The US military has slapped an air-tight lid of secrecy on planning underway for anti-terrorist operations, and Pentagon officials said on Monday the attack on America had "turned a page" on warfare.
"There is a new way of doing business here, and it's not in the sunshine," one defense official said. "We're not fighting a Japan or a Germany ... It's gone beyond `Loose lips sink ships.'"
That "lips" caution was emblazoned on posters throughout US military headquarters and at American defense-industry plants during World War II.
Veteran defense reporters and Pentagon workers, some with decades in this now-blackened and scarred headquarters of the US military, have not previously seen such a flat refusal by military officials -- even "on background" and unnamed -- to discuss movements of troops and equipment.
US President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have indicated that secrecy and expanded intelligence are the keys to success against Washington's new enemies.
"I want to make it clear to the American people that this administration will not talk about any plans we may or may not have," the president told reporters during a Pentagon visit with Rumsfeld on Monday.
"I think we have just turned a page in our history about how open we will be with information," Navy Rear-Admiral Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said.
In several press meetings since the attacks, Rumsfeld has made no bones about the clampdown on information following Tuesday's air attacks on the Pentagon and New York City's World Trade Center that left more than 5,000 people dead or missing.
"When classified information dealing with operations is provided ... the inevitable effect is that the lives of men and women in uniform are put at risk, because they are the ones who will be carrying out those prospective operations," he said.
Bush and other senior officials have hinted broadly that a military response to last Tuesday's coordinated strike could begin with an attack on Afghanistan.
But beyond Bush's authorization to call up to duty 50,000 part-time reserve forces to work with the 1.4 million-member active military and speculation that elite Special Operations forces could participate in any strike, officials have remained silent.
Defense experts say that, aside from the difficulty finding bin Laden, launching effective attacks against guerrilla training bases in the rugged country would be extremely difficult. The military launched cruise missiles against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 with virtually no lasting effect.
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