If we were for sure going to invade afghanistan in October there would be wide spread knoowledge of it in the millitary 6 mos to a year prior.
Assets and logistics would have been immposible to cover up. I knew about iraq 6 months before it happened.
So, although your timeline looks good, i think there should be more supporting evidence.
Jane's Defense - India Joined US led plan against Afghanistan in March 2001.
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir010315_1_n.shtml "India joins anti-Taliban coalition"
By Rahul Bedi
India is believed to have joined Russia, the USA and Iran in a concerted front against Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
From April 2001, yet more indications that a mideast war was planned long before 9/11.
India Reacts - American government told other governments about Afghan invasion IN JUNE 2001.
http://www.indiareacts.com/archivefeatures/nat2.asp?recno=10∓ctg=policy
In this article published in India in the summer of 2001 the Indian Government announces that it will support America's PLANNED military incursion into Afghanistan.
India in anti-Taliban military plan
India and Iran will "facilitate" the planned US-Russia hostilities against the Taliban.
By Our Correspondent
26 June 2001: India and Iran will "facilitate" US and Russian plans for "limited military action"
against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic sanctions don't bend Afghanistan's fundamentalist regime.
The Taliban controls 90 per cent of Afghanistan and is advancing northward along the Salang
highway and preparing for a rear attack on the opposition Northern Alliance from
Tajikistan-Afghanistan border positions.
Indian foreign secretary Chokila Iyer attended a crucial session of the second Indo-Russian joint working group on Afghanistan in Moscow amidst increase of Taliban's military activity near the Tajikistan border. And, Russia's Federal Security Bureau (the former KGB) chief Nicolai Patroshev is visiting Teheran this week in connection with Taliban's military build-up.
Indian officials say that India and Iran will only play the role of "facilitator" while the US and Russia will combat the Taliban from the front with the help of two Central Asian countries, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to push Taliban lines back to the 1998 position 50 km away from Mazar-e-Sharief city in northern Afghanistan.
Military action will be the last option though it now seems scarcely avoidable with the UN banned from Taliban controlled areas. The UN which adopted various means in the last four years to resolve the Afghan problem is now being suspected by the Taliban and refused entry into Taliban areas of the war ravaged nation through a decree issued by Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar last month.
BBC - American government told other governments about Afghan invasion IN JULY 2001.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1550000/1550366.stm
US 'planned attack on Taleban'
The wider objective was to oust the Taleban
By the BBC's George Arney
A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks.
Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.
Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.
Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.
The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah.
Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.
He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby.
Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.
He said that he was in no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks.
And he said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban.
