| 1 | Instead it took five months of fighting and 17,000 air sorties. | |
| 2 | It would be a round-the-clock operation, with nine aircraft each required to fly three sorties a day. | |
| 3 | With more than 85,000 commercial flights across the globe every day, those are unacceptable odds. | |
| 4 | Mr. Obama said the military has completed hundreds of flights to bring food and water to Japan. | |
| 5 | That was the bet President George W. Bush placed during his final months in office, when the CIA greatly increased drone sorties and strikes in Pakistan. |