U.S. Jim Mattis says the will not disclose how much damage occurred when the used its most powerful non-nuclear bomb to strike an Islamic State stronghold in Afghanistan.
The massive bomb used by the United States against a base in eastern Afghanistan destroyed a tunnel complex built almost four decades ago by Islamist fighters during the Soviet invasion of the Asian country, Afghan officials said on Friday. The video of the bomb drop can be seen here.
The retired four-star general says the learned from its Vietnam war experience that it doesn’t pay to judge the success of battlefield action in terms of the number of enemy forces killed. It was a reference to the so-called body count that was publicly exaggerated in Vietnam.
Instead, he says the April 13 use of the so-called “mother of all bombs” shows the U.S. doing “what was necessary to break ISIS,” whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or elsewhere.
Mattis was asked about the bombing by journalists traveling with him Thursday to Tel Aviv.
USMC Life staff contributed to the article.
