The names of two U.S. servicemen who were killed in Friday’s helicopter

crash were released by the Defense Department on Sunday morning.

Spc. Jonn J. Edmunds, 20, of Cheyenne, Wyo. and Pfc. Kristofor T.

Stonesifer, 28, of Missoula, Mont. were killed when the Blackhawk helicopter

they were riding in crashed in Pakistan.

The two Army Rangers were on a support mission in Operation Enduring

Freedom, the Pentagon said. While the cause of the crash is still under

investigation, the Defense Department has ruled out hostile fire, contrary

to a Taliban claim that they had shot it down.

In a briefing with reporters, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff expressed his condolences to the families of Edmunds and

Stonesifer.

“They and all who are participating in Operation Enduring Freedom are

heroes. They put their lives on the line on behalf of freedom and on behalf

of America, and they do it each and every day,” Myers said. “I’m so very

proud of them and their comrades in arms.”

Myers adamantly denies that the Taliban had anything to do with the crash.

“I think it’s pretty well established the Taliban lie. In this case, any

claims that they shot this helicopter down are absolutely false,” Myers

said. “This was a middle of the night landing. There was a significant

amount of dust when you get close to the ground, the rotor wash brings up

the dust and makes landing very, very difficult. We think that had something

to do with it.”

Special Operations Forces attacked two sites in Afghanistan as part of what

the Pentagon describes as “limited” ground operations.

“Under the direction of the president and the secretary of Defense and under

the command of U.S. Central Command, General Tom Franks, Special Operations

Forces, including U.S. Army Rangers, deployed to Afghanistan. They attacked

and destroyed targets associated with terrorist activity and Taliban command

and control,” Myers said at Saturday’s briefing. “U.S. forces were able to

deploy, maneuver and operate inside Afghanistan without significant

interference from Taliban forces. They are now refitting and repositioning

for potential future operations against terrorist targets in other areas

known to harbor terrorists.”

The ground troops were deployed in southern Afghanistan, parachuting from a

C-130 cargo plane onto an airfield. Myers presented a short video of the

attack, which showed U.S. soldiers entering a building and discovering a

room filled with weapons.

“These troops are clearing the airfield building by building, and you’re

going to notice at one point in the tape the troops come across a small

weapons cache including rocket-propelled grenades, a machine gun and

ammunition,” Myers said. “These weapons were subsequently destroyed.”

U.S. forces encountered “light” resistance the airfield and a separate

Taliban command and control facility near Kandahar.

“As you would expect going into Taliban-held territory, you would meet

resistance, and we met resistance at both objectives, the airfield and the

other objective. It was, I guess you could characterize it as light,” That’s

probably easy for us to say here in this room. For those experiencing it, of

course, it was probably not light. And there were casualties on the other

side, the exact number we do not know yet.”

There were three injuries incurred during the operation, though Myers

described them as “not life threatening.”

“The mission overall was successful. We accomplished our objectives,” Myers

explained. “We have two primary goals in Afghanistan. One is to eliminate

the support to al Qaeda, primarily the Taliban; and the other is to

eliminate al Qaeda. We are going about that from the military part in a very

measured and a very careful way.”

Meyers explained that the two targets were chosen for their intelligence

value, but would not go into specifics about how the mission was carried

out.

“One of the primary reasons we conducted these missions on these two

objective was to gather intelligence, and we are in the process of

evaluating the intelligence that we brought out. But one of the messages

should be that we are capable of, at a time of our choosing, conducting the

kind of operations we want to conduct,” Myers said. “We used a variety of

aircraft. I will not go into specific types. Again, that gets into the

tactics, the techniques and the procedures. We used a variety of aircraft

for this particular operation, and I’ll just leave it at that. The next time

we conduct an operation somewhere in this world on this globe, people would

have an understanding of how we operate and I’m just not going to divulge

that.”

In addition to the ground attacks, aerial operations continued.

“On Friday we struck in 15 planned target areas. These included AAA

[Anti-Aircraft Artillery] sites, anti-aircraft sites, with dispersed armor

and radar at those sites, ammunition and vehicle storage depots, and

military training facilities including armored vehicles, trucks and

buildings,” Myers said. “We again flew four C-17 missions in support of

humanitarian relief delivering approximately 68,000 rations and bringing the

total rations delivered via air drops to date to approximately 575,000.”

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