OPERATION DASCHLE SHUSH:

G.I. Hunt for Qaeda Intensifies (CARLOTTA GALL, March 21, 2003, NY Times)

About 1,000 American troops backed by attack helicopters mounted a dawn assault on a string of mountain villages and caves in southeastern Afghanistan today, sending a forceful message to militants here that coalition forces would not be slackening their pace as the war in Iraq gets under way.

Special Forces and a battalion from the 504th Parachute Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division, were dropped into the region at 6 a.m. from Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters, a military spokesman said today. Apache attack helicopters provided security, he said.

The operation, named Valiant Strike, was aimed at several villages and caves in the Sami Ghar mountain range, in the Maruf district of Kandahar province, some 20 miles from the Pakistani border. "There are suspected people in the area," said Master Sgt. Richard Breach, a spokesman at the coalition headquarters here at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.

Intelligence had led American forces to watch the area and they then caught radio intercepts of people in the caves communicating with each other, the senior spokesman, Col. Roger King, said at a morning briefing. [...]

Military officials insisted the timing of today's raid, on the first day of airstrikes against Iraq, was purely coincidental. But Sergeant Breach agreed that American forces were also sending a message to any terrorists or militants opposed to the American presence in Afghanistan. "We are showing them we are still out to win this war on terror," he said.

The commander of American forces in southern Afghanistan, Lt. Col. John Campbell, said in a recent interview that he was acting aggressively against any opposition forces to show that the United States would not lose focus in Afghanistan while it wages war in Iraq.

Unfortunately, the reality is that the targets of this operation are the Democrats and our own intelligence services who are whining about the war distracting attention from al Qaeda. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 20, 2003 11:31 PM