For the third straight day, U.S. warplanes pounded targets in Afghanistan, striking military sites near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. More raids were reported later Tuesday around Kandahar, Kabul and Herat. U.S. intelligence reported that two male relatives of Taliban leader Mohammad Omar were killed Sunday, the day the attacks began. When asked if any of Omar's several compounds had been targeted, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said 'some elements outside' one of them were.
U.N. and other humanitarian officials in Islamabad accused the U.S. warplanes of mistakenly bombing offices of a land-mine removal group near Kabul early Tuesday, killing four civilian Afghan guards.
Rumsfeld said he had 'no information' on whether an American bomb or missile was responsible for the deaths. He expressed regret for the loss of life, but noted that thousands of innocent people had been killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon and warned that more would likely die in the United States-led effort to root out terrorist networks around the world.
'Coalition forces will continue to make every reasonable effort to select targets with the least possible unintended damage,' Rumsfeld said. 'But as in any conflict, there will be unintended damage.'
As a sign of the Pentagon's concern that civilian casualties could undermine support for the operation, pilots on the carrier USS Carl Vinson are now required to fly over and visually identify targets before dropping bombs.
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization pledged defiantly Tuesday that a 'storm of airplanes' will continue to attack American targets until the United States ends its 'crusade' against Afghanistan and Islam.
In a menacing video message addressed to the entire Islamic world, al Qaeda spokesman Sleiman abu Gheith called on Muslims in more than 50 nations to 'uphold their religion' by attacking U.S. interests worldwide, echoing statements made by bin Laden earlier this week.
'The Americans must know that the storm of airplanes will not stop and there are thousands of young people who look forward to death, like the Americans look forward to living,' he said in the taped message aired on Al Jazeera, the Arab world's version of CNN, broadcast from Qatar.
'America must know that the battle will not leave its land until America leaves our land, until it stops supporting Israel, until it stops the blockage against Iraq,' abu Gheith said.
It was the second video released by al Qaeda since Sunday, when the United States began its military offensive against terrorism, dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom.
Al Qaeda urged Muslims across the world to rise up against 'the crusade that Bush has promised,' abu Gheith said.
Abu Geith focused on what he saw as the responsibility of all Muslims to 'play his real and true role to uphold his religion as his nation.'
UW-Madison history Professor Kemal Karput said the call to duty will have a limited effect on the region.
'I believed it would have some effect among the hardcore Taliban supporters in Afghanistan and Western Pakistan,' he said. '[But] the effect would be rather limited because al Qaeda does not speak on behalf of Afghanistan as a whole. They [are] a minority within a minority.'
A large reason for the ineffectiveness of the al Qaeda statement is the lack of television sets in the Middle East, Karput said.
'Usually only 15 to 20 percent of the people would follow regularly the news through the venue of television,' he said. 'The news would travel by word of mouth.'
A dispute over the Bush administration's control of information since the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes erupted into an angry exchange between the White House and Congress Tuesday after President Bush moved to restrict intelligence shared with lawmakers.
Members from both parties objected strongly to Bush's highly unusual step of ordering that briefings with sensitive information be limited to just eight of the 535 members of Congress. The memo was signed by Bush on Friday following a report in The Washington Post that intelligence officials told lawmakers there was a '100 percent' likelihood of further terrorist strikes.
'To put out a public document telling the world he doesn't trust the Congress and we leak everything, I'm not sure that helps develop unanimity and comradeship,' Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said. 'We have to have classified briefings if we're going to do our oversight role,' said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich.
Bush, appearing in the Rose Garden with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, gave Congress a stern lecture. 'I understand there may be some heartburn on Capitol Hill,' he said. 'But I suggest if they want to relieve that heartburn, that they take their positions very seriously and that they take any information they've been given by our government very seriously.'
He continued: 'I want Congress to hear loud and clear, it is unacceptable behavior to leak classified information when we have troops at risk.'
According to CNN, federal investigations into the belongings of the suspected hijackers have not linked the Sept. 11 attacks with the deadly anthrax outbreak in Florida.
However, officials are beginning to suspect the appearance of anthrax in American Media Inc., the publisher of such tabloids as The Sun and The Globe, was not an act of nature.
'The evidence is stacking up that indicates it is not environmental,' Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta told CNN.
The death of The Sun's photo editor, 63-year-old Bob Stevens, is blamed on a strain of anthrax similar to the one that appeared in an AMI mailroom worker employed in the same building as Stevens.
Tests on the bacteria found in Stevens and his co-worker resulted in no match to any other strain of anthrax on record. Sources said the closest matches were a strain of anthrax from a goat and a laboratory-manufactured strain.
'The chance this happened without some human intervention was zero,' a spokesman for Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., told CNN after the senator was briefed by Koplan and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.
The FBI is looking into the possibility that Stevens had been infected with the bacteria through the mail, but no conduit has yet been recovered.
