WASHINGTON(KRT)—A second barrage of missiles and bombs hammered targets in Afghanistan on Monday night as 15 U.S. warplanes and an armada of warships again punished terrorists and the Taliban regime that stubbornly harbors them.
The Pentagon claimed initial success against dozens of targets, including airfields, aircraft, air defenses, command centers, and bases of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.
Taliban ground troops and possibly followers of bin Laden came under fire, according to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The United States and Britain suffered no casualties and lost no aircraft during Sunday’s initial attack, and no casualties or lost aircraft were immediately reported during Monday’s follow-up strike, conducted solely by American forces, the Pentagon said.
"They’ve roused a mighty giant," President Bush said.
Navy Captain T.C. Bennett, a carrier-based fighter pilot who led an assault on the Taliban’s Kandahar air base in southern Afghanistan said, "I’m not going to live in fear, and I don’t think America should live in fear."
Along those lines—and as an apparent warning to Syria, Iraq and Iran—the administration notified the United Nations on Monday that military retaliation might not be limited to Afghanistan.
Three B-1 Lancer bombers, two radar-evading B-2 stealth bombers, and 10 F-14 and F-18 jetfighters joined in Monday’s raids, along with 15 sea-based cruise missiles, according to defense officials who gave those details only on the condition of anonymity.
Once again, Taliban anti-aircraft batteries in and around Kabul fired with apparent futility at the high-flying U.S. aircraft.
Air strikes also were reported in Kandahar and near Taliban positions around the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The Afghan Islamic Press agency said the Northern Alliance opposition launched an attack Monday night on a Taliban position near Dara-e-Suf, also in northern Afghanistan.
But bin Laden, the suspected terrorist mastermind who struck the United States with devastating force and audacity on September 11, remained at large Monday night, as did his main protector, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
A Taliban spokesman said bin Laden was alive and still hiding in Afghanistan. Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan, claimed that the United States had declared war on the Muslim world.
"The consequences will be so severe that no one can imagine them," Zaeef said.
Bush has emphasized that America’s fight is only with terrorists and those who protect them, not with the millions who believe in Islam, which he has praised as a noble religion that the terrorists have profaned.
On the home front, amid fear of new terror attacks, and with a second anthrax scare in Florida spurring a probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, authorities tightened security around the nation.
The Coast Guard mobilized its largest security force since World War II, adding 21 new special security zones that surround nuclear power plants, piers where oil is loaded, and other particularly sensitive facilities.
Long lines formed at many airport security checkpoints. Huge lines undulated through some terminals and many would-be travelers didn’t clear security in time to make their flights.
Vice President Dick Cheney remained in a secure location; in his place, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas swore in former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge as head of the new Office of Homeland Security.
Bush, who attended the ceremony, said afterward that he was determined "to bring the evildoers to justice."
Rumsfeld and other military leaders cautioned that a lot of perilous work remained and that the global campaign against terrorism could persist for years.
"These strikes are part of a much larger effort against worldwide terrorism, one that will be sustained and which is wide-ranging," Rumsfeld said. "It will be sustained for a period of years, not weeks or months. ..."
"We will not stop until the terrorist networks are destroyed. To that end, regimes that harbor terrorists and their training camps should know that they will suffer penalties."
Rumsfeld took care to emphasize that only those Taliban factions that ally themselves with bin Laden are America’s enemies. "Afghanistan would be vastly better off were they not there," he said, while making clear that any Afghan groups that oppose bin Laden could win U.S. support.
The F-14s and F-18s that participated in Monday’s strike flew from the Enterprise and Carl Vinson aircraft carriers, according to U.S. officials.
The Lancers, which were originally designed to drop nuclear weapons on the former Soviet Union, took off from a British military base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, the officials said.
Making use of mid-air refueling, the B-2s flew non-stop from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., dropped satellite-guided bombs, and then landed at Diego Garcia so crews could rest before returning to the United States. Two B-2s made the round-trip for Sunday’s attack.
Three U.S. ships—the destroyers McFaul and John Paul Jones and an unidentified submarine—fired 15 Tomahawk cruise missiles, said U.S. defense officials.
No British forces were directly involved in the second day of Operation Enduring Freedom, sources claimed. A British submarine fired Tomahawks on the first day of the strikes.
Air Force General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Monday’s attacks were aimed at the same kinds of targets that were struck Sunday—the Taliban’s aging Soviet-made air defense radar, anti-aircraft missile batteries, command centers, airfields, and the militia’s ragtag air force of 22 Soviet-made MiG 21 and Su-22 fighters.
He said that other targets on the list include "terrorist infrastructure," the Pentagon’s term for Al Qaeda training camps and bases from which bin Laden and his lieutenants have overseen an amorphous network of militants involved in terrorist attacks against the United States.
Rumsfeld said some Al Qaeda "ground forces" were targeted in northern Afghanistan. He was apparently referring to the 055 Brigade, a highly trained, well-armed contingent of Arabs and other non-Afghans organized and funded by bin Laden.
Two U.S. C-17 military transport jets flying out of Ramstein, Germany, were due to drop more than 37,000 individual food rations in the second delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance in as many days, officials said.
The rations consist of two ready-to-eat vegetarian meals based heavily on lentils, beans, and rice. They also contain bread, a fruit bar, a fortified biscuit, peanut butter, and spices.
The rations, contained in bright yellow plastic bags, are marked in English: "Food Gift from the People of the United States of America." The packages include illustrations on how to use the contents.
Myers said that the United States and Britain struck 31 targets during Sunday’s first wave of attacks. "We are generally pleased with the early results," he said, though he cautioned that only preliminary assessments had been completed.
He offered no details concerning damaged or destroyed targets, but Rumsfeld rejected enemy claims of strikes on civilians.
Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador, claimed that the allied bombing had killed 20 Afghan civilians in Kabul.
"Every target was a military target," Rumsfeld said. "The reports indicating that there were attacks on Kabul are incorrect. The attacks were on the military targets surrounding the city."
Independent verification of what was hit was impossible.
At the same time, Rumsfeld said, Afghan air defenses, aircraft, and airports had not yet "been fully disabled."
Myers said new targets would be hit in Afghanistan as opportunities arose.
In a letter to the 15-nation U.N. Security Council, the United States served notice that terrorists in other nations also could come under fire.
"We may find that our self-defense requires further actions with respect to other organizations and other states," said the letter from U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte.
A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the letter was intended as a warning to Syria, Iraq, Iran, and other nations that host terrorist groups that they could face U.S. military action if those groups launched fresh terrorist actions in response to the ongoing strikes on Afghanistan.
Even so, Syria won a seat on the U.N. Security Council on Monday with overwhelming worldwide support. The United States did not oppose Syria’s selection, despite its being on the U.S. list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
