Gates: U.S. to send more troops to Afghanistan

[JaneQPublic]

Source: MSNBC

Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S. intends to send many more combat forces to Afghanistan next year, regardless of whether troop levels in Iraq are reduced further.

It's the first time the Bush administration has made such a commitment for 2009.

Gates was speaking to reporters on Friday while flying to Muscat, Oman, from a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania. The Pentagon chief said that President Bush made the troop pledge during the summit.

Gates said Bush was not specific about the number of additional troops that would go to Afghanistan. The U.S. now has about 31,000 troops there.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23955451/

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Doesn't the Bush administration leave office in 2009, or do they?

[LakeSamish706]

1. Supposed to leave office, but maybe not! Depending on a hit on Iran. n/t

[CJCRANE]

2. Obama's policy

is to withdraw from Iraq but increase troop numbers in Afghanistan.

[Supersedeas]

3. surge and surge again

[acmavm]

4. Do these fuckwits REALLY think they're gonna get the best of

the Afgani tribes??? Do they think there's something to win there? Do they think that Karzai will ever be able to walk down the street without an entire squad of bodyguards?

If so, they're all crazy

[TheLastMohican]

10. They don't

They have a nice drug route to protect there. And the drug production is breaking records with every passing year.

[Arctic Dave]

5. Question. Where in the hell do we find another

7,500-10,000 more soldiers? Is this the part of the movie were * starts moving around imaginary divisions we no longer have?

[legin]

6. what General Dan McNeill said to someone else

(snip)

"General Dan McNeill, Nato's hard-pressed commander in Afghanistan, told my colleague David Blair earlier this week that he has only a tenth of the forces necessary to pacify a country the size of Afghanistan. At present, there are 43,000 troops from 40 countries contributing to ISAF, and, of these, only the British, Americans, Canadians, Dutch and Danes are prepared to take on active combat roles. Gen McNeill believes that to secure a country the size of Afghanistan a force of well over 400,000 is required, but Nato's political masters believe they are doing well if they can maintain the deployment at its current level."

(snip)

(from an article about recent NATO conference and writer of article, Con Coughlin,
is a rightwing dirtbag)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/04/04/do0402.xml

[jzodda]

7. NATO may be in over their heads

I hope not, but that place is where superpowers go to die. That saying was created for Afghanistan. The only thing on our side is that the people are tired of war and the Taliban are not the greatest group of people around. As long as they have free reign to run around in Pakistan this will never end. What a mess, a freaking mess.

[samsingh]

8. pull them out of Iraq

[0007]

9. A watered down version of water boarding before the change over

in January.

Move right along folks nothing to see here.