20 October 2001
Excerpts: Pentagon Briefing on U.S. Ground Operations in Afghanistan
(U.S. Special Forces attack terrorist and Taliban targets) (1590)
U.S. Special Forces assaulted targets in Afghanistan associated with
terrorist activity and the Taliban, the Department of Defense
announced on October 20.
At a Pentagon briefing, Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the troops destroyed an airfield
in southern Afghanistan and a Taliban command-and-control center near
Kandahar.
"U.S. forces were able to deploy, maneuver and operate inside
Afghanistan without significant interference from Taliban forces,"
Myers said, adding that the troops did encounter "light resistance."
In a related development, the Defense Department announced that two
U.S. soldiers were killed on October 19 in a helicopter accident that
occurred inside Pakistan.
During the briefing, Myers showed video clips of soldiers packing
equipment, loading and jumping from aircraft, and conducting a
nighttime assault on an airfield.
General Myers also noted that air operations are continuing, as well
as humanitarian food drops.
Following are excerpts from the Pentagon briefing with General Myers:
(begin excerpts)
U.S. Department of Defense News Briefing Presenter: Gen. Richard B.
Myers Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
October 20, 2001
(Slides and videos used in this briefing are on DefenseLINK at
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/g011019-D-6570C.html )
Myers: Good afternoon.
Yesterday U.S. military forces conducted ground operations in addition
to our air operations in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Under the direction of the President and the Secretary of Defense and
under the command of U.S. Central Command, General Tom Franks, Special
Operations Forces, including U.S. Army Rangers, deployed to
Afghanistan. They attacked and destroyed targets associated with
terrorist activity and Taliban command and control.
U.S. forces were able to deploy, maneuver and operate inside
Afghanistan without significant interference from Taliban forces. They
are now refitting and repositioning for potential future operations
against terrorist targets in other areas known to harbor terrorists.
I have several video clips of yesterday's action to show you.
In the first clip you'll see deployed Special Operations Forces
preparing for their missions.
The next clip is of the same forces loading onto transport aircraft
and taking off for the trip into Afghanistan.
Next you'll see troops exiting the C-130 aircraft and jumping onto
their objective, an airfield in southern Afghanistan.
Next you will see actions taken by the Special Operations Forces on
the objective. This occurs in the dark, of course, so the video was
taken with a night vision lens. These troops are clearing the airfield
building by building, and you're going to notice at one point in the
tape the troops come across a small weapons cache including
rocket-propelled grenades, a machine gun and ammunition. These weapons
were subsequently destroyed.
Before I take questions, I'll also give you a quick recap of
yesterday's air operations over Afghanistan.
On Friday we struck in 15 planned target areas. These included AAA
sites, anti-aircraft sites, with dispersed armor and radar at those
sites, ammunition and vehicle storage depots, and military training
facilities including armored vehicles, trucks and buildings. We used
approximately 100 strike aircraft, about 90 of them carrier-based
tactical aircraft, and between 10 and 12 land-based aircraft including
long range bombers and AC-130s.
Also yesterday we again flew four C-17 missions in support of
humanitarian relief delivering approximately 68,000 rations and
bringing the total rations delivered via air drops to date to
approximately 575,000. Yesterday's drops were in western Afghanistan
in Northern Alliance controlled areas.
Q: General, how did you get those troops out of the airfield, or are
they still there holding the field?
Myers: One of the things that I simply can't do is talk about any of
the tactics, techniques and procedures that we use beyond what you've
seen on that tape.
Q: Could you tell us approximately how many troops were involved? Were
there any casualties?
Myers: Again, I'm not going to discuss the number of troops. In terms
of injuries, we had I think it was two people injured in parachute
drops onto the objective that you saw. They are doing fine. They are
certainly not life threatening. Q: General, can you tell us a little
bit about the crash of the helicopter in Pakistan, what caused the
crash, and comment on the claim by Taliban that they shot it down?
Myers: Let me address the first part. I think it's pretty well
established the Taliban lie. In this case, any claims that they shot
this helicopter down are absolutely false. This is being classified as
an aircraft mishap, and it will be investigated as such as we do all
mishaps like this where there's loss of life or significant loss of
equipment.
This was a middle of the night landing. They prepared, of course, in
great detail for this mission. They knew the conditions they were
flying into. There was a significant amount of dust when you get close
to the ground, the rotor wash brings up the dust and makes landing
very very difficult. We think that had something to do with it, but
it's going to be up to the mishap investigation board to tell us
finally.
Q: Did the troops who assaulted the airfield meet any resistance? Did
they kill or capture any Taliban?
Myers: As you would expect going into Taliban-held territory, you
would meet resistance, and we met resistance at both objectives, the
airfield and the other objective. It was, I guess you could
characterize it as light. That's probably easy for us to say here in
this room. For those experiencing it, of course, it was probably not
light. And there were casualties on the other side, the exact number
we do not know yet.
Q: You said the airfield and the other objective. What was the other
objective?
Myers: It was another Taliban command and control facility.
Q: You said that "we have accomplished our objectives on that
airfield." Does that mean the mission was successful, and could you
elaborate on that? And also, what would you say to those in uniform
who took part in it?
Myers: The mission overall was successful. We accomplished our
objectives. To those in uniform who accomplished it, let me just make
a real general statement. The credibility of Dick Myers, or the
secretary of Defense, or any of our senior leadership in the services
rests really with the professionalism in the way our young armed
forces members conduct themselves day in and day out. They have never
let us down and yesterday was no exception. We were very, very proud
of their abilities and their dedication and their courage. Everybody's
very proud of them.
Q: Aside from the military objectives, what does this raid say about
the success of the air strikes to date and the ability of U.S. forces
to operate on the ground now in Afghanistan?
Myers: I think you have to be careful with extrapolating this to the
future. We have two primary goals in Afghanistan. One is to eliminate
the support to al Qaeda, primarily the Taliban; and the other is to
eliminate al Qaeda. We are going about that from the military part in
a very measured and a very careful way. I would not draw any
extrapolations that this means anything like you're trying to impart
to this.
But one of the messages should be that we are capable of, at a time of
our choosing, conducting the kind of operations we want to conduct.
Q: Can you say whether any Taliban leaders were captured or killed in
these raids?
Myers: One of the primary reasons we conducted these missions on these
two objective was to gather intelligence, and we are in the process of
evaluating the intelligence that we brought out.
Q: General, were they supported by C-130 gunships and attack
helicopters, did you have this support in the air?
Myers: Again, I'm not going to go into the specific aircraft that
supported this operation. It was a variety of aircraft. I've said
before that we're going to use the full spectrum of our capabilities,
and essentially that's what we did.
Q: Why the targets?
Myers: Primarily for their intelligence value. One of them was a
Taliban command-and-control facility, so we're hoping to find
intelligence there. The other, the airfield was similarly, we thought
of intelligence value.
Q: Were you hoping to find commanders as well as intelligence at this
command and control facility?
Myers: We did not expect to find significant Taliban leadership at
these locations. We of course were hoping we would, but we did not
expect it, and we did not find senior Taliban or al Qaeda leadership.
Q: The al Qaeda leadership. Were they expected to be in this area? Can
you characterize that in any way?
Myers: Yes, I'll characterize the one target as one of the locations
where Omar lives, and it's a fairly large complex. It's a
command-and-control compound for the Taliban leadership.
Q: And was bin Laden or associates, were they thought to be in this
area?
Myers: I don't want to comment on that. As I said before, we had very
low expectations that any of the senior Taliban or al Qaeda leadership
would be involved in these particular targets.
Q: Is that because Omar's compound had been bombed before so you just
assumed he wouldn't be there?
Myers: The Taliban has several command-and-control and leadership
compounds. Some have been bombed, this one had not, in fact.
(end excerpts)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
|
NEWSLETTER
|
|
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
|
|
|
