While I don't think McNeill needs a staff of 500 officers to command a theater with 7,000 troops, it's good to see that Franks is being freed up for "other duties", so to speak. Be Seeing You,
Chris
Posted on 05/14/2002 2:02:11 PM PDT by blam
Two Big Arms Caches Found in Afghanistan - Pentagon
Tue May 14, 3:55 PM ET
By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military has found two huge al Qaeda and Taliban arms caches in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and is moving to reorganize its operations in that unsettled country under the commander of the elite 18th Airborne Corps, the Pentagon (news - web sites) said on Tuesday.
Five T-54 tanks and more than 15,000 mortar rounds, 800,000 50-caliber machine gun bullets and 600 rocket-propelled grenades were found over the weekend near Herat in northwestern Afghanistan and Orgun in the eastern mountains, a senior officer told reporters.
"If they are not, they are close," Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, added when asked if the old Soviet-made tanks and ammo were the biggest such caches found in the 7-month-old Afghan war.
"The ammunition, depending upon its condition, will either be destroyed in place or turned over to the Afghan national army for their training," Pace said.
He also told reporters U.S. special forces troops on Tuesday joined an effort by several countries to train an Afghan national army involving an initial 250 soldiers and another 160 to follow shortly.
Pace, speaking at a Pentagon briefing, said Army Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, would soon move from North Carolina to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan with a staff of up to 500 officers to lead a joint U.S. task force in charge of virtually all of the 7,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
CONCENTRATE ON OTHER ISSUES
American ground forces in Afghanistan are currently under the command of Army Maj. Gen. Franklin "Buster" Hagenbeck, based at Bagram Air Base near the capital, Kabul.
"He (McNeill) will assume responsibilities for the majority of the (U.S.) forces currently in support of operations in Afghanistan," Pace told reporters. He said McNeill would serve under U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks, who is based in Tampa, Florida.
Pace said Franks had called for the establishment of the task force to provide command and support for the operation on the scene and to free himself to concentrate on other issues within CENTCOM.
"I think (the task force) allows him to spend perhaps a little more time on the rest of his region," Pace said of Franks.
The announcements came after U.S. special forces troops killed five suspected Islamic militants and captured 32 others in a raid just before midnight on Sunday north of Kandahar.
Pace said American intelligence indicated a senior Taliban commander might be at the site, but he did not know whether the man -- whom he would not identify -- had been killed or captured.
The compound where the raid occurred appeared to be an old home of elusive Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The detentions brought to more than 40 the number of people arrested over the past week in operations in southern Afghanistan, where the fundamentalist Taliban emerged in 1994 and established its power base among conservative ethnic Pashtun tribes.
There were no American casualties in the raid, U.S. military officials said on Monday.
Now Franks and CENTCOM can devote their time and energy to the coming dismemberment of Iraq.
I was hoping someone would say that.
While I don't think McNeill needs a staff of 500 officers to command a theater with 7,000 troops, it's good to see that Franks is being freed up for "other duties", so to speak. Be Seeing You,
Chris
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