Free Republic

On Sept. 11, 2001, the core of al-Qaeda was concentrated in a single city: Karachi, Pakistan. At a hospital, the accused mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole was recovering from a tonsillectomy. Nearby, the alleged organizer of the 2002 bombing in Bali, Indonesia, was buying lab equipment for a biological weapons program. And in a safe house, the man who would later describe himself as the intellectual author of the Sept. 11 attacks was with other key al-Qaeda members watching the scenes from New York and Washington unfold on television.

The Air Force may keep selected aircraft and weapons on alert as part of a strike package aimed at responding quickly against terrorist targets, according to a draft service briefing obtained by Inside the Pentagon. The "Global Response Task Force," or GRTF, is one of seven task forces around which the Air Force will soon plan nearly all its requirements, operations and acquisition, ITP was the first to report Jan. 31. Other packages will assemble Air Force capabilities for: Global Strike; Homeland Security; Humanitarian Relief or Non-combatant Evacuation; Joint Space Command and Control/Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; Nuclear Response; and Air...