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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-17-07 11:46 AM
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US defense secretary "sympathetic" to Afghanistan troop needs

US defense secretary "sympathetic" to Afghanistan troop needs

1 hour, 21 minutes ago

KABUL (AFP) - US Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrapped up a visit to Afghanistan saying he was sympathetic to a request for more troops to battle an expected upsurge in the Taliban-led insurgency this year.

Snip...

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) includes about 33,000 soldiers from 37 nations but is still short of the manpower it has been promised, despite pleas for more support after a year of intense fighting.

Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, the top US commander in Afghanistan, said Tuesday ISAF was about 10 percent short of the troops it had been pledged.

Gates, who met President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday, said it was "very important not to let the success in Afghanistan slip away from us, and that we keep the initiative."

"There's no reason to sit back and let the Taliban regroup," he said.

more...


Then why has the Bush admin been pulling troops from Afghanistan to send to Iraq?



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acmavm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-17-07 11:49 AM
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1. First off, what f**king success in Afganistan??????????
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-17-07 12:25 PM
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2. "There's no reason to sit back and let the Taliban regroup,"

U.S. Says Attacks Are Surging in Afghanistan

By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: January 17, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 16 — Attacks by militants crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan have tripled since September along portions of the border, a senior American intelligence official said Tuesday, prompting calls for a greater effort by Pakistan to curb the influx and a larger deployment of American and other NATO soldiers here.

Of particular concern, officials said, has been a rise in attacks by Taliban and other militants from remote and largely ungoverned tribal areas in Pakistan in eastern Afghanistan, where most of the American combat forces in the country are based.

“The border area is a problem,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters after meeting on Tuesday with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. Mr. Gates said more attacks were coming from across the border and from “Al Qaeda networks operating across the border.”

On his first visit to Afghanistan since taking office six weeks ago, Mr. Gates flew by helicopter to a small joint American-Afghan base in Khost Province, less than a mile from the border.

more...




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gratuitous Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-17-07 12:30 PM
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3. Just because you pretend something
Doesn't make it real. Pretending "success" in Afghanistan (though I guess in relation to Iraq, Afghanistan looks pretty good) and pretending like you have more troops to send there are all very nice, but it doesn't make them real.

Someone really needs to clue in this administration on the differences between imaginary and real, between magic and actuality.
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