New York Post December 11, 2001
MEGABOMB HEADS OSAMA'S WAY
By NILES LATHEM
December 11, 2001 -- WASHINGTON - U.S. military forces have unleashed the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in their arsenal on a cave complex where officials believe Osama bin Laden and his diehard fighters are staging a last stand.
The Pentagon said yesterday that it dropped a 15,000-pound "Daisy Cutter" Sunday on the mouth of a cave in Tora Bora, where bin Laden has been spotted.
The Volkswagen-sized bomb is so powerful, it obliterates everything within a 600-yard radius.
It has to be dropped by parachute so the Special Forces MC-130 Combat Talon transport plane that launches it has time to escape the devastating blast.
It was the third time in the Afghan conflict that the U.S. military has dropped a Daisy Cutter. Two of the big bombs were dropped earlier on Taliban front-line soldiers defending Kabul.
The Pentagon's spokesman, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, said the latest Daisy Cutter attack was directed at a "cave target," where U.S. intelligence spotted "substantial al Qaeda forces, possibly including senior leadership."
He said U.S. war commanders were hoping to get bin Laden in the latest Daisy Cutter blast - although the military has been unable so far to determine how much damage the bomb wreaked.
"There's a psychological effect of having ammunition of 15,000 pounds of explosive capability that's brought into a narrowly defined area," Stufflebeem said.
"This cave complex is literally on the sheer walls of a valley - and there, the reverberation effect that goes up those caves should have some negative effect," he said.
The Daisy Cutter, which contains 12,500 pounds of GSX chemical "slurry explosives," and ignites before it hits the ground, was first used by U.S. forces in the Vietnam War to quickly clear patches of jungle for airstrips and helicopter pads.
"It's used not only to kill a lot of people, but also for sheer shock and horror," said Tim Brown, a Senior Analyst with globalsecurity.org, a Washington military think tank.
"To anyone near the target who managed to survive and whose teeth vibrated loose or had ringing in their ears for hours, it sends a very powerful message."
Copyright New York Post
