- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
top U.S. military officer said on Sunday that Afghanistan was only a ``small
piece'' of what he suggested might be the broadest campaign since World
War Two, possibly lasting more than a lifetime.
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- Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, did not answer directly when asked in a television interview
whether he had ``started to prepare targets in Iraq'' -- an old U.S. foe
that some U.S. officials would like to make their next target.
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- ``This is a global war on terrorism and weapons of mass
destruction,'' he replied on the ABC program ``This Week.'' ''Afghanistan
is only one small piece. So of course we're thinking very broadly.''
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- ``I would say, since World War Two, we haven't thought
this broadly about a campaign,'' Myers added, referring not just to the
military action but to multifaceted operations by emerging international
alliances against alleged terrorists and their suspected state sponsors.
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- By citing weapons of mass destruction, Myers seemed to
set out a possible new rationale for attacking Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Since the late 1990s, Saddam has barred U.N. weapons inspectors who had
been documenting breaches of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire pact outlawing
Baghdad's biological and chemical weapons programs.
-
- Since the Sept. 11 airliner-hijacking blitz that killed
an estimated 5,400 people in the United States, President Bush has cast
the enemy as terrorists and their state sponsors -- without explicitly
mixing deadly-weapons capabilities into the equation.
-
- In launching air strikes against targets in Afghanistan
on Oct. 7, for example, Bush said: ``Today we focus on Afghanistan,'' but
``the battle is broader.'' He warned states that sponsor or protect ``outlaws
and killers of innocent'' that they were taking a ``lonely path at their
own peril.''
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- Myers said U.S. forces in Afghanistan would capture Osama
bin Laden, the U.S.-accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, alive if
possible but ``bullets will fly'' if they must defend themselves.
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- CIA GETS "NEW LEEWAY''
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- A U.S. official said President Bush had given the Central
Intelligence Agency "new leeway'' for any covert operations needed
to destroy bin Laden and al Qaeda.
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- A presidential order, called a ``finding,'' lets the
CIA do ''what is necessary to bring down al Qaeda and its leadership,''
the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. ``It's pretty broad-ranging.''
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- The CIA and the military have also been directed to boost
coordination and Bush added more than $1 billion to the spy agency's budget
for the fight against terrorism, the official said, confirming a Washington
Post report.
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- In the ABC interview, Myers was asked about Vice President
Dick Cheney's comment to the Washington Post that the U.S.-led campaign
may ``never end. At least not in our lifetime.''
-
- ``I think that may be correct,'' he said. ``I think this
is going to be a long, hard-fought conflict, and it will be global in scale.''
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- Myers said intelligence analysts were still evaluating
material seized in a lightning strike on Friday on the compound of Taliban
leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
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- Army Rangers and other U.S. special operations forces
officially opened the ground war with the airborne assault on a Taliban
airfield and a raid on Omar's compound near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
-
- Asked whether this mission had been wrapped up or whether
some U.S. forces were still on the ground, Myers did not answer directly,
saying some operations would remain secret.
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- ``The visible ones, obviously, we can talk about, the
invisible, sometimes we'll talk about them, but not all times,'' he said.
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- Myers said the U.S. military and intelligence services
had not yet found all al Qaeda and Taliban command facilities.
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- But the U.S. and British air campaign has knocked out
enough of al Qaeda's training camps -- along with Taliban military targets
-- that bin Laden's guerrillas ``won't be doing any training in the near
future in Afghanistan,'' Myers said.
-
- The Pentagon on Sunday ruled out hostile fire as a cause
of the fatal crash in Pakistan of a U.S. Army ``Blackhawk'' helicopter
backing the first declared U.S. ground operation in neighboring Afghanistan.
Two Army Rangers were killed.
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- They were Specialist Jonn Edmunds, 20, of Cheyenne, Wyoming,
and Pfc. Kristofor Stonesifer, 28, of Missoula, Montana -- passengers in
the helicopter, the Pentagon said.
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- Myers described the dead men as heroes, along with all
others taking part in ``Enduring Freedom,'' the Pentagon code name for
the military leg of the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
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- As President Bush said on Saturday, ``They did not die
in vain,'' Myers said.
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