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U.S. Commander Defends Tactics in Afghanistan
Saturday, January 26, 2002
(9:22 PM ET)
By Laura King
The Associated Press

"It looks like it was raided by mistake," Yusuf Pashtun, an aide of Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha, said. "The people of the district center are very much against the Taliban."

KABUL, Afghanistan -- AP
The top commander of the war in Afghanistan defended U.S. tactics on Saturday, saying that putting large numbers of American soldiers on the ground would not have increased the chances of capturing Osama bin Laden or Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Elsewhere, Afghan villagers challenged U.S. accounts of a firefight, claiming U.S. Special Forces soldiers killed the wrong people during a raid in which the Pentagon said a Taliban weapons cache was destroyed and about 15 people were killed.

At a news conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, Gen. Tommy Franks said the United States did not want to repeat the mistake made by the Soviets in 1979 when they sent large numbers of troops into Afghanistan, provoking widespread Afghan resistance that forced them to withdraw more than nine years later.

"The tactics in this operation were just the right tactics," Franks said. "One does not want to commit mistakes that have been committed by other people in the past. I believe one does want to cooperate with cooperative allies in pursuit of military objectives."
(More: The Nando Times News Source)
2002 © The Associated Press.

Dan