McCaffrey issues new report on Afghan war

[unhappycamper]

McCaffrey issues new report on Afghan war
By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 7, 2009 16:59:20 EST

U.S. troops could be in Afghanistan for as many as 10 years at a cost of up to $300 billion and “thousands more American casualties,” according to the retired Army general who has penned a new independent report on challenges the military will face in the war.

But retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey concludes that the U.S. can, in the next five years, achieve three primary objectives: Create a viable Afghan security force that will allow for the reduction of an active U.S. combat role; create governance from the district level up that the population can support; and reduce official corruption by establishing a “parallel chain of financial custody and approval of resources” until the Afghan government is “operating unlike an active criminal enterprise.”

McCaffrey’s findings put a sharper edge on the Obama administration’s planned surge of 30,000 troops, announced last week and followed by a flurry of congressional hearings and interviews in which administration officials attempted to satisfy demands for details.

To date, those officials had stepped carefully around the topics of cost, casualties and presence. Cost discussion had been limited to a first-year estimate of roughly $30 billion, which Defense Secretary Robert Gates called a “ballpark figure.” Out-year costs have yet to be broached. The furthest anyone would go on the sensitive issue of casualties was Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen telling the Senate Armed Services Committee that “they will go up.”

And administration officials repeatedly strove to refine Obama’s call for the beginning of a withdrawal in July 2011, saying the date would mark the start of transfer of security responsibility to Afghan security forces and that the pullout of U.S. forces would be slow. On Sunday, Gates told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the U.S. will have a significant troop presence in Afghanistan for “two to three to four years.”


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/12/military_mccaffrey_afghanistan_120709w/



unhappycamper comment: Hey Barry! 10 years of 100,000 boots on the ground equals one trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) dollars, not $300 billion.