Free Republic

In His Memoir, Franks Also Seems Supportive of the Bush Administration Four days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, then the commander of the U.S. military in the Middle East, told his intelligence staff that his greatest fear was "a terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in New York," according to his new memoir. He does not elaborate on what led him to that view. "American Soldier," which goes on sale Tuesday, does not break much other new ground but does deepen and confirm some earlier accounts of the Bush administration's conduct of the...

DOHA, Qatar — The United States military is installing a new command center at a heavily guarded base in this small Persian Gulf state that would be ready to serve as the main headquarters for a war on Iraq. The official purpose of the work at the base, As Sayliyah, is to prepare for a major American military exercise in December called Internal Look. But it will be no ordinary exercise. American officials say that it will be the first time that a war game of its type has been conducted outside the United States and that the command and...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — President Bush has settled on a war plan for Iraq that would begin with an air campaign shorter than the one for the Persian Gulf war, senior administration officials say. It would feature swift ground actions to seize footholds in the country and strikes to cut off the leadership in Baghdad. The plan, approved in recent weeks by Mr. Bush well before the Security Council's unanimous vote on Friday to disarm Iraq, calls for massing 200,000 to 250,000 troops for attack by air, land and sea. The offensive would probably begin with a "rolling start" of...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 — Commanders in the American military's most elite Special Operations unit are contending that their troops should be freed from the fruitless hunt in Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden, military and intelligence officials say. Some senior officers in the Joint Special Operations Command have concluded that Mr. bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, was probably killed in the American bombing raid at Tora Bora last December, officials said. They concluded that he died in a bombing raid on one of several caves that had been a target because American intelligence officials believed they housed Qaeda leaders....

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 — State Department security officers will begin providing the inner ring of bodyguards for President Hamid Karzai in September, as they take over that job from United States Special Operations forces, American and Afghan officials announced today. The American military will continue to assign forces to form what one official in Kabul called "the outer ring of security" for Mr. Karzai, and will supply intelligence and logistical aid to the State Department detail. The decision, according to one senior Afghan official, will remove the visible presence of the American military from Mr. Karzai's side as he carries...