- NEW YORK (UPI) -- The
Pentagon
is not reporting battle casualties suffered by U.S. Special Forces fighting
near the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar and some other one-time
Taliban strong points, administration sources speculated.
-
- "Some fatalities could be involved," an
administration
source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said there are
estimates
reported that between 25 to 40 Americans had been killed so far in clashes,
but acknowledged that these were figures contained in "hard copy
reports,"
and had not been confirmed.
-
- A U.S. government official said: "The Pentagon takes
casualties from one operation and extrapolates."
-
- While some casualties have been due to friendly fire,
most have been the result of intense battle clashes with the Taliban, with
fighting rising to its most savage levels to date in some areas, these
officials said.
-
- These sources added that the British Special Air Services
(SAS) troops in action in Afghanistan have also suffered casualties that
were not being reported.
-
- The British Embassy did not return phone calls.
-
- "The administration is managing the war
differently,"
one U.S. intelligence official said when asked about casualties.
"We've
begun to do what the British used to do so well -- lie. It's an `all of
our aircraft returned safely' approach."
-
- This source said that he had seen reports of 25 to 40
U.S. fatalities, but said the figures were in "cables and
reports"
and not confirmed.
-
- But as to casualties, he emphasized they had occurred:
"Look, you cannot wage a hard war in earnest without taking
casualties.
We are waging war in earnest."
-
- John Pike, president of Washington-based GlobalSecurity.
Org, told United Press International: "The press can't say it wasn't
warned," and he referred to a press conference last month where
Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was quizzed about the Taliban displaying a wheel
of a helicopter, torn off in an accident, but which the Taliban claimed
was shot down.
-
- At the end of his explanation, Rumsfeld looked at the
reporters and according to Pike, Rumsfled stated the equivalent of:
"This
is the last time I'm telling you the truth."
-
- Pike added: 'I think he meant it."
-
- One U.S. intelligence official told UPI that during the
war in Bosnia: "There were U.S. casualties in that campaign that
simply
were never declared. I think the Pentagon thought, hell, we got away with
it then, why not now?"
-
- Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday, during a trip to
Illinois,
that U.S. commando teams in the south are working to foment anti-Taliban
rebellion by Pashtun tribal leaders. He added: "They're looking for
information, they're interdicting roads, they're killing Taliban that won't
surrender and al Qaeda that are trying to move from one place to
another."
-
- Rumsfeld said the teams were also scouting potential
landing fields for U.S. and coalition aircraft.
-
- Asked if the troops were engaged in ground combat,
Rumsfeld
said: "The answer is yes. In the south, they've gone into places and
met resistance and dealt with it."
-
- But Rumsfeld said that no Americans had been killed in
such operations, a remark one State Dept. official called:
"Crazy."
-
- "The rationale in denying the losses is that you
don't want to give aid and comfort to the enemy," this source
said.
-
- The question of casualties first arose in the wake of
an Oct. 20 raid involving Delta commandos who arrived in five helicopters
to ransack the fortified home of reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohamed
Omar in the village of Baba Sahib in the Arghandab district, five miles
northwest of Kandahar.
-
- A large body of 200 Rangers, plus helicopters and AC-130
gunships were sent in to back up the Delta force.
-
- The raid, whose execution was described by a senior
Pentagon
official, as "flawless in execution" was to be the start of new,
fast-paced hit-and-run ground strategy that would alter the course of the
war, said Pentagon officials at the time.
-
- But instead of being deft and fast paced, the mission
proved to be cumbersome, noisy, and maladroit, and not only because of
the back-up forces, according to one administration official.
-
- Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said: "We
were unfamiliar with the area, and we had poor intelligence. We didn't
expect the Taliban to be there."
-
- The Taliban opened fire as the Delta emerged from the
house, he said.
-
- Another U.S. government official said that Taliban
resistance
around Mullah Omar's fortified house, built for him by bin Laden, was
"surprisingly
stiff," in spite of 13 days of pervious aerial bombardment.
-
- Initial reports of casualties were as high as 22 wounded,
but this figure was later "downgraded," he said.
-
- When a DIA official was queried about reports of
casualties,
he said: "I have absolutely nothing to give you on that," and
recommended that United Press International talk to public affairs.
-
- According to other U.S. government officials, in the
Oct. 20 raid, some hostile fire initially was mistakenly identified as
coming from Taliban dug-in tanks or large mortars, U.S. government
officials
said. Actually, most of the fire proved to be coming from shoulder-fired
Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs), which caused serious shrapnel, wounds
among the attackers and slowed them to a stall, U.S. government sources
said.
-
- The counterattack by the Taliban was "amazingly
swift and tough," one U.S. intelligence official said.
-
- The Oct. 20 raid was mounted from the remote Pakistan
airstrip at Dalbandin, Pakistan, only 37 miles from the Afghan border,
U.S. officials said. The raid was similar in character to the joint 1998
FBI/Kenyan security forces raid of the Kenya house of Wadhi El-Hage,
sentenced
last month in Manhattan Federal District Court to life in prison without
parole for his part in the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in
East Africa in which 224 were killed and 4,600 wounded.
-
- In the raid on El-Hage's house, the FBI seized hard
drives
containing details of bin Laden cells in East Africa and inflicted
"significant
damage" on his al Qaeda organization, according to U.S. intelligence
officials.
-
- But in this raid, the Delta force came away "with
little of intelligence value," according to one administration
official.
"We wanted their Rolodexes, their plans,their chit-chat, the names
of Taliban commanders. We didn't get them," he said.
-
- Top-ranked investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in the
New Yorker Magazine first made the allegation of casualties and the
mishandling
of the mission.
-
- Hersh told United Press International, "The standard
for being wounded was very flexible. If you had a shrapnel wound which
could be stitched up and you could still walk, then you weren't classified
as a casualty."
-
- A U.S. government source confirmed this. "Hersh
right is on the money," he said. "The Pentagon doctored the
figures
of casualties. We are back in the Gulf War syndrome where we won a great
victory with hardly any casualties. I think it's a mis-reading of the U.S.
public mood."
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