Washington — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended on Tuesday his decision not to send a large U.S. ground force to hunt down Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida fighters made a final stand in eastern Afghanistan last month.
That would only have hastened a bin Laden escape, Rumsfeld said in an interview with AP Radio and a small group of other radio networks.
"It's unambiguous that we had the right approach," he said.
Meanwhile, U.S. troops in Afghanistan are discovering more caves and tunnels that will be searched for clues to bin Laden's whereabouts and information that could pre-empt future terrorist attacks, Rumsfeld said.
The defense secretary disclosed that "several hundred-plus" American troops have arrived in the Philippines to train and support local forces in their fight against the Abu Sayyaf extremist group, which has links to al-Qaida. Rumsfeld mentioned no specific number, but Philippine officials have said the American contingent would total about 600, including 160 U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers.
Reacting to criticism
Critics of the Pentagon's approach in Afghanistan have questioned the wisdom of relying on local Afghan forces to chase bin Laden's al-Qaida fighters in the mountainous Tora Bora area. Even some in the Pentagon favored sending several hundred Marines there in mid-December in hopes of getting bin Laden before his trail went cold.
Rumsfeld, however, said that such a move "would not have been helpful" because no U.S. force could have occupied all of Afghanistan, which is roughly the size of Texas. "The larger number of Americans on the ground might very well have hastened (bin Laden's) departure as opposed to delayed it," he said.
Some al-Qaida fighters who fled Tora Bora were captured by Pakistani forces and turned over to the United States. Rumsfeld said more al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners have been turned over this week; some detained earlier have been sent back to Pakistan, while others have been sent to the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.
Other U.S. defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that American troops are holding seven new prisoners in Afghanistan. They were caught during one of several ongoing operations, one official said. He declined to give details, saying the efforts continue.
Conflicting reports
Rumsfeld said he continued to receive conflicting intelligence reports on whether bin Laden was alive or dead, inside Afghanistan or outside.
The manhunt has been hurt by leaks of classified intelligence information to the news media, he said.
"We know that as these things occur, our sources of information tend to dry up, and that is notably unhelpful as well as illegal," he said.
A few dozen U.S. Army Special Forces troops were sent to the Tora Bora area in December to direct U.S. airstrikes at al-Qaida bases and later to help search caves the terrorists had abandoned. They found evidence that bin Laden had been there but no signs of where he went next.
A larger U.S. ground presence ran the risk of suggesting a U.S. intent to occupy and control Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said.
"Had we had a lot of people on the ground ... you would have gotten everyone in Afghanistan against you, as opposed to just the Taliban and al-Qaida," he said.
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