Administration: Initial strategy is to control the skies.

Byline: John Diamond

WASHINGTON_The campaign to destroy terrorist havens in Afghanistan began after nightfall Sunday as the flash and boom of cruise missiles and the chatter of anti-aircraft fire marked the beginning of what President Bush promised would be the relentless pursuit of a hidden enemy.

In the attack aimed at terrorists and the regimes that support them, President Bush decided to start from the outside and move in, aiming first not at suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, but at the air defense assets of the Afghan Taliban regime that protects him.

The strategy, Bush administration officials said, was to control the skies of Afghanistan and clear the way for more comprehensive military operations to come, including the possible use of special operations ground forces against specific terrorist strongholds. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointedly did not rule out the possibility that some U.S. ground forces may be in Afghanistan. Sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, satellite-guided bombs dropped by radar-evading "stealth" bombers, and laser-guided munitions launched from carrier-based jets gave the opening night of the campaign the look and feel of past U.S. air wars over Iraq and Kosovo.

But in a sure sign of that this campaign will be unlike its predecessors, the initial attack wave was followed by a pair of C-17 transports…