U.S. PLANS PAK OFFENSIVE

“The Bush admin­is­tra­tion,” reports the Chicago Tribune, “is prepar­ing a U.S. mil­i­tary offen­sive that would reach inside Pakistan with the goal of destroy­ing Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda net­work.“

U.S. Central Command is assem­bling a team of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cers that would be posted in Pakistan ahead of the oper­a­tion, accord­ing to sources famil­iar with details of the plan and inter­nal mil­i­tary com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The sources spoke on the con­di­tion they not be iden­ti­fied.
As now envi­sioned, the offen­sive would involve Special Operations forces, Army Rangers and Army ground troops, sources said. A Navy air­craft car­rier would be deployed in the Arabian Sea.
Referred to in inter­nal Pentagon mes­sages as the “spring offen­sive,” the oper­a­tion would be dri­ven by cer­tain undis­closed events in Pakistan and across the region, sources said. A source famil­iar with details of the plan said this is “not like a con­tin­gency plan for North Korea, some­thing that sits on a shelf. This plan­ning is like plan­ning for Iraq. They want this plan to be exe­cutable, now.”

January 29th, 2004 | War Update | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.