Frustrated warmongers

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Pentagon split over war plan

Generals at odds with politicians on strategy

Julian Borger in Washington and Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday October 15, 2001
The Guardian

The Bush administration is growing increasingly alarmed by the direction of
the military campaign in Afghanistan after a week of almost continuous
bombing has failed to dislodge either Osama bin Laden or the Taliban
leadership.

In the absence of new intelligence on the whereabouts of the Saudi-born
extremist accused of masterminding the September 11 terrorist attacks, US
generals are under pressure from civilian defence officials to send greater
numbers of special forces into Afghanistan to try to accomplish what the
bombing failed to do - flush out a target.

But the Pentagon's top brass are reluctant to deploy their best troops in
the absence of good intelligence about Bin Laden's whereabouts, and before
further bombing has softened expected resistance on the ground.

The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is reported to be increasingly
frustrated by the caution of the generals and their inability to come up
with a creative battle plan. One of his aides was quoted in today's edition
of Newsweek as comparing the attitude of today's Pentagon to the
conventional thinking familiar in the Gulf war - a thinking now considered
to be out of date and inappropriate for the delicate nature of the war
against terrorism. "The media are preparing to cover a second Gulf war,"
the aide said, "and the military are preparing to fight one."

full article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,574216,00.html

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

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