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Anti-Taliban Forces Gear Up for Attack on Kabul
Wednesday, October 31, 2001
By Matt Kelley / The Associated Press

"It certainly wouldn't make military sense to afford the Taliban regime, which has been under very considerable pressure in recent times, the opportunity of regrouping, reorganizing during a predictable period of time."
-- British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- AP
U.S. soldiers are in Afghanistan helping guide bombs to their targets and advising anti-Taliban forces, but they aren't telling the rebels what to do, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says.

"These people have been fighting in that country for ages," Rumsfeld said at a news conference Tuesday. "You're not going to send in a few people and tell them they should turn right, turn left, go slow or go fast. They know their own minds, and they're going to move when they think it makes sense."

Rumsfeld said a "very modest" number of U.S. forces - less than 100 - are in northern Afghanistan, working with specific units of the loose anti-Taliban coalition known as the northern alliance. He said other U.S. forces had been "in and out" of southern Afghanistan to work with Taliban opponents there.
(More: PJStar.com News Source)
2001 © The Associated Press.

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