work with the nations that one would have felt a couple of years ago would have been impossible to work with," Bush said. "This will not be a short-duration, six cruise missiles, two stealth bombers, then read about it in the morning operation. It's a war and it's going to go back and forth," says Bill Nash, a retired Army major general who commanded U.S. forces in Bosnia in 1995-96. The planning for the military response to the attacks, officials say, is requiring out-of-the-box thinking to conduct what in all likelihood will be America's first commando war. That is necessitated by the suspected enemy. It is not a hostile government with clearly defined targets, but a shadowy network of terrorists hiding in remote regions of Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa, and possibly the West. Later rather than sooner Military experts do not rule out the possibility of an immediate response in the coming days, followed by a more sustained campaign. But the strong sense from the administration is that the heart of the operation would come later rather than sooner. The reasons: The difficulties of planning such an unorthodox operation and of keeping a global anti-terrorism coalition intact. "Cruise missiles do not get people who are operating in the shadows," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on ABC's This Week. "And the era of antiseptic warfare - planes dropping bombs from 20,000 feet, cruise missiles flying off in the night, no one getting hurt on the United States or the coalition side - that will not work with this enemy, let there be no doubt." Americans seem ready to back a war, even one with major casualties, according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll Friday-Saturday. Even so, experts say most Americans are utterly unprepared for the type of war their government is about to wage. "Terrorism has become an act of war. The question is, do the American people have the stomach for it?" said Rep. Tim Roemer, D-Ind., a member of the House Intelligence Committee. "This is not going to be a war viewed on CNN with some missiles exploding over tents in Afghanistan and 2 months later it's over. This is going to be a long process. ... It may take losing some people" The terrorist organizations themselves and the terrorists don't have targets of high value," Rumsfeld said on Fox News Sunday. "They don't have armies and navies and air forces that one can go battle against. ... They work in the shadows." Senior military analysts and former commanders outline several scenarios if fugitive Saudi financier Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network in Afghanistan are targeted. Administration officials say bin Laden is their chief suspect. Afghan neighbors are crucial The key to success, given Afghanistan's mountainous, sprawling topography, will be developing staging bases from either its neighbor to the east, Pakistan, or parts of the former Soviet Union that border northern Afghanistan. Short of that, U.S. forces might have to operate from at least 400 miles away in the Arabian Gulf or seize airfields in Afghanistan. Massive bombing from air and sea to minimize U.S. casualties won't work this time. "This is a threshold event," says retired Air Force Gen. Charles Horner, air commander during the 1991 Gulf War that drove Iraq out of Kuwait. "In the past, we've used cruise missiles to avoid the loss of troops and collateral damage. Those two things are off the table now." The most likely scenarios: *Get bin Laden. U.S. commandos, highly trained and secretive special operations forces, would be aided by massive air cover and naval protection as they launch coordinated attacks on bin Laden and his foot soldiers. The attacks could include the top-secret Delta Force, Navy SEALs and the elite Army Rangers. Experts say an option involving elite ground forces is among the most likely. Horner says one difficulty will be finding bin Laden, who moves constantly from one hiding place to another. Any invasion, therefore, might have to go after several sites simultaneously. Horner foresees a scenario in which Army special forces or SEALS, in squads of five to 500 troops, enter Afghanistan in helicopters flying over Russian, Pakistani or Iranian airspace. These units, Horner says, would need heavy air support from B-2 stealth bombers and perhaps B-52 bombers. Air Force F-15 and F-16 fighter jets and Navy and Marine F-18 fighters would provide air cover. In a possible sign of operations to come, more than 3,000 Marines rehearsed helicopter and ship-to-shore landings off East Timor on Sunday, Reuters reported. Before the terrorist attacks, the ships from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Amphibious Squadron One had been set for purely humanitarian work. *Mount an air campaign. Some say the administration could choose a Kosovo-style air campaign to attack countries that harbor terrorists. Iraq is being frequently cited as a possible target. But many analysts believe this option is unlikely because many countries on any target list, including Afghanistan, are already poor and lack obvious targets, such as anti-aircraft batteries, military command centers or power grids or communication and transportation systems. *Arm resistance movements. Another option is arming resistance movements in Afghanistan and other countries that harbor terrorists and using elite ground forces in commando raids. In Afghanistan, at least, this is a plausible scenario, given the organized resistance to the rule of the radical Taliban militia from groups based in northern Afghanistan. The administration faces a major hurdle, however, because of the assassination last week of the head of the Afghan opposition, Ahmad Shah Massood. He likely would have spearheaded any U.S.-backed effort to topple the Taliban. U.S. intelligence sources say Massood was killed 2 days before the attacks on New York and Washington by two North Africans working for bin Laden. The two men, posing as journalists, detonated a bomb during a bogus interview. Late last week, Afghan opposition forces named Gen. Mohammed Fahim, an active leader of the opposition since 1973, to temporarily replace Massood. *Invade Afghanistan. Some analysts have speculated that U.S. forces might invade Afghanistan with large contingents of Marines and Army troops in an all-out push to eradicate bin Laden's network. There are logistical and political problems to a Desert Storm-style military operation that cause many to discount this scenario. The chief roadblocks: convincing Pakistan, Russia or former Soviet republics such as Tajikistan to provide a large-scale staging ground for U.S. forces. Negotiations with Russia, Pakistan and Tajikistan are just a few of the diplomatic challenges the administration faces as it plots various war scenarios. On one hand, administration officials believe they face the opportunity of a lifetime to unite the world against terrorism. That would include cooperation from countries that have had strained relations with the United States, such as Iran and Syria, which are on the U.S. list of terrorism backers, and China, which U.S. officials have denounced for human rights abuses. One motivation is what White House aides call a sense among U.S. allies and adversaries alike that "there but for the grace of God go we." "Every single leader in the world that I've spoken with, they can picture those two planes crashing into anything from the Eiffel Tower to hundred-story buildings in Shanghai," Senate Foreign Relations chair Joseph Biden, D-Del., told CNN. "This has been a wake-up call." Many of the countries that are seen as crucial to any U.S. response also have their own problems with bin Laden and the Taliban and find cooperation with Washington to be in their own self-interest. Diplomatic risks ahead But many potential members of a U.S.-led coalition face significant risks if they decide to cooperate in an all-out war: *Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been praised by U.S. officials for granting use of his country's airspace, providing intelligence and sealing Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. But there is significant support for bin Laden in Pakistan, particularly by the country's powerful intelligence service. Some experts believe Musharraf could risk being overthrown if he helps Washington. *Saudi Arabia will be pushed by Washington to give its assistance to any military response. But in Saudi Arabia, too, the ruling monarchy must gauge the level of anti-American sentiment it might face, given the anger that still exists about the use of Saudi soil by Washington to launch the Gulf War. *In neighboring Iran, the government has sealed its 560-mile border with Afghanistan for fear of a massive refugee influx into Iran in the wake of a U.S. attack. The Taliban has killed numerous members of Afghanistan's Farsi-speaking, Shiite Muslim minority linked culturally to Iran. The Taliban also killed nine Iranian diplomats in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998. The Taliban also allows drug smugglers to cross into Iran, where heroin addiction has become a serious problem. At the same time, Iran has its own power center of Islamic fundamentalists, as well as its own links to terror groups. It's also far from clear how Tehran would react to a full U.S. strike on bin Laden. That's why experts say it is unlikely that Iran will stop supporting Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, terrorist groups that have attacked Israel. Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East expert at the Nixon Center, says Iran would not provide bases or allow the United States to over fly its territory to attack the Taliban. "The best we can hope for is probably that they have the same attitude they did during the Gulf War," Kemp says. "They will not interfere and make things worse." Kemp also says that Iran might take some of its cues from Syria's untested new president, Bashar Assad, who has expressed condolences. And there is an opportunity for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to try to ingratiate himself with the Bush administration by rethinking his tacit support for terrorism, Kemp says. *In Russia, President Vladimir Putin was one of the first world leaders to call Bush after the terrorist attacks to promise full cooperation in any response. Putin's motivation: Russia has had its own problems with bin Laden-linked terrorism, particularly in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. But Russian officials have begun to backpedal in recent days. They suggest that no U.S. invasion could be staged from Russian soil or from any former Soviet republic. Those statements, U.S. officials say, reflect a fear of terrorist reprisals against Russia, as well as lingering anti-American feeling within the Russian armed forces. Surreal is the word Americans and citizens around the world use to describe the tragic developments of the past week. Within the U.S. government, there also is the sense of moving into a new world of untested methods and unimagined choices. "I was raised a soldier and you are trained: There is the enemy occupying a piece of ground. We can define it in time, space and other dimensions, and you can assemble forces and go after it," Secretary of State Colin Powell, the retired Army general who oversaw U.S. forces in the Gulf War, said Friday. "This is different." Contributing: Kathy Kiely, Barbara Slavin and Andrea Stone. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Secure your servers with 128-bit SSL encryption! Grab your copy of VeriSign's FREE Guide, "Securing Your Web site for Business" and learn all about serious security. Get it Now! http://us.click.yahoo.com/r0k.gC/oT7CAA/yigFAA/kgFolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ------------------ http://all.net/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-09-29 21:08:44 PDT