my gut reaction was, "Good, more targets."

Taliban readying its heavy weapons Since this link is only good for today, I'll post the article text here.

Taliban readying its heavy weapons
Knight Ridder Newspapers

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers on Sunday ordered heavy guns unsheathed to counter U.S. ground attacks after earlier dispersing troops and hiding heavy weapons to protect them from U.S. airstrikes.

The Taliban's shift in tactics could make it more difficult for U.S. Special Forces to attack Afghan towns and cities but also might expose more of the Taliban's weaponry to U.S. air attacks.

The change of tactics came two days after U.S. commandos carried out the first land operation of the 2-week-old war, a brief nighttime raid near the southeastern city of Kandahar that apparently was designed to gather intelligence.

Also Sunday, refugees flowing out of Kabul said the duration of the air campaign and the increased number of civilian casualties is beginning to undermine initial support for the American action.

"There's a lot of civilian casualties," said Mohammed, a 25-year-old trader who sat on a truck carrying cargo and a dozen refugees who walked through Taliban lines. He said more than a dozen civilians were killed Friday when a bomb struck Sarai Shamali, a Kabul informal marketplace.

Accounts from refugees escaping to opposition-held northern Afghanistan near Nowabad could not be verified, but they affirm other reports of errant American bombs.

The United States began the airstrikes on Oct. 7 against the radical Islamic Taliban regime for harboring bin Laden and his al-Qaida network, the chief suspects in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in America.

The comments from refugees this weekend were strikingly different from reactions during the first week of bombing, when a kind of euphoria swept through some Kabul neighborhoods that the airstrikes signaled a quick exit of Afghanistan's loathed Taliban rulers. Most people fleeing to territory held by the United Front in northern Afghanistan are sympathetic to the opposition, so their comments tend to be slanted against the Taliban.

"At first the people thought bombing would be finished very soon and the Taliban would be gone," said Zalmay, a hotel owner who fled Kabul with his wife and five children. "On the contrary, the Taliban are gaining confidence. They announced at Friday prayers that the U.S. would be destroyed if they attacked on the ground, that they will defeat them like they defeated the Russians during the jihad."

Refugee officials for the Islamic State of Afghanistan, the government-in-exile that the Taliban ousted in 1996, said about 5,000 people fled Kabul in the past week for territory held by the opposition United Front. The number is smaller than for Taliban supporters who are escaping to Pakistan.

Muhibullah, 26, is a trader. He and others said new recruits of Islamic fundamentalists from Pakistan had arrived to reinforce Taliban positions depleted by defections. The fresh troops apparently crossed the border without difficulty despite Pakistan's promises to help curtail terrorism.