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CNN Live At Daybreak

America Strikes Back: Bombers Use "Bunker Busters" to Target Taliban and Al Qaeda

Aired October 11, 2001 - 07:34   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: The military campaign has picked up speed in a big way yesterday and again overnight. In addition today, there's a memorial later this morning at the Pentagon.

At the Pentagon this morning, here's CNN's Bob Franken watching both -- Bob, good morning.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

And let's do this by the numbers. First of all, the military campaign overnight includes now these 5,000 pound "bunker busters," they're called. They're bombs who are designed to burrow into the ground and get through the reinforced bunkers which are often the sanctuaries for the military leaders in any particular operation. They were first used during the Persian Gulf War. They are being used now.

There is now a stated campaign to go after Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership as an effort to, perhaps, demoralize them and further along the possibility that there could be some sort of surrender. That is going on.

At the same time there is the reality developing that combat troops are already in the region, particularly the special forces and commando units whose jobs it will be to go in and in very invisible ways -- we've heard that word so many times -- invisible ways conduct their military operations, the kind of special dark operations we know about, such things as trying to go in and coerce or recruit Taliban defections and, of course, the one that they don't like to talk about, trying to find Osama bin Laden.

Now, they will operate oftentimes in secrecy and oftentimes from the countries that surround Afghanistan, Pakistan, for instance, and Uzbekistan, which will not officially acknowledge that combat operations are going under way.

But also we have to keep our eye on the Kitty Hawk as best we can, that aircraft carrier that was sent from Japan and sent without its usual complement of 75 war planes. So there's a lot of blank space on that huge deck, which normally serves as a runway for the planes. That is blank space that defense sources say will be used up by special operations units and helicopters and the like, the kind that can deposit people in Afghanistan. In effect, it will become a floating base.

That was the discussion that was had at the time when it was moved to the area. Well, Bill, it is now in the area. And, of course, all this war planning is going on in a building that exactly a month ago was the target of one of the terrorist attacks. At 9:38 in the morning Eastern Time a plane crashed into this building on the other side of the building and left behind 189 identified dead. Not all of them have been found yet. The refurbishing goes on.

But to mark the occasion, at 11 o'clock this morning, President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld will have a ceremony outside the building at the parade ground outside just where we are right now. Three thousand members of the families of those who were lost will be here. It will be a ceremony marking not only what occurred here, but what occurred at the World Trade Center, as the United States marks one of the darkest days in its history, the one month anniversary of that -- Bill.

HEMMER: Bob, thank you.

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