[iwar] [fc:Experts.Say.Photos.Are.Misleading]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-16 09:19:39
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Los Angeles Times
October 13, 2001
Experts Say Photos Are Misleading
Military: Carefully chosen images reveal few details about the effectiveness
of the airstrikes, analysts warn.
By Edmund Sanders, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- The photographs released by the Pentagon this week depicting
pockmarked runways and shattered aircraft portray a successful U.S. bombing
campaign in Afghanistan, but military experts warn that the carefully
selected images reveal far less than meets the eye.
Scant details about the effectiveness of the airstrikes can be gleaned from
the more than two dozen images released by the Defense Department, which
says it is hitting targets with an 85% success rate.
Independent experts interviewed Friday said the images tell a story of a
U.S. bombing campaign that appears to have handily picked off easy aerial
targets, such as buildings and airstrips. In fact, some Taliban
targets--such as a row of aging Soviet MIG fighters lined up in plain
view--appeared so vulnerable in the photographs that some experts wonder
whether they were Taliban decoys. Others suspect that the photographs reveal
an astonishing lack of preparation and resourcefulness on the part of
Taliban troops, who appear to have done little to camouflage equipment or
salvage it after it was struck.
Anthony Cordesman, a former Defense Department intelligence officer and now
senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International
Studies, said the photographs don't show what's really going on in the
military campaign.
"The photos are chosen because the missions were successful and because they
are not revealing," Cordesman said. "Trying to second-guess them is
ridiculous."
Defense officials have declined to talk at length about the photographs,
saying the images speak for themselves.
In addition to trying to keep a tight lid on information that might prove
helpful to the extremist Islamic regime in Afghanistan, the military is
still stinging from criticism leveled after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when
military photographs and video footage drastically overstated the
effectiveness of the bombing campaign.
"They are being careful this time not to sell air power as a silver bullet,
as they have in the past," said Mackubin Owens, a strategy professor at the
Naval War College in Newport, R.I.
The Pentagon has released 21 photographs and five videos, providing before
and after shots of at least 10 targets, including three airfields, three
surface-to-air missile sites, two terrorist training camps, a radio station
and a regiment headquarters. (The photographs are available on the Internet
at the Pentagon's Web site, http://www.defenselink.mil.)
Experts say the Pentagon's photographs so far have focused on the kinds of
targets the U.S. military is good at hitting, such as large objects, both
fixed and mobile.
More telling is the fact that the Pentagon has not released images or
statistics about harder-to-reach targets such as tanks, troops and
underground facilities, according to Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.
"It's not so much a question of whether we're hitting 85% or 75% or 65% of
targets," O'Hanlon said. "The notable thing to me is that the targets we're
trying to hit so far seem to be limited to the kinds of things we've always
been good at. It's a little like a high school football player bringing home
a report card that shows an 'A' in physical education."
Others also questioned the significance of some of the targets depicted in
the Pentagon photos.
One photo shows about 20 MIG fighters and a cargo plane at Herat airfield in
northwestern Afghanistan. The post-strike picture shows nearly all the
aircraft broken into pieces.
Tim Brown, a senior analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, said a closer look at the
photographs reveals that the fighters were probably Korean War-era MIG-15s,
MIG-17s or MIG-19s, not the newer MIG-21s and MIG-23s that Taliban forces
reportedly have.
"Because they're older aircraft and piled up in a row, it looks to me that
the Taliban put them there as a decoy," said Brown, who served in the Air
Force and has been studying military satellite photographs for four years.
"It's a classic deception technique. In the Gulf War, the Iraqis lined up
their junk aircraft, hoping we'd hit them and be distracted from striking
other areas."
He said U.S. military officials may have realized that the aircraft were
decoys but hit them anyway to mislead the Taliban into thinking the U.S. had
been fooled. The strike also provided the military with compelling
photographs that didn't reveal any sensitive information, he noted.
"It's a balancing act," Brown said. "You want to give out enough to satisfy
the public and the media, but not so much that you give away any
weaknesses."
Cordesman, however, said he suspects that the photos reveal ineptitude on
the part of the Taliban forces.
"They've been amazingly negligent in some cases, leaving equipment in place
after something has been struck," Cordesman said. Even damaged or
nonoperational aircraft and vehicles are still useful for providing spare
parts and resupplies, he noted.
A senior Defense Department intelligence official confirmed Friday that
Taliban troops do not appear to be as resourceful in defending their targets
as Iraqi and Serbian troops were in the Gulf War and the 1999 campaign to
protect the Yugoslav province of Kosovo.
The photos also suggest that the U.S. bombing has been selective and based
on intelligence reports, experts said.
A shot of the destruction to the Mazar-i-Sharif Divisional Regiment
Headquarters in northern Afghanistan indicates that U.S. bombers targeted
certain buildings in the camp but left others untouched, suggesting that
U.S. intelligence officials provided guidance about which facilities to
strike, Brown said.
Likewise, U.S. forces don't appear to have bothered to bomb dozens of combat
vehicles parked around the camp, the photographs suggest. Because the
vehicles had not been relocated by Taliban troops after the attack, Brown
said, he believes they might be nonoperational vehicles, parked at the camp
as another decoy. 

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