1.   American airstrikes had been successful in hitting a military barracks and the police station here.

2.   American airstrikes against Saddam seem intended to dismember the one state in the region that can counterbalance Iran.

3.   Asked if the American airstrikes here had made his forces eager to attack the Taliban, he laughed.

4.   After the American airstrikes on Monday night, the surviving Taliban prisoners launched at least two attempts to escape from the fort, the Northern Alliance soldiers said.

5.   Bush issued the remarks a day after Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld had been somewhat more guarded about the success of American airstrikes.

6.   But he said that large-scale alliance ground attacks would not begin until several days into the American airstrikes.

7.   But in the past few days, the expressions of misgivings about continued American airstrikes have mounted.

8.   He and other alliance officials are clearly hoping that the American airstrikes will severely weaken the Taliban.

9.   In the first week of American airstrikes, thousands of protesters rampaged through the streets of Quetta, shouting anti-American slogans, smashing windows and torching shops and cinemas.

10.   Indeed, Pentagon officials and Northern Alliance leaders agreed that American airstrikes, plus several dozen special forces soldiers slipped into Afghanistan, had helped turned the tide.