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CNN Live Saturday
U.S. Officials Disclose Presence of Special Ops in Afghanistan
Aired November 17, 2001 - 16:08 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: U.S. officials have now disclosed that there are hundreds of U.S. special operation troops on the ground in Afghanistan. They're targeting Taliban troops that will not surrender, we are told, as well as members of the al Qaeda terrorist network.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld showed reporters a photo yesterday that he said depicted U.S. special forces riding on horses, alongside Northern Alliance fighters. Rumsfeld also says he knows of no American casualties currently in the Afghan war.
U.S. officials also estimate more than two-thirds of the country has been taken now from the hands of the Taliban, but there are pockets of resistance. CNN military analyst General Wesley Clark is here to talk more about that with us. Good afternoon, general. It's good to see you on a Saturday afternoon.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Nice to see you, Bill.
HEMMER: There is a town in northern Afghanistan -- we'll show our viewers on the map -- the town of Konduz. We have seen some videotape today. The aerial bombing continues there. The Pentagon says that the 3,000 Taliban troops are there, and refuse to surrender. How ugly, how full of death could this town become, general?
CLARK: Well, it could be very difficult, because if they don't surrender and if they are fighting inside the town itself, it'll be a house-to-house fight, and the Northern Alliance is going to have to go in and dig them out house-by-house.
Now we don't know exactly the strength of the Northern Alliance up there either, and if they don't have a substantial numerical superiority, then they'll be relying on U.S. air power, and that means we'll be spotting individual houses to try to target. It'll take not just B-52s, it will take AC-130s and some smaller aircraft to really be able to bring precise fire power to bear, if it goes into urban combat.
Right now apparently, they're still defending on the ridge lines and hills outside Konduz.
HEMMER: Take a look at this picture. I want to show our viewers here. Special operations troops moving through a small Afghan town. That's not it. We'll get to it in a second here. It's a still photo that shows an American soldier moving through a town -- there we go. It's like "Star Wars" meets the Middle Ages, such an enormous contrast here. Talk about that.
CLARK: Well, this is a special operations soldier. He's an Air Force special ops guy. He probably is part of a team that calls in air strikes. He's also armed with an individual weapon. He's got a laser designator. He's got communications, probably two sets of communications gear -- one to talk to the other members of his team, another to be able to talk to the aircraft overhead -- and this is the means of bringing the heavy fire power to bear. This is what's new about this operation.
The fire power is brought in from the skies by just a few troops on the ground, and there's some very brave men down there doing that.
HEMMER: I want to juxtapose that picture with another one, the one we saw yesterday, with special op forces riding alongside along horseback, with the Northern Alliance troops. I know you're a military guy, but doesn't some of this stuff just stop you in your tracks?
CLARK: Well, this is what special ops are trained to do, and they're trained to go and operate along with the native forces there, wherever they are, whatever kind of equipment they're using, and so we've obviously -- they've always accused these special ops guys of being cowboys, you know, but now they've proved it.
HEMMER: Yes, indeed, they have. What did you make this past week of the Taliban retreat?
CLARK: It was necessitated because they didn't have the popular support in Kabul to defend Kabul. They thought they could make a virtue out of it by calling it a strategic retreat. It really wasn't. It was a collapse in the Kabul area. They thought they could try to pull something together and hold in the south, anchored on Kandahar. They haven't been able to do that either, and there's a frantic struggle going on right now -- political -- to really get tribes to defect.
And then, with our special ops in there brining air power in to encourage those who may not know which side's winning to make the right choice in there. So I think the Taliban's -- they're on the way out of town.
HEMMER: What do you make of the technology right now? I know over Yugoslavia we've talked about laser-guided missiles. Now we're looking at satellite-guided, and it looks like the precision has been near perfect in so many cases for the U.S. military to move half way around the world in a matter of a couple weeks, and then inflict the amount of damage they've inflicted in about five-and-a-half weeks' time.
CLARK: Well, we're doing a superb job. We've got some great technology and great men and women behind it. And it does truly illustrate the global reach of the U.S. armed forces, and I think it sends a strong message, well beyond Afghanistan, to any other states that may be considering giving safe harbor to Osama bin Laden. They'd better think twice. This guy's an international outlaw. The United States is going to get him, and we can reach him anywhere he goes.
HEMMER: Wesley Clark. General, thanks. Good to talk to you again. We'll talk again this week.
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