NYT, in effect, says that it's a setback for Washington, though not on the front page:
***** The New York Times 9 March 2002
THE DIPLOMACY
U.S. Shifts Gears in Mideast Policy
By TODD S. PURDUM
WASHINGTON, March 8 - For months, the Bush administration's calculus on the Middle East boiled down to this: rising Israeli-Palestinian violence was brutal but did not threaten strategic American interests, and it was bound to ease in time, paving the way for resumption of peace efforts.
On Thursday, President Bush effectively acknowledged that those calculations were wrong: The violence is worse than ever, it threatens the Bush administration's broader Arab alliances in the war on terrorism and possible action against Iraq, and the riskiest thing of all now might be to do nothing - even if there is nothing much new to do....
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/09/international/09DIPL.html> *****
Also of interest:
***** The New York Times 10 March 2002
Retreat of Afghan Allies Forced G.I.'s to Take Lead in Fighting
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON, March 9 - American troops were unexpectedly forced to do the fiercest fighting in Afghanistan this week after an allied Afghan general retreated under withering fire from foes who might have been tipped off about the attack, senior military officers said.
The Afghan retreat and subsequent battlefield confusion in the operation's early hours led swiftly to American combat deaths and allowed hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters to surge into the fight from hide-outs in nearby mountains and valleys, these officials said, creating a massed enemy force larger than American commanders anticipated.
Soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain and 101st Airborne Divisions moved quickly to fill the breach left by their bloodied Afghan allies.
But the enemy's size, stiff resistance and well-coordinated counter-attack forced American commanders to summon fresh reinforcements - including 16 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters from the United States and five Marine Corps Cobra gunships from a warship afloat in the Northern Arabian Sea to replace Apaches that were shot up early in the fight.
"The Afghan withdrawal and the fact Al Qaeda reinforced dramatically caused us to reassess what was needed," one senior American officer said. "Any good plan always preserves flexibility."...
...Sgt. Maj. Frank Grippe of the 10th Mountain Division was among those Americans told his mission would be "to conduct blocking positions" to kill or capture fleeing Qaeda fighters flushed out by advancing Afghan allies who were to carry the weight of Operation Anaconda.
But as he explained in a telephone interview from Afghanistan, the Afghan allies never arrived, and his troops became the pointed end of the spear engaging adversaries in the first 18 hours of combat.
"The Afghan forces were part of the operation to clear the villages of Al Qaeda forces," he said. "The Afghan forces on the first day received heavy automatic weapons fire and mortar fire and they could not make it through the other canyons into the valley. So the Afghan forces never arrived. This was a total American force in the Shah-i-Kot Valley that day."
Commanders had always planned an American air assault and direct ground combat role, but that mission dramatically expanded.
Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of the war in Afghanistan, has said the American offensive succeeded in surprising the enemy.
But with American troops training as many as 500 Afghan allies for a major battle some weeks beforehand and hints that Afghans on both sides were talking to each other, other officers said it was no accident that some Al Qaeda fighters seemed so well prepared.
"They either got real lucky or they had a pretty good sense of what we were up to," one senior officer said....
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/international/asia/10MILI.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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