America Strikes Back: Pentagon: Taliban May Poison Relief Food
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: What some might call a shocking new revelation from the Pentagon, officials say the Taliban may intend to poison food brought into Afghanistan for humanitarian relief and blame it on Americans. The Taliban denies this, saying they would never poison their own people, but Bob Franken is standing by. He, of course, is on duty at the Pentagon this morning with some reaction to these reports. Bob, what do you make of these reports?</s>BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think that one of the wars that's going on is a propaganda war. We've been witnessing for the last several weeks countering claims about casualties, Taliban making claims about civilian casualties, the Pentagon very sensitive to that, saying that the Taliban claims are significantly exaggerated. There is that battle that's been going on. There's been a battle about bombs and what their purpose really is. We've been listening to that. Now the one about food, and the Taliban, as you pointed out, claiming first that the United States was trying to poison food, the United States at its briefing saying that the concern was that the Taliban would be poisoning the food so it could blame the United States. So you can see the kind of battle that was going on: The United States offers no proof of its claims; the Taliban offers no proof of its claim. The United States claimed in the briefing that it was relying on credible sources. Others told us that those were intelligence sources.</s>REAR ADM. JOHN STUFFLEBEEM, JOINT STAFF DEP. OPS DIRECTOR: We are confident in the information that we have that they may intend to poison one or more types of food sources and blame it on the Americans. We are releasing this information preemptively so that they will know if the food comes from Americans, it will not be tainted.</s>FRANKEN: And Paula, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said that this was just the United States claiming that the Taliban was poisoning the food, as it poisoned the food, so it'd have somebody to blame, and as a result, the Afghan people had to worry about poisoned food.</s>ZAHN: Bob Franken, thanks so much for that update.</s>ZAHN: And welcome back at just about 19 minutes after the hour. The United States continues to strike at the very heart of the Taliban regime. Our own Chris Burns is watching the latest military action from northern Afghanistan. He joins us live. Good morning, Chris.</s>CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Paula, as we speak we hear what we believe to be two U.S. war jets flying overhead as they have repeatedly done this afternoon, striking in the past two hours along the foothills, widening their targets now to along the foothills, hitting in at least five places. We saw five bombs going off along that mountainside, mountainside where they have been dug in and shooting rockets and mortars on villages like this one and another not far away from here -- we hear another impact here and some anti-aircraft fire -- and hit another village a couple of days ago -- that killed two people. So they're hitting at their targets, as well as, overnight, they hit targets along the road between here and Kabul, that being along the front there. Those are new targets as well, and along that road, we saw two Northern Alliance tanks moving down in that direction this afternoon, perhaps taking advantage of the Taliban positions that might have been struck by those airstrikes. Also more airstrikes overnight in areas along the front line where the Bagram air base is. That is the main point of contention along this front. That is what the Northern Alliance hopes to take. The front line runs right through there. More fighting in the north as well, where the Northern Alliance is trying to take the strategic town of Mazar-e-Sharif. The airstrikes were also pinpointed along that front there. However, no major progress is reported. It does appear the Taliban are fighting back very fiercely and the Northern Alliance, being outgunned and outmanned, are finding a hard time and demanding more airstrikes hopefully to level the playing field -- Paula. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com