First US ground attack ‘could have ended in disaster’: “The attack was meant to be a purely cosmetic exercise for the benefit of the media and the public against a relatively safe and poorly defended target.

But there had been a failure of intelligence, and the troops from the elite 75th Rangers Regiment ran into such heavy fire on the ground near Kandahar that they had to beat a hasty retreat. A Chinook helicopter airlifting them out lost its undercarriage and had to make a forced landing.

The Pentagon presented the operation as a complete success and evidence that Operation Enduring Freedom was going according to plan. There was blanket and mainly adulatory media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic with the prognosis that the ground war had begun.

But, instead, what happened last weekend made US and British planners at central command in Tampa, Florida, reappraise the military campaign, and continue with air strikes rather than carry out any more missions on the ground. Within 24 hours the Pentagon has requested special forces troops from Britain and Australia. And the British Government was forced to consider a much larger deployment of ground troops than originally envisaged.” Independent UK