http://www.paknews.com/specialNews.php?id=78&date1=2001-11-03

US likely to storm Osama hideouts

1,000 fresh Special Forces in Pakistan

Naveed Miraj

Peshawar Nov 03 (PNS): While United States B-52 bombers are carpet-bombing Taliban targets Vietnam-style, one thousand fresh Special Services troops have arrived in Pakistan to help mount a fresh ground assault, The Frontier Post has learnt.

The fresh troops landed at Pasni airbase in the western Balochistan province the night before Friday, well-placed sources told this correspondent. With the GI’s arrived military hardware for mountain warfare, including 50 top-of-the-line gunship helicopters.Shortly after their arrival, which was around midnight, the US elites broke into numerous operational units, which diverged to several strike bases in Pakistan. The strikes units were transported via C130 military transport planes.

The development comes at the quick heels of a Pentagon announcement that it has several more teams of special forces teams ready to go into Afghanistan. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had previously indicated there are fewer than 100 US troops now in northern Afghanistan and that others had been in and out of the south.

I’d like to see as soon as humanly possible the number of teams go up by three or four times, Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press briefing Thursday. US jets are carpet-bombing Taliban targets, conjuring up images of the Vietnam War, a struggle the Pentagon lost in the end. The strategy seems to be to demolish any residual military muscle of the Taliban before fielding Special Forces.

The Pentagon has said success of the strikes has improved in recent days since US troops went in on the ground to help the group with communications and pinpointing targets for warplanes. Latest reports say the US has narrowed down its search for Osama bin Laden to a few caves and tunnels, which are being monitored from the air as well as the ground.

Observers say Pentagon is deliberating whether to storm these caves through Special Forces to capture bin Laden. However, before taking such a step, the Pentagon will need to be fairly sure that bin Laden is not armed with tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons, possibilities which have not been ruled out so far. The other option for the Pentagon would be to bomb the sites with 5000-pound bunker busters, annihilate any inmates.

-- Swissrose (cellier3@mindspring.com), November 04, 2001

Answers

Defeat could be snatched from the jaws of victory very quickly in this War on Terrorism. Why? The terrorists are holding back now, refraining from serious terrorist action, so as not to further anger the U.S. and moderate Arabs, and in the hope of mounting Afghan civilian casualties eventually causing Arab patience to become exhausted. The geopolitical cascading effects would be a great victory for the terrorist side. In short, time is on their side.

But if and when Bin Laden and associates realize they are about to lose, and be killed or captured, their "cells" worldwide are likely instructed already to "go for broke", and utterly destroy the West. This could take the form of massive bioterrorism, severe basic infrastructure disruption, or both. The worst case scenario would be release of highly contagious and lethal germs with an incubation period, (which would not be detected immediately) followed by a power grid collapse during a winter cold snap. If properly executed and fully successful, this would indeed totally destroy the United States as we know it. Is our society preparing for such a possible scenario? Is every mile of electrical transmission line being guarded? How well is the population prepared for such a "worst case Y2K" like scenario?

If only the Western governments had responded to Y2K by urging full stockpiling preparedness by the public, immediately after the landmark Newsweek Y2K article in June 1997, while there was still time for do so without panic; the West would have far less vulnerability to serious terrorist infrastructure attack, and a far superior robust ability to recover if it does happen. It's not too late for individuals to prepare, however. This is Y2K's "Second Time Around."

-- Robert Riggs (rxr.999@worldnet.att.net), November 04, 2001.