By THE NEW YORK TIMES
UWAIT, April 28 — The Pentagon sent two of its new 21,500-pound bombs to the Persian Gulf but they arrived too late to be used in the Iraq war, an allied official said today.
Two of the massive weapons, the largest conventional bombs in the American arsenal, were dispatched to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar in early April, the official said.
At the direction of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the allied commander in the Persian Gulf, military planners even picked out half a dozen possible targets, mostly Iraqi Republican Guard forces in northern Iraq.
But by the time the bombs arrived, the allied official said, "it would have looked like piling on to use them."
The weapon is officially called the Massive Ordnance Air Blast, but the initials have also been used to refer to it as the Mother of All Bombs. It is so big that it must be dropped from the rear of a cargo plane.
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