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American Morning

Two American Servicemen Killed in Afghanistan in Accidental Bombing

Aired December 05, 2001 - 07:17   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Now back to the breaking news we have been following this morning. Two American servicemen have been killed in Afghanistan and 20 more are wounded in what is reported to be an accidental bombing.

Joining me now to talk more about this is Retired Major Air Force General Don Shepperd. Welcome back.

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), U.S. AIR FORCE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning.

ZAHN: So, General, we have heard the Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz warn about the fog of war. This is clearly evidence of this this morning, isn't it?

SHEPPERD: Indeed, it is, Paula. You always expect to be killed when you go into battle. You don't expect to be killed by your own troops or your own bombs, and yet it happens in every war.

I watched it happen in Vietnam. It happened in the Gulf and now it's happened in Afghanistan, a terrible tragedy.

ZAHN: As best as you can describe to us this morning, what went wrong here?

SHEPPERD: Basically what we're hearing is a 2,000 pound JDAM, joint direct attack munition, a satellite guided bomb, went awry for some unknown reason. Now, there are several possibilities. The other reports by Bob Franken are that the people who were injured were under attack by mortar fire and they called in air support. We now have the ability to call in air support by relaying coordinates to these satellite-guided bombs very, very quickly.

Now, it could be that bomb itself went awry, the guidance mechanism went awry. It could be that in the fog of battle, when you're under fire, the coordinates were relayed improperly, the mark was wrong. We still don't know that yet, but we're going to have to find out.

Now, the other thing is you need to be a long way away from these bombs. These fragmentation patterns from the bombs will go several hundred feet. Think two to three, maybe even four football fields. You need to be that far away from these things and yet when you're in a moving battle under fire, you get up close to the enemy. So you're always taking a risk. But this is clearly a tragic event.

ZAHN: Of course, this is the worst incident in friendly fire since this war on terrorism began. Of the two scenarios you just put forth, where either the guidance mechanism went awry or the possibility that the wrong coordinates were put in, historically which of the two scenarios would be most likely or do we just simply not know that?

SHEPPERD: We simply don't know it. It'd be improper to speculate right now. But either one of them clearly could have happened there. Again, it's just a tragic event. And in Vietnam, where we called it in by voice all the time, I've seen people drop bombs on the wrong side of the river. They were told to drop on the east, they dropped on the west. Or the forward air controller had misinformation about where troops were on the ground and killed our own troops over there.

It's just, it's just a very heart rending situation. Now, remember, our secretary of defense, our president warned us there will be more casualties. The more people we have on the ground, the more likely this is to happen and also these troops were evacuated to forward base Rhino, which is the forward operating base of the marines there, another reason to have one of these forward operating bases over there.

One other important thing, it's reported that these troops were special forces troops and they were north of Kandahar. So you can see our people engaged in many places we don't know about as the battle for Kandahar and other places goes on. A dangerous situation.

ZAHN: General Shepperd, thank you for your insights this morning. See you a little bit later on.

SHEPPERD: A pleasure.

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