gotcha for Bushbots you meet

[Fresh_Start]

if leaving Iraq sends the wrong message to the terrorists, what type of message did pulling most of our troops out of Afghanistan send to the terrorists?

[1620rock]

1. Spot on. eom

[Jackeen]

2. Difficult to answer due to false premise.

I wouldn't go using that argument much.

With the re-direction of the 173rd Airborne to Afghanistan, that will bring US troop levels to some 27,000, a record high.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070214/pl_afp/usafghanistaniraq

In the past, when US troop numbers have gone down, they've been replaced in the field with NATO forces, oftentimes German, Danish or Canadian.

So not only do you have a false premise, you also have a failed analogy.

[Fresh_Start]

3. But our troops in Iraq can/should have been replaced

by Iraqis troops (which is comparable to the Nato replacements in Afghanistan) since the enemy after all is Al Qaida and not the Iraqi people themselves.

We've been whack a moling in both Afghanistan and Iraq and both of them are losing ground under our strategy.

[Vickers]

4. We're talking 3-4 years ago, not now...they are replacing troops NOW because

they pulled them out for Idiot George's stupid little Iraq misadventure, otherwise this troop shift would not be necessary.

FTR, I believe there are only about 10,000 non-US troops in Afghanistan (split between 4 or 5 countries).

[Jackeen]

6. You underestimate numbers of both troops and countries.

Right now ISAF consists of over 22,000 troops from 36 non-US nations (Plus the 12,000 US under ISAF control, and 8,000 US under US control). The big contingents are France, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, UK, which combined make up about 2/3 of the 22,0000. The Afghan jaunt has been generally uncontroversial, countries that won't touch Iraq with a barge pole have no issues with sending people there. Even Switzerland has a small contingent.

[Vickers]

8. You are monkeying with numbers...I mean really, when you say 36 nations

it's supposed to make me go "WOW!" I suppose, but some countries have less than TEN troops on the ground. :eyes:

Oh, and speaking of Switzerland, they have authorized the start of criminal proceedings about those CIA flights that illegally moved folks around to torture them...nice, huh?

[lakeguy]

5. okay, how about not sending ENOUGH troops to afghanistan

to get the job done. was there a surge there i missed? what kind of message does that send, letting osama's base fall back to the taliban?

http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?169132


2//PakTribune.com (Pakistan News Service), Pakistan
NEXT TWO MONTHS "MAKE OR BREAK" IN AFGHANISTAN: REPORT

A 'make or break' situation is facing NATO forces in southern Afghanistan in the coming months, with the threat of a major Taliban spring office, an international think-tank warned the other day. After Musa Qala fell two weeks ago, the Taliban now have the big towns in their sights and anyone who can leave has already left, the Senlis Council said in its latest field report on the Counter Insurgency in Afghanistan. The council, which has offices in London, Brussels, Paris and Kabul, concluded that the international community`s own policies are responsible for the dramatic loss of support for the Afghan government and for the rise in the insurgency. "With our own policies, we have created our own enemies," said the founding president of Senlis, Norine MacDonald, who has lived and worked in Afghanistan for the past two years. "The policies implemented by the international community have created these resentful and poor young men who cannot feed their families, and they are now being easily recruited by the Taliban," MacDonald warned. ... Senlis said that there were many legitimate grievances of the local Afghan population which needed and could be simply and inexpensively be addressed. ... "The people of Afghanistan have become the unwilling victims of a war which is not their own," said MacDonald. "Proper provision has not been made according to the Geneva Conventions for civilian casualties in a war zone," he said. "Hospitals have no equipment, no medicines, no blood, no heating. For the most part, civilians injured in the bombing campaigns are abandoned by the international community," he added. The report also pointed out that in 2006, some 2000 NATO bombing campaigns were executed over southern Afghanistan, causing an estimated 4,000 civilian deaths and an untold number of casualties, for which there is practically no possibility of treatment. "The insurgency in southern Afghanistan has been fuelled by the neglect of the international community to address vital issues such as emergency treatment for victims of the international forces bombing campaigns, or the widespread starvation," MacDonald said.

[sanskritwarrior]

7. Ummm

we've never had more troops in Afghanistan than we do now......what are you on about?